Orlando Magic Daily Mailbag Vol. 2: Assessing value

The Magic are a few games into their 26th season with a ton of questions left to answer. The deadline for extensions passed, but many of you in the last few weeks had questions about Tobias Harris and Nikola Vucevic and their overall value to the franchise.

As always, well maybe always is the wrong word since this is volume 2, I will do my best to answer the questions you sent. I will try to do this every other week or so. Feel free to send a question any time via Twitter @OMagicDaily or by e-mail at omagicdaily@gmail.com.

Let’s open the mailbag:

This question was asked during the beginning of the preseason, but it warrants a response after Saturday’s game against the Raptors.

I would expect Aaron Gordon‘s production to be a bit more up and down this year. It is going to take some time for him to find his position in the league and figure out exactly what he can do. This year especially. I would suspect he will get better with an offseason, etc. He is only 19 years old, after all.

In three games, Gordon scored 11 points in the season opener and looked to find a good rhythm picking his spots. He did not force anything. Against the Wizards, Gordon scored four points including an extremely athletic dunk. Saturday, Gordon committed three fouls in 1:34 and was out of the game for most of the remainder of the contest. Expect this kind of up and down.

Where things will get tough is trying to balance minutes for Maurice Harkless, Tobias Harris and Aaron Gordon. Harkless was the one left out of the rotation in the first three games until Gordon got into foul trouble. Jacque Vaughn decided to stick with Harkless after his successful first stint. That was a decision to go for a win rather than develop a rookie. This will be the difficult balance all season for the Magic.

E-Mail from Partin from Orlando:

"Once Vic and Frye are healthy, the end of our bench starts getting pretty crowded. Who do you think gets left out of the regular rotation this year? (If you want to up the degree of difficulty, pretend like we made the playoffs and pick the 9-man power squad)."

I alluded to some of the difficulties of setting the rotation in the previous question. There is a logjam at small forward and, eventually, the Magic might want to get Tobias Harris some time at the four. Jacque Vaughn has never really been tested this way as a coach. At least, not with the slight pressure of winning involved.

So a 9-man rotation then?

Clearly Elfrid Payton and Luke Ridnour are your point guards. Victor Oladipo and Ben Gordon slide in at shooting guard (or maybe it should be Evan Fournier as @CoolLare pointed out!). If I have to tighten my rotation, I may take Ridnour out and have Oladipo and Payton platoon at point guard. Channing Frye, Tobias Harris, Aaron Gordon and Maurice Harkless are the jumble at the forward position. At center you have Nikola Vucevic and Kyle O’Quinn. That leaves Willie Green, Dewayne Dedmon, Devyn Marble and Andrew Nicholson out of the rotation.

As you might expect with this young team, the depth of rotation is not incredibly great and there are still some pretty big questions marks for this lineup. So the Playoffs might be a little far off right now, especially with Oladipo out of the lineup.

This is a balance too.

The Magic have already made a significant investment in Nikola Vucevic. So lock him in on this roster. I would suppose Channing Frye is locked in for the rest of his contract as well. Expect an extension for Victor Oladipo when that time comes. Elfrid Payton and Aaron Gordon project to be part of the team’s future.

So by that math, that is a lot of players the Magic are going to commit long term too. So again, there will be a balance.

For now, the Magic are picking free agents to sign to reasonable deals (debate the Frye deal as reasonable later) to supplement the young players. The team comes into some significant cap room in 2016 with only Nikola Vucevic and Channing Frye receiving any money beyond their rookie contracts.

Then again, everyone could have cap room that year thanks to the new TV rights agreement. It will be interesting to see how the Magic’s plans change thanks to the influx of money coming to each team in the new TV rights deal. That may accelerate things or not. A question to explore another day though.

https://twitter.com/Benjami65229416/status/524340999598780417

This is a really good question. We have seen in three games that shots are going to be secondary for both of these players.

Already, I have been surprised with how well Gordon has been in the offense. He looks confident when he shoots. The important thing is for him not to force things and attack when the offense calls for it. Easier said than done. Rookies’ eyes get big and they want to do more than they are capable of.

Elfrid Payton presents a more interesting thing. Payton has had the opportunities to score. He has seen his shot blocked more than a few times — six times already this season, according to Basketball-Reference. But he is getting into the paint much more often. The opportunity for Payton to score has been there a lot more.

Payton’s best chance to score, along with Gordon, will be in transition for much of the season. Their jumpers will need an offseason to improve before they can unleash them comfortably in a game.

The hopes are the Magic will be in a better position when this time comes.

The fortunate part for the Magic is that at this point no player can really “escape” the team. All of Orlando’s best players — or key players — are on rookie contracts and would be limited by restricted free agency.

The hope is that by the time Elfrid Payton and Aaron Gordon are entering restricted free agency in 2018, the Magic will have the pillars of their franchise’s future in place and maybe even some high-priced free agents to boot — or trading some of these assets for a key player or star.

That time is pretty far in the future. The Magic will have four or five years now to play around with some of the players on this roster before they can leave willingly in free agency. Right now, it is the Magic’s choice what to do with them.

And they will have to play their way into new contracts or into the Magic’s future plans.

That is it for this mailbag. I still have tons of questions I did not get to that I will hopefully get to in the next mailbag which might be coming sooner than expected. Keep sending me your questions at omagicdaily@gmail.com or @omagicdaily. Until next time…