Assessing Value on the Orlando Magic Roster: Class Warfare

The Extensions

The big question Magic fans will likely be asking when it comes to value this year is whether the Magic got good value for Nikola Vucevic and Tobias Harris on their new deals.

Vucevic signed a four-year, $52-million extension in October and Harris inked his four-year, $64-million deal in the summer. Both are getting paid substantially more than they were last year.

So first, let’s look at last year’s numbers:

Under the rookie scale, both Vucevic and Harris grade very well. They produced a much better value than Oladipo and Payton. On the rookie scale, having a VTC of $5 million is when you are getting to the elite levels. So Nikola Vucevic is adding value to the Magic in a major way.

The question though is whether they are going to get that same value when his salary takes a bump up.

So let’s take last year’s numbers and put them up against this year’s salary.

Do not be too worried with the negative numbers on the VTC. That gets more normal when salary begins to increase.

Upper Middle Class contracts are typically bad values. As Nygaard relates:

"In many ways, contracts that fall under the upper-middle class are the least beneficial contracts a team has at its disposal. Rookie deals and max contracts artificially suppress player salaries. Minimum deals and lower-middle class contracts enable teams to climb above the salary cap to sign new free agents. Upper-middle class contracts? They offer no additional benefits. Upper-middle class contracts can be classified into one of two groups. The first group is comprised of players who are on their second contract in the league. These are players who did not impress their team enough to warrant a rookie-scale max extension but did at least earn a raise over their rookie deal. This group includes guys like Steph Curry, DeAndre Jordan and Al Horford, along with lower-end guys like Gerald Henderson and Greivis Vasquez. Needless to say, players in this group can carry immense upside. However, to that same point, if those players’ agents thought they could make a plausible case for a max contract, they wouldn’t be in this group. So, there’s some risk involved as well."

Vucevic squarely falls into this category with his deal. It is largely considered a good deal though because many people believed Vucevic could get a max deal. Max deals off a rookie contract often have better value at the end of the day too. So the Magic might be getting great value in both these players.

For Vucevic specifically, placing his VTC on the max player scale shows he is right in the middle. He provides a better VTC than Kevin Love did last year, as you can see in the chart below.

On this scale, then, it seems Vucevic is an extreme bargain. You just have to recognize he could have gotten max value on the open market to get there. Otherwise, as an upper middle class player, it is hard to get much of any value.

The Magic treat Vucevic as a max player and key player on their team. So it would make sense to value and compare him to these group of players. In this sense, the Magic will get excellent value for him.

So what about Tobias Harris?

Harris is essentially getting paid the max salary. He turned down a max salary to stay in the Magic. So let’s judge him at that level (he will not mind, especially considering the discussion on upper middle class players).

Harris here grades out much worse. His comparables on a max deal are Brook Lopez and Eric Gordon (we can ignore Kevin Durant since he did not play much last year).

By this metric, Harris does not grade well and has to produce more value it would seem to make his contract match.

It seems with Harris and his new deal, there are some points that suggest he is more than worth the contract considering his age and production. And then there are others like this one that are not sold on Harris.

Harris will have to prove his worth all over again.

Next: The Mid-Level Guys