As Jeff Weltman and the new Orlando Magic front office get settled in for their first season, they must learn how to get more out of Summer League.
Between the end of the season and training camp, there is not a lot for fans to look forward to when it comes to basketball. Especially if that team misses the Playoffs.
Summer League is basically it. And like the Draft, it is all a futures game. It is merely an expression of hope for the upcoming season. The odds of actually finding that player or unearthing that diamond in the rough are slim.
On a Summer League team maybe one or two players from each team will catch on with the team they are playing for — and they are usually playing for scraps on the roster.
For rebuilding teams like the Orlando Magic the last five years, Summer League remains important. It is a place to mine for lesser-known talent (read: cheap) hungry for a shot in the NBA. For teams that are not necessarily looking to win, this quality is absolutely necessary.
It may be something small in the grand scheme of things for the Magic, but it is a resource the Magic have failed to use properly.
That came into sharper focus this year when several Magic players on their Summer League roster seemed to catch on with other teams.
Guard Marcus Georges-Hunt, probably the best player on the Magic’s Summer League team, had a contract with the Magic. Free agent moves pushed him off the roster and the team ultimately granted his release.
Derrick Walton Jr. impressed with his play throughout Summer League. But he ended up signing a two-way contract with the Miami Heat.
Jalen Jones was active in two games with the Magic Summer League team. He signed a two-way contract with the New Orleans Pelicans.
Matt Costello similarly had his ups and downs with the Magic in three games at Summer League. He ended up signing a two-way deal with the San Antonio Spurs.
There is a general theme here. The Magic opted to use their two-way contracts in a different way. But Anthony Parker and the Magic’s staff did a good job putting together a talented team that had several NBA-caliber players. Or at least players other teams seem to have a bit of confidence in.
Georges-Hunt is likely to end up somewhere for training camp. That would make four players off the Magic’s Summer League team that ended up with NBA contracts in some fashion. With Jonathan Isaac and Wesley Iwundu also getting guaranteed deals, that is quite a lot of talent on the Summer League team.
And only Jonathan Isaac and Wesley Iwundu, the Magic’s draft picks, will be on the team next year.
Any way anyone can slice it, this is something of a missed opportunity for the team to build some young talent. It is the exact kind of opportunity the Magic have missed throughout much of the last five years to build depth.
This year was a bit of an outlier.
The new management group did not have the same time to build its roster or to get a look at what kind of players they would focus. And opportunities changed as free agency played out.
A summer that originally looked like one where the Magic would add young players to grow more organically became a summer where the Magic found veterans at bargain prices.
Orlando Magic
Signing Jonathon Simmons, Arron Afflalo and Marreese Speights squeezed out a lot of opportunities for young players to play. It pushed Georges-Hunt off the roster. Mario Hezonja may not even find himself a spot in the rotation either.
Things got crowded very quickly.
And with the Magic not in full rebuild mode, perhaps going with veterans was the right path for the team to take. But throughout the past five years, the Magic similarly came up short with its Summer League rosters.
As Miles Wray of the Step Back pointed out a few weeks ago, the Magic have not had a single hit on Summer League signees. They have not had any player make it after signing an undrafted player to a contract in the offseason.
There are a few Summer League standouts who made the roster during this rebuild.
Arinze Onuaku made the team in training camp after standing out for the Magic on their Summer League roster. He lasted to his guarantee date in January.
Two years ago, Keith Appling got a midseason call up after a good Summer League showing. But he did not last very long in the NBA.
The only real Summer League success for the Magic came in Rob Hennigan’s first year with the team. DeQuan Jones surprisingly beat out Quentin Richardson for the last roster spot that year after a strong Summer League showing. But he never established himself on the team much beyond that strong preseason showing.
Orlando has essentially used Summer League for the last few years to stock up the D-League team and provide a test for the team’s draft picks. Even then, the Magic only rarely called up players from the Erie BayHawks.
Again, these were missed opportunities for a rebuilding team. Orlando needed talent and could not come up with it.
Some of that was perhaps by design. There were years where the Magic had several players they wanted to look at who already had guaranteed roster spots. They were not looking to mine the depths for talent. They just wanted to see their roster players and draft picks play.
Still, the team needed to find talent anywhere it could. And consistently this avenue went unused.
President of basketball operations Jeff Weltman said he plans to use the G-League heavily. The formation of the Lakeland Magic was a positive for him taking the job. It seems possible free agent Khem Birch will spend the year on a two-way contract in Lakeland. And it looks likely Wesley Iwundu will spend significant time there too.
The Magic still have to fill out the rest of their G-League roster. It is possible Summer League standouts like Kalin Lucas, Josh Gray or Hassan Martin could end up on the Magic. Then again, none of those players stood out enough to get a two-way contract or see meaningful time in the NBA with the Magic this year.
This year may have been a wash for the Magic with such little time to put a team together. But in the future, Orlando will have to do better at taking advantage of this asset. If anything, just to build up and replenish talent. Even some of the better teams know how to use the Summer League.
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It is ultimately still a crap shoot. And the Magic will not have to worry about filling a Summer League roster again until next June and July. To be sure, they will have to do better at taking advantage of this tool if they want to continue improving and beefing up their bench.