Orlando Magic Top 30: The Most Under-Appreciated Player in Orlando Magic History
History has a way of forgetting how players contributed and what they did. We look back at the most under-appreciated players in Orlando Magic history.
It is easy to get excited about the good part of Orlando Magic history.
Watching Shaquille O’Neal and Anfernee Hardaway flying down the lane and imposing their will on the league at a young age. The threat of Tracy McGrady scoring 50 points at any moment. Dwight Howard’s dominance on both ends and his ability to close down the paint.
There are the players that are easy to remember too. The teams that resonated with Magic fans long after they broke up or even in spite of sometimes poor results.
The story of the Magic flows easily through these players. From the superstars like Shaquille O’Neal, Anfernee Hardaway, Tracy McGrady and Dwight Howard to the fan favorites like Scott Skiles, Dennis Scott, Darrell Armstrong, Bo Outlaw and Hedo Turkoglu. It is impossible not to speak about these names in the course of Magic history.
But even those players have lost something to history. And if they have lost something to history, who else has lost something to history?
History probably does not even remember these players accurately — such as Bo Outlaw leading the league in defensive box plus-minus twice in a Magic uniform (1998 and 2000). Subsequent play has perhaps caused plenty to forget just how dominant Howard was in a Magic uniform.
Or perhaps a player was with the team for such a short time or with the wrong team that they are almost completely forgotten to history.
That is what we hope to do with our list this year. In previous iterations, we have ranked the top teams in Magic history and the top players. We have also ranked the most popular players in Magic history.
This year we wanted to search for the most under-appreciated players in Magic history.
What does under-appreciated mean? All the things described above and really whatever you want it to mean. It can be interpreted in different ways and the question was meant to be fairly open-ended.
We had members of the Orlando Magic Daily staff submit their lists of the most under-appreciated players in team history. We then asked Magic fans on Twitter and on the Magic Subreddit for their nominations.
Finally, we ran a series of polls pitting players against each other and asking for their reasons for their vote to come up with our final list of the top 30 most under-appreciated players in Magic history.