The Orlando Magic just inducted Darrell Armstrong into the Orlando Magic Hall of Fame. So who has next for the Hall? We sift through the candidates.
To anyone outside of Orlando Magic fans, Darrell Armstrong might have seemed like an odd choice to honor for the Hall of Fame.
He is truly a player that belongs solely to the Magic. Fortunately, his Dallas Mavericks team — Darrell Armstrong is an assistant coach for Dallas — seemed to recognize how special and passionate he was too. They celebrated his induction into the Orlando Magic Hall of Fame with a team get-together before Friday’s game. As Armstrong walked away from center court after getting recognized by the Amway Center crowd, the Mavericks mobbed him in celebration.
Armstrong truly was a special player. The drumbeat of the famed Heart and Hustle team. Someone Magic fans still show all kinds of appreciation for at every moment he gets brought up.
Armstrong’s induction into the Orlando Magic Hall of Fame was an emotional one. Armstrong was never supposed to make it to the NBA. He thanked every coach that guided him along the way, pausing to collect his thoughts and compose himself when he finally reached Doc Rivers and that Heart and Hustle team.
As things stand, Armstrong is third in franchise history in total assists (seventh in assists per game), second in steals (and second in steals per game, tops in steal percent) and sixth in value over replacement player according to Basketball-Reference.
Armstrong is not on the Mt. Rushmore of Magic basketball, but he is certainly in that next tier. His inclusion in the Orlando Magic Hall of Fame was always expected.
The question now is who has next? Which player or figure will join the Magic’s Hall of Fame next?
The list of players who surely qualify for the Hall of Fame is fairly set in stone. The question for the team with it playing some catch up after forming the honor in 2014 is the order in which franchise luminaries enter the hall.
The first batch were obvious. Nick Anderson and Pat Williams were the founding members of the team and easy choices for the first group in the hall. Rich DeVos and Jimmy Hewitt were pretty much the team’s only owners. Shaquille O’Neal and Tracy McGrady are Basketball Hall of Fame players who had significant time with the Magic. Anfernee Hardaway would have been there.
The team will have to wait until Dwight Howard retires before they admit the final member of the franchise’s Mt. Rushmore into the team’s hall of fame.
There are still a lot of players and figures to get to from the team’s early years. And now players from the 2009 Finals run are starting to retire and are becoming eligible for the honor. And there are always the fan favorites who should get in for their contributions and adoration as much as their statistics.
The Magic will eventually get to everyone on that list — I will probably mention everyone who I think should be in through the course of this post. The order in which players go in has some importance. It states who is important in the franchise’s history. There is some ranking to go with that.
Practically, it is also about who is available to make the trip to Orlando for all the pomp and circumstance (sorry, Scott Skiles).
Here are our best guesses at who has next (in order for drama’s sake).
Jeff Turner, and other Orlando Magic support staff
It is really hard to imagine the Orlando Magic without Jeff Turner. He has been with the franchise virtually since the beginning.
He signed with the team on July 11, 1989, before the team’s first season. He played seven largely unspectacular seasons with the Magic, bouncing in and out of the rotation for much of his time in Orlando.
The Orlando Magic traded him to the Vancouver Grizzlies in 1996. He was injured at the time and never played for the Grizzlies. He almost immediately returned to Orlando and started doing radio color commentary by the end of that 1996 season.
He was the team’s radio color commentator from the 1997 season through 2005. He took a break to coach and work for Lake Highland Preparatory School in town before rejoining the Magic broadcast as the television color commentator in 2013 after spending a few seasons as a studio analyst.
Essentially, there have been only six seasons of Magic basketball where Jeff Turner was not involved in some way. He is a central figure in how fans relate to the Magic.
Turner would get in for this impact and this relationship as much as his days on the court. Turner averaged 6.5 points and 3.6 rebounds per game in his seven seasons with the Magic.
But he has cemented himself as a voice for the Magic on-air and a key cog in the relationship between the team and the fans.
Orlando Magic
More importantly, Turner is considered the team’s first free-agent signing. He essentially was the first player to choose Orlando. And the fact he has stayed here in the 31 years since is a really powerful statement. Especially considering what Orlando was when the Magic arrived.
There are a lot of other people who fit that same bill as contributors that deserve some recognition.
None probably more so than public address announcer Paul Porter.
Porter has been the in-arena voice of the Magic since the beginning, driving all the way from Tampa for most games. He has started splitting games between the Orlando Magic and Tampa Bay Lightning. But Porter is always in the arena for the big games now and as much a part of the experience of attending Magic games.
His booming voice and derisive tones for the opponent helped change public address announcing. His seeming cackle as a team committed a travel or threw the ball out of bounds added to the somewhat avant-garde experience of going to a game at the Orlando Arena in the mid-1990s. There are unconfirmed stories the NBA asked him and the Magic staff to tone it down.
The Magic could also choose to honor John Gabriel.
John Gabriel was an assistant coach under Matt Guokas‘ original coaching staff and moved into the front office. He worked with Pat Williams to free up the cap room to sign Horace Grant. Then as the general manager of the team, he pulled off the move that brought in Tracy McGrady and Grant Hill, ushering in a new era of Magic basketball (albeit ill-fated).
Another staff member the Magic have previously honored is Director of Team Operations Rodney “Sid” Powell.
Powell has been with the team since its beginning too, working as an equipment manager. He is vital to the team’s operations. It is unlikely the team would give him the Hall of Fame honor because his just is so behind the scenes.
The Magic honored Powell at mid-court during the team’s 15-year anniversary in 2004.
Hedo Turkoglu and Rashard Lewis
It is hard to separate Hedo Turkoglu and Rashard Lewis in Orlando Magic history.
They were the two players who made the Magic devastatingly unique in the late 2000s. Their size at the forward position and their ability to stretch the floor was not anything the league had seen from elite players at that point.
Hedo Turkoglu was a ball-handling, 6-foot-9 forward well before his time. Stan Van Gundy unlocked Hedo Turkoglu by playing him in a way no one was even conceiving of at that point. Who lets their 6-foot-9 forward initiate the offense, let alone give him the green light to shoot from beyond the arc.
Rashard Lewis was much the same. He was taken in the second round originally as a high schooler who seemed destined to be a tweener. He proved himself a capable shooter and an underrated (and under-used) post-up player.
By the time he reached Orlando, Lewis had established himself as a solid player. But persuading him to stay at power forward and trust this new vision for playing basketball was a big part of Lewis’ ethos. He was all about the team. Never mind his max contract, he was happy to help the team win.
Having two players who could switch seamlessly between the forward positions and drain shots from the outside was revolutionary. It changed the NBA. The 2009 Magic proved a 3-point shooting team could win a NBA title. Even though they ultimately fell short.
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Turkoglu averaged 14.5 points per game, 4.5 rebounds and 3.9 assists per game in eight seasons with the Magic. He shot 37.9 percent from beyond the arc. In his two years with Van Gundy (the first stint, at least), Turkoglu averaged 18.2 points per game, 5.5 rebounds and 4.9 assists per game.
Not to mention all the big shots Turkoglu hit along the way in the 2009 playoff run. He is cemented deeply in Magic lore.
Lewis was much quieter, even if his salary was much bigger. He was the one that made the whole thing work with his sacrifice to move to power forward.
In four seasons with the Magic, he averaged 16.3 points per game and shot 39.9 percent from beyond the arc. His ability to defend both bigger forwards like Kevin Garnett and stay versatile enough to stay on the perimeter. He was truly revolutionary and the Magic deployed him that way.
Lewis and Turkoglu should both be in the Orlando Magic Hall of Fame now that their NBA careers are over. It is a matter of timing for them.
The timing might be Dwight Howard. It is hard to imagine the Magic starting to go through players and figures from that 2009 team without putting the heart and soul of that team — Dwight Howard, Jameer Nelson and Stan Van Gundy — in the Hall of Fame first.
A lot of the exercise for the Orlando Magic Hall of Fame is figuring out the order to put players and figures into the hall since the team is playing catch up. The 2009 group will get their turn to go into the Hall of Fame very soon.
Jameer Nelson
Few players mean more to the Orlando Magic than Jameer Nelson. Like this year’s Hall of Fame inductee, Darrell Armstrong, Jameer Nelson quickly endeared himself to fans as someone who would always give his all and show fierce loyalty to the organization. He was quickly a fan favorite.
Nelson was solid for the entirety of his Magic career. The only blip was Stan Van Gundy’s decision to play him in the 2009 Finals after he missed the last half of the season with a torn labrum. Nelson was not quite the same in the biggest moment for the franchise. It was still sad that Nelson could not participate in the biggest moment of his career.
Nelson averaged 12.6 points per game and 5.1 assists per game in 10 seasons with the Magic. He is one of two players to last that long with the team.
Nelson ranks second in games played, leads the team in assists, is fifth in steals and fifth in points. He is one of the luminaries in the franchise’s history. Nelson won the Rich and Helen DeVos Community Enrichment Award in 2013.
Magic fans were happy to see Jameer Nelson hanging with Dwight Howard again during the dunk contest, even if Howard was in a Los Angeles Lakers uniform for the contest. Magic fans still have a deep affection for Nelson.
His induction into the Orlando Magic Hall of Fame is a foregone conclusion. The question is when.
The whole 2009 group probably will have to wait for Howard to go into the Hall of Fame before unlocking them. It makes sense that the best player of each era goes in before some of the role players — yes, both Jameer Nelson and Rashard Lewis were All-Stars, but that was Dwight Howard’s team. Stan Van Gundy will likely join them at some point.
Fans are eagerly awaiting the team to recognize some of the players in that 2009 group. Likely they will have to wait for Dwight Howard to go in first. And the Magic still have a host of players from the original era that they should be aiming to honor first too.
Nelson will go in right after Howard. He is one of the most important figures in Magic history and one of the biggest influencers on the franchise’s history. Nelson is always welcomed back in Orlando.
Bo Outlaw
Darrell Armstrong was taking photos with his family and other Orlando Magic Hall of Famers in attendance for his induction during Friday’s game. Nick Anderson and David Steele were flanking him when someone shouted, “Get Bo over here.”
Slowly the group grew, but everyone had to point out Bo Outlaw specifically. He had to be in these photos. He had to be a part of this moment.
If Darrell Armstrong’s heart was too big for his body and he composed the heart part of the beloved Heart & Hustle team, then Bo Outlaw was the hustle part. And it was impossible to think of Armstrong without thinking of Outlaw. They were seemingly attached at the hip and provided the basis for everything the Magic would do during that interregnum and Tracy McGrady periods.
The Magic might as well have been calling Outlaw into the Hall of Fame when they were trying to get him in photos with Armstrong.
Armstrong certainly merits Hall of Fame induction on his own — his impact and place in Magic history are actually greater than even some of the perceptions about him. But it still felt a bit off that Outlaw did not go in with him. That is how tied together the two are.
Outlaw averaged 6.3 points per game and 6.0 rebounds per game in eight seasons with the Magic. Outlaw was always much more than his statistics, however.
He has the fourth-highest on-court defensive rating in Magic history (third behind Dwight Howard and Marcin Gortat among players with multiple seasons and significant roles with the Magic). He has the highest defensive box plus-minus (+2.8) in Magic history. A significant feat considering Dwight Howard and Shaquille O’Neal were franchise luminaries.
In many ways, Outlaw was a whole lot more than the hustle he provided. But that was the underpinning for a lot of his success. That is what made him so memorable.
Like Armstrong, Outlaw was never supposed to make it in the NBA. He never quite figured out how to score. But his energy, heart and hustle changed games and made him someone the Magic could not leave off the roster. Even when much of that athleticism left him, the team wanted him around.
His impact in the community speaks for itself too. He won the Rich and Helen DeVos Community Enrichment Award three times (1999, 2006, 2007) and is still on the Magic staff as a community ambassador. Fans still connect with him and Outlaw remains one of the faces of the Magic franchise to the community at large.
Outlaw will get his call to the Hall of Fame. It is a matter of when the Magic want to pull that card. I mean, he still works in the building, it should not be hard to find him.
Dennis Scott
But my pick for induction in the Orlando Magic Hall of Fame next year has to be someone from that original era. The team has to do a better job recognizing some of the key players from that original group and the players from the Shaquille O’Neal era before the floodgates open for more modern-era players.
The next big guy that needs to get inducted is Dwight Howard, and he is still playing. It is hard to put any of the other 2009-era guys into the hall without Howard going in first. Even if all their inductions are inevitable.
That leaves the Magic looking to honor their early history — or honor guys out of convenience like Jeff Turner and Bo Outlaw, whom I both feel should be in any way.
And so next year, I think the Magic need to give Dennis Scott the call for the Orlando Magic Hall of Fame.
The Magic’s second-ever first-round pick was truly a revolutionary. At a time nobody used the 3-point line or viewed it as a gimmick, Dennis Scott was the guy who turned it into a weapon.
Scott scored 14.8 points per game and shot 40.3 percent from beyond the arc in his seven seasons with the Magic. That 3-point field goal percentage is fourth all-time. Despite the prevalence of 3-point shooting in the league today, Dennis Scott still leads the Magic all-time with 981 3-pointers (Evan Fournier is the active leader with 801).
Granted two of those seasons, the NBA moved the 3-point line in by a foot. But that only allowed Scott to feast even more.
The Magic have an important role in the history of the NBA as a 3-point revolutionary — twice. Orlando proved the strategy could win in 2009. The team proved the strategy could work as a viable option in 1995. The 3-pointer was not a gimmick and Scott was a big part of that.
Several NBA luminaries believe that Scott’s penchant for shooting 3-pointers — especially in transition — changed a lot of minds around the league. And he did almost all of it with the Magic.
Of the players on the Shaq-era teams and the expansion-era teams, Scott is the next name that clearly needs to be in the Hall of Fame and honored in some way. He was extremely popular in his time in Orlando and he is still a ubiquitous presence in NBA media.
Next year, it is time for 3-D to get the call to the Orlando Magic Hall of Fame.