7 trades involving Aaron Gordon and the Orlando Magic
The Orlando Magic seemed poised to being shifting and transforming their roster. They appear ready to transition away from the holdovers of the Rob Hennigan era and make a new era.
The team already has the seeds with extensions for Markelle Fultz and Jonathan Isaac already signed and an injury-filled season likely leaving the team with a top-10 pick at worst and the possibility of great odds to be in the lottery among the top-4. That is at least a start.
And the Magic do not have to start from scratch either. The team is a recent playoff team and this reset will start from that base. But Orlando has plenty to consider and judge before the trade deadline to set up their future.
The easy decision might be trading away potential free agents in Evan Fournier and Khem Birch. Their clocks are up and the Magic have to determine how to extract value from them, plan to keep them this offseason or let them walk in free agency.
The team’s future is cloudier still with what the team might do with its other veterans. Teams are expecting the Magic to be more willing to sell these players for future assets now that the team has fallen in the standings.
The Nikola Vucevic market is full but not likely to create the conditions for a deal. The Magic are rightfully planning on having Vucevic stick around to be the veteran for a young team and want a healthy return if they were to move him.
But the bigger questions revolve around Aaron Gordon.
Teams around the league are lining up to ask the Orlando Magic what it will take to trade Aaron Gordon. It is clear there are some very strong suitors if the team wants to move him at the trade deadline.
As a player, Aaron Gordon remains a mystery. He has shown flashes of his skill offensively — averaging a solid 13.6 points per game and 7.0 rebounds per game with a career-high 4.0 assists per game and 36.5-percent shooting from beyond the arc. But he has also been an inconsistent shooter and has never found his fit offensively.
Still, at 25 years old, Gordon still has a lot of growth to come. And Orlando may not be so keen to let Gordon go even with the team’s apparent glut of versatile forwards.
Monday saw a flurry of rumors involving Gordon that suggests a lot of teams are interested to see if they could wriggle Gordon free. But, at the same time, the Magic seem to be making it clear they will ask for a lot to move off Gordon. After all, his contract is not expiring (he has one year left) and the team can wait until the offseason to do any heavy lifting.
A lot of the discussions being had now are likely to carry over to the summer. it is not like the Magic’s position will change a whole lot before then.
Still, it is important to figure out what the Magic want in a deal involving Gordon. And for that, the clues from the latest batch of rumors will help us figure out what the Magic are looking, which teams actually have the framework to make a deal and who to watch as this market develops.