Orlando Magic Trade Value Column 2022: Preparing for the next steps

Orlando Magic Trade Value Column 2022

2. Wendell Carter (5 years, $56.9 million)

The Orlando Magic made it known to everyone else around the league how much they were betting on Wendell Carter before the extension deadline. Carter became the first long-term contract the Magic handed out after their big moves last offseason.

In many ways, Carter was the first piece really put in place for this rebuild. He joins extensions handed out to Jonathan Isaac and Markelle Fultz from the year before (before the team initiated the rebuild) as the pillars for the Magic. But he is probably the one with the fewest amount of questions.

Carter has been undoubtedly solid in his first full year with the Magic.

He has been a tenacious rebounder, a solid defender and a bone-crushing screen setter. The Magic’s offense does not operate nearly as well without him — 104.4 with him on the floor (trailing only Cole Anthony among rotation players) and 100.7 with him off the floor (trailing only Cole Anthony and Franz Wagner).

There still seem to be areas where Carter’s game can grow and mature too.

He is expanding his game out to the 3-point line and starting to shoot it more confidently. He will even be the first to admit that his intensity level still needs to be the same. A big admission considering the criticisms he faced in Chicago from that seeming lack of intensity and his hesitance to shoot.

Carter needed a new environment and a fresh start to become the player everyone believed he could be from the draft process. He has fully taken advantage of that.

Carter is not trade eligible at this deadline because he just signed his extension. But it still feels like the Magic got him on a bargain. According to Spotrac too, the Magic front-loaded Carter’s contract, paying him $14.2 million next year and $10.9 million in the final year of his deal in 2026.

If Carter keeps up the kind of production he has this year, that will be an incredible bargain for a starting-level big man. The Magic established a solid foundation with a versatile big who can anchor their defense in the near future.