Orlando Magic Shooting Month: Shooting trades the Magic regret
Orlando Magic Shooting Month: Shooting trades the Magic regret
Salary Dumps
We want to focus this post more on trades than free agent acquisitions. But it is impossible to look at shooting moves the Orlando Magic might regret without looking at a few of them. And the best place to start is with salary dumps.
These are not necessarily moves the team might regret fully because they were in different positions overall. The goal for these kinds of trades was simply to move off salary and set things up for free agency or for a new era of Magic basketball.
In that respect, many of these deals accomplished that goal. There is no getting around that.
Still, they all left a bad taste for fans in their mouth.
Nick Anderson
In the summer of 1999, the Orlando Magic decided they had reached the end of the road with the remnants of the 1995 Finals team. They lost in the first round of the lockout-shortened season despite tying for the best record in the league. Anfernee Hardaway was not quite the same player and Nick Anderson carried the team as far as he could.
That ended up not being far. The Magic were set to rebuild and set their sights squarely on free agency in 2000.
The team methodically sold off all the players on their team from the old days to make themselves as bad as possible and clear the cap room to go after what would become Grant Hill and Tracy McGrady.
It was a necessary move. But nothing hurt more than trading the Magic’s original draft pick in Nick Anderson after 10 years. Especially after he had such a surprising breakthrough season in 1999.
In a way though, that was selling high.
The Magic got a decent player in Tariq Abdul-Wahad. He averaged 12.2 points per game in 46 games with the Orlando Magic before he was moved on to the Denver Nuggets for Ron Mercer (and some guy injured guard named Chauncey Billups). Abdul-Wahad shot though just 2 for 21 from deep.
Abdul-Wahad was not a shooter at all. Maybe that was the point.
Ryan Anderson
It is hard to believe Ryan Anderson played just three seasons with the Orlando Magic. He was an incredibly popular and effective player, helping evolve the stretch-4 as someone who changed the game for the Magic. It was Ryan Anderson that made the Magic feel comfortable enough to tinker elsewhere with their lineup (in mostly negative ways, but stay tuned for that).
Anderson shot 38.8 percent on 5.2 3-pointers per game in his three seasons. He was an incredibly effective weapon for the Magic as they tried to push to the NBA Finals in 2010 and tried to keep their championship window open the following two seasons.
When Dwight Howard left though, everything about the Magic changed. They had new management and a new plan to rebuild. That included tearing everything down.
Anderson was a restricted free agent in the summer of 2012. He would normally be a shoo-in for a long extension. But that never came from the Magic. They let him out onto the market and were happy to help him land somewhere he wanted.
Fans did not quite understand why the Magic got so little for Anderson. Gustavo Ayon, an accomplished international player both in FIBA for Mexico and overseas, was OK in the NBA. He spent a lone season with the Magic as a center. There was not much notable about his time.
The purpose of the deal was to help Anderson get where he wanted and to take in as little as possible in return. Still, that left a gaping hole with the Magic’s shooting they struggled to fill.
J.J. Redick
Similar to Ryan Anderson, J.J. Redick was an incredibly popular player who just clicked with the Orlando Magic’s shooting-centric idea for their team around Dwight Howard. Redick seemingly could fit everywhere.
And even in that first year without Howard, Redick made a big impact for the team and still seemed to fit, averaging 15.1 points per gameand shooting 39.0-percent from beyond the arc in that final year.
The Magic knew they were not going to re-sign Redick the next summer just like they knew they were not signing Anderson the previous offseason. So they cashed in.
It is hard to say they did poorly. They took advantage of a Milwaukee Bucks team desperate to make the playoffs and acquired an interesting and underused player in Tobias Harris. It was the perfect kind of deal for a rebuilding team.
The Magic lost shooting — both Doron Lamb and Beno Udrih were solid shooters, but mostly salary filler for this deal — but gained a solid scorer. Harris averaged 17.3 points per game the rest of that season. He averaged 15.6 points per game (on 32.0-percent 3-point shooting) in his four seasons with the Magic.
Orlando never quite found th right fit. But this was certainly a trade that made sense at the time.