Orlando Magic Shooting Month: Shooting trades the Magic regret

Orlando Magic Shooting Month: Shooting trades the Magic regret

The Day the Title Window Closed

Dec. 18, 2010 is a day that should live in infamy for the Orlando Magic. It was the day the Orlando Magic’s late-2000s title window completely closed. The day the team was no longer a title contender.

This was not quite the beginning of the end for Dwight Howard. There was a brief reprieve when the Magic won a franchise-record nine straight games in the wake of these two deals.

But everyone knew everything was different and the Magic were not grasping for straws to stay relevant. A first-round playoff loss and a looming lockout put the team on the path toward a Dwight-mare.

In two trades and one fell swoop, the Magic completely shifted their roster (they barely had enough players to play their game that evening against the Philadelphia 76ers — and still lost only 97-89).

The Magic traded away one of their best shooting role players and the guy who was supposed to be their best perimeter scorer along with their backup center for shooting, a nostalgia play and a prospect. They then swapped injured and aging stars for each other, hoping to recapture some magic from Gilbert Arenas.

Orlando got plenty of shooting in this deal.

Richardson was not the same high flyer he was with the Golden State Warriors and reformed himself into a great 3-point shooter. He had one of the great flamethrower games in the 2012 season when he made nine 3-pointers to lead the Magic to a shocking win.

Arenas still showed some flashes of his superstardom although it was clear that was well behind him. He had the “I can’t feel my face” game when he made three 3-pointers in the second half to help guide the Orlando Magic to a come-from-behind win over the Miami Heat in the first year of the LeBron James-Dwyane Wade-Chris Bosh trio.

There were things that worked. But hardly consistent enough.

This ended up moving deckchairs on the Titanic.

Yes, the deal freed up time for Ryan Anderson to emerge as the Most Improved Player in the 2011 season. That is why the Magic were comfortable trading Lewis. That may have been a risk worth taking — especially with the team knowing an amnesty was likely coming to get them out from Arenas’ deal if it did not work.

But Orlando essentially chased shooting without concern for fit on the court, where players were developmentally or even how their coach Stan Van Gundy would use them. Arenas famously clashed with Van Gundy and the pieces just did not match.

The Magic’s big failure that year was not finding the right deal to keep their championship window open. Instead, they shut it closed and began walking the path toward trading their Hall of Fame superstar once again.