The 5 worst Orlando Magic trades of the last 10 years

With the Orlando Magic now in position to be one of the better young teams in the league for the foreseeable future, it is easy to forget about the decade that preceded this season. Most fans want to forget much of the last decade.

What a time that was for the organization. And that does not even include the “Dwightmare” of 2012. There was plenty of losing, two playoff appearances, and not much else to report.

The franchise eventually found a savior in Nikola Vucevic, and it was the trade that sent him to the Chicago Bulls that netted them two of their young stars in Franz Wagner and Wendell Carter.

A happy ending to that particular story for the organization, but the Orlando Magic were a part of some truly awful trades between 2013-2023. As they continue to dig themselves out, we look at how they got stuck so deep in the hole.

So, as if to remind fans out there of just how far this team has come, we have decided to go back and revisit the five worst trades of this ugly era of Magic basketball.

In truth, it was hard to narrow this list down to just five, as even the seemingly small deals that were made when the Magic were tanking, still usually ended up with the team on the losing side.

Strap yourself in then, if you dare, and take a look back at the worst deals that kept the Magic in the doldrums for much longer than they should have been.

5. The Meh-rice Harkless deal

A fairly underwhelming place to start, but these kinds of nothing deals were exactly the problem at the height of the Orlando Magic being a complete afterthought.

Maurice Harkless was a decent rotation player in the NBA. There was nothing spectacular about him, but to play 201 games for the organization is not nothing.

So to give him up for a second-round pick with relatively heavy protections was just weird. Surely there was a better deal out there than this?

Harkless went on to play even more games for the Portland Trail Blazers (274), and also appeared in 33 postseason contests, including their run to the Western Conference Finals in 2019.

This deal came at a time when the Magic were giving away OK players like Shabazz Napier, Kyle O’Quinn and Moe Harkless for absolutely nothing at all.

The logic was likely that a second reboot was coming for the roster, and we know that it did.

But the inability to turn a rotation player like Harkless, as well as the others named here, into anything that could help them in the long term was criminal. Front office ineptitude at its finest.

4. The Magic drafted Jarred Vanderbilt?

A little bit of revisionist history here, but the fact is the Orlando Magic drafted Jarred Vanderbilt with the 41st pick in the 2018 NBA Draft.

That would not have been seen as much of a miss, but context is key here. Vanderbilt was traded to the Denver Nuggets for the pick that became Justin Jackson.

Jackson of course never played for the Magic, although he has played a single game for the Milwaukee Bucks in case that ever comes up at trivia night in your house.

At the time, this felt like a pretty bad giveaway and early mark against Jeff Weltman and his rebuild strategy.

Elfrid Payton was a favorite of former general manager Rob Hennigan but was essentially a four-year starting point guard for the team. He started 234 of 281 games in a Magic uniform. He was not terrible either averaging 11.1 points per game and 6.4 assists per game.

It did not even feel like those stats were simply because he was playing. He still averaged more than 10 points per game for the next three seasons. At the time of this trade, it felt like the Magic should have gotten more than a second-round pick for him.

Even with the player the Magic ultimately used this pick on:

More unforgivable, is the fact the Vanderbilt pick was what the Magic received from the Phoenix Suns for Elfrid Payton. An opportunity to turn a failed lottery pick into a future defensive standout.

You need only look at what he is doing with the Los Angeles Lakers since being traded there at the deadline, to see how much he could have helped this version of the Magic if they stuck with him.

The franchise has drafted players through the years like Devyn Marble (now in Israel) and Wesley Iwundu (in the G-League), with a view to turning them into high-level defensive stoppers.

Neither worked out. Meanwhile, Michael Carter-Williams is on his second stint with the team to fill the role.

Vanderbilt was the one that got away, and although the 2018 version of the Magic were not ready for him, had they held onto him he would have been invaluable to the current roster.

Failing that, he would have grown to have value in the league. An annoying miss.

3. The return for Tobias Harris

Keeping Tobias Harris is kind of a “what if” for the Orlando Magic, because had he stuck around and become their main option he could have sniffed an All-Star team in the pinstriped blue.

Next to Nikola Vucevic, they would have been in their primes a better duo than Vucevic and Evan Fournier, although we all know there would have been a pretty low ceiling on that tandem as well.

Trading Harris was not really the issue. But getting back Ersan Ilyasova and Brandon Jennings in return was… troublesome.

The Magic were reeling through January and February after a 19-13 start and were clearly under some ownership pressure to make a playoff push and rescue the season. Trading away the freshly signed Harris for two veterans would keep the ship steady, but really signaled the Magic were going for salary cap room to play free agency in the summer.

In doing this deal the Magic were reeking of desperation. They did not commit to rebuilding, rebooting or even trying to be better. And they were doing this all in a summer where everyone was going to have cap space because of the unprecedented cap spike in the summer of 2016.

They ended up striking out on free agents, settling on spending their cap room on Bismack Biyombo, D.J. Augustin and Jeff Green.

The immediate return did not improve the Magic’s fortunes as they missed the playoffs, although they hit 35 wins their best win total since Dwight Howard left at that time.

Ilyasova was a kind cult hero in Orlando, a competent and professional player who managed an impressive 877 games in the NBA.

A dangerous pick-and-pop scorer who once shot better than 45 percent from deep while with the Milwuakee Bucks. The problem was he was too good for a bad team, and played only 22 times for the franchise.

Jennings on the other hand was, if not a disaster then . . . not what the Magic needed. The promise of high scoring never materialized as he managed seven points per game, and he was gone after only 25 games played.

To recap then, the Magic gave away a legitimately good young player who is a part of the contending Philadelphia 76ers in 2023 for 47 combined games from two players who were never going to be part of the long-term future. And then used the resulting cap room to get only one player who would start for their next playoff team.

Ouch.

2. The ridiculous Elfrid Payton reach

Elfrid Payton has the unfortunate distinction of appearing twice on this list, and what the Orlando Magic gave up to get him is far worse than only getting, and flipping, Jarred Vanderbilt.

In 2014, the Magic needed, among many other things, a point guard as part of the rebuild in the post-Dwight Howard era.

On draft night the Philadelphia 76ers selected Payton 10th, with the Orlando Magic promptly offering their own pick in Dario Saric, a future first-round pick, and a future second-round pick to secure his services.

The 76ers gladly accepted, and so began a period of the Magic having Elfrid Payton and Victor Oladipo on the roster, with no clue how to use both together.

The team would have been much better simply holding onto Saric, who is still in the league with the Oklahoma City Thunder, while Payton plies his trade at 29 in the G-League.

To give up an additional two picks, especially that first-rounder (one they had acquired from the Sixers in the Howard trade), means that the organization was confident they were getting their guy who could help kickstart their faltering rebuild.

Instead, Payton goes down with Victor Oladipo, Mario Hezonja and even Aaron Gordon as lottery picks who failed to live up to their full potential with the Magic.

A look back at the numbers in 281 regular season games would have you thinking Payton was actually alright for the team. In reality, it was all very uninspired, and the end could not come quick enough.

Elfrid Payton was the ship that Rob Hennigan decided to hitch too. And his tenure as GM sank as Payton struggled to do more than collect stats, alienating coaches and souring the once-promising rebuild.

1. The Serge Ibaka “disaster-class”

What else could top this list but the granddaddy of them all? The Serge Ibaka horror show of 2016.

Everything, and we mean absolutely everything, was wrong with this trade.

Ibaka himself had been an important part of those contending Oklahoma City Thunder teams, and in a vacuum that was all well and good.

But the Magic had Nikola Vucevic under contract already along with a promising young power forward in Aaron Gordon. And that same summer, the team signed Bismack Biyombo to a four-year, $72-million deal during a spike in the cap that caused the organization to lose its collective minds.

Having three centers made no sense especially in a league trending smaller. And trying to fit Gordon in as a small forward was asking for disaster with the team’s overall lack of shooting.

With the league getting smaller and becoming obsessed with 3-point shooting, adding Ibaka to that duo was never going to work. To the surprise of nobody, it did not.

The additional layer here is the fact the Magic gave up on Oladipo a fraction too early (not that fans at the time minded), and also added veteran Ersan Ilyasova and future All-Star Domantas Sabonis — yes really — to the deal.

Before injuries robbed him of his athleticism, Oladipo would become a two-time All-Star with the Indiana Pacers. It is the addition of Sabonis to the deal however, that hurts the most.

Right now he is a top 35 player in the entire league in helping the Sacramento Kings to light the beam, having been an All-Star himself in a previous life with the Pacers and once again this season with the Kings.

To trade Sabonis on draft night in this deal, having never had a chance to work with him properly, is one of the lowest moments of this 10-year period. This right here was the darkest day.