The NBA trades a lot on its offseason activity and transaction market.
The never-ending drama that is the NBA loves to speculate on trades and try to find the next headline-grabbing offseason move.
What Orlando Magic fans are learning this offseason is that the restrictions governing transactions make the path to winning and maintaining a title team very difficult.
The Magic will be a tax team for the first time since the 2012 season. They are likely to be a first-apron team too, further restricting how the team can spend and add to the roster.
Orlando virtually only has trades available to it this offseason.
For now, the Magic are signaling that they do not want to disrupt their starting lineup, believing that injuries were the only thing keeping the team from their potential. There are statistical arguments for that. But it also might be some public posturing.
What is clear about the transaction wave around the league is that teams move in ebbs and flows as they become more expensive. Teams will consolidate and add to the roster by combining salaries to get into the tax, only then to back out and break pieces up to get out of the tax and aprons.
That is the reality the team is going through.
Last summer, Orlando consolidated the contracts of Kentavious Caldwell-Pope and Cole Anthony to acquire Desmond Bane.
The next move is inevitable and clear, whether fans or the Magic want to acknowledge it or not: For the Magic to improve the roster they will need to break up one of their bigger salaries to add depth and flexibility to consolidate again -- or cut payroll.
This is the way of the NBA. And it is why Jalen Suggs seems to be under the most pressure this offseason and in the next transaction windows.
Suggs might have a market
The question, of course, starts with what the Orlando Magic can get for Jalen Suggs if that is the path the team wants to go down.
He is still viewed as a game-changing defender and an all-defensive team caliber player. All of the Magic's best lineups include Suggs.
That is a player who has value.
While Suggs' 2027 salary of $32.4 million feels a bit over market. But his contract is front-loaded. He will make less than $30 million per year in the last three years of his deal, including a team option in the final year in 2030.
Suggs still averaged only 13.8 points per game and shot 33.9 percent from three. His struggles in the Playoffs -- 11.1 points per game and 24.1 percent shooting from three -- were well documented.
That is as much as anything that has put Suggs on the chopping block. But so too has the reality that Suggs is a player who can contribute to winning despite his flaws, and he has a salary that can be broken up to help the Magic with their biggest issue: Their depth.
Suggs should have a market.
As even merely a thought exercise, Jon Krawczynski of The Athletic noted Suggs could be a target for a team like the Minnesota Timberwolves as they look to shake up their roster after falling short in the Playoffs again.
"If I were to handicap all of the possibilities out there, I do think that Giannis is a really hard one to pull off," Krawczyinski said on his podcast. "I think Kyrie Irving is a more realistic possibility. You are hearing some other names get thrown around the rumor mill. You are hearing Kawhi Leonard, you are hearing a little bit of Jalen Suggs and a few other names. A lot of what is going on right now is fact-finding, a little bit of due diligence to see what is achievable and what isn't."
Everything is revolving first around the Giannis Antetokounmpo trade. That is the first domino to fall. But after that, the teams that are looking to improve will explore everything.
They will call about Suggs. And the Magic will pick up the phone.
This is just the natural life cycle in the NBA.
The Magic's ebbs and flows
Jon Krawczynski stressed, as the podcast from last week got aggregated in Orlando Magic and national circles on Saturday, that he put those names out as thought exercises. There is no reporting yet to suggest anything serious is being discussed.
It is important to continue stressing that the Magic have publicly backed their starting lineup. But conditions change and the Magic are trying to improve with a very tight cap situation and rules they need to fit in -- the biggest being not taking back more salary than they send out if they remain in the first apron.
Like the Minnesota Timberwolves need to go through thought exercises, the Magic need to go through thought exercises, too.
As unthinkable as it might be to trade Jalen Suggs, the Magic must go through those permutations and know what that trade looks like. They likely need to be prepared to do it with all of their players -- although Paolo Banchero, Franz Wagner and Desmond Bane seem to be the team's three-player core.
The Magic seem eager to give this group one more chance before making that decision. But it still feels inevitable.
For whatever it is worth, the Timberwolves and their fans would likely welcome Suggs back home.
Eamon Cassels of Dunking with Wolves marked Suggs as a good non-star target for the Wolves to chase. Suggs is viewed as a winning player, even with his struggles.
A direct trade with Minnesota would be difficult to swing, but not impossible.
The Magic could not take back Rudy Gobert without including $4 million in more salary -- a Gobert and filler for Suggs and Carter works under the rules, but would likely be giving up too much even for Gobert's incredible rim protection and defense.
They likely would not be interested in Julius Randle. And like the Magic, the Wolves do not have any mid-level salaries to help fill in and keep the Wolves underneath the first apron -- a Naz Reid and Joan Beringer package works mathematically.
The Magic and Wolves would likely need to find a third team to spread out salaries. And the Wolves likely want to keep some cap flexibility to re-sign Ayo Dosunmu and perhaps Bones Hyland.
That is the extent of where the thought experiment should go. Is Gobert or Reid the player the Magic want to target?
Orlando must know what it wants in any trade first and foremost. That is where everything starts.
This is the ebb and flow of the NBA transaction market. And the reality is that Suggs will remain at the center of the Magic's next major move when it inevitably happens just to break his salary up or add another high-priced player to the fold.
This is a league of ebbs and flows and consolidation and tearing apart.
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