All-Star Nikola Vucevic. Gone.
Aaron Gordon. Gone.
Evan Fournier. Gone.
The Orlando Magic conducted a complete fire sale of the team at the NBA trade deadline on Thursday, to almost guarantee that they will be losing for the immediate future.
That’s just fine for a front office that at this point just seems to be protecting their own jobs. They have an excuse to keep losing now.
What Orlando does get in return is a bunch of draft picks. That would normally be fine for a team on the rebuild.
Except this Orlando Magic front office doesn’t know how to draft. In fact they’re pretty bad at it.
They draft injury prone players that rarely see the court, and then give them even more money.
Picks? They’ve had picks in the past from playing poorly and they’ve done nothing with them.
It’s like buying a chemistry kit and calling yourself a scientist, and expecting to make a living off of it without having a successful experiment to your name.
And that’s what we’re doing here.
The worst part is the toll that this will take with the culture of the team, and a community that still prefers the visiting team on some nights here at home. The Magic aren’t giving them a reason to love this team.
And it also means that we’re likely trying to fill a brand new entertainment complex across the street from the arena with a losing team. It’s just terrible.
So buckle up guys. This team is aiming to be bad for the time being.
They’re designing it to be exactly that way.