If the Orlando Magic could have one of Victor Oladipo or Tobias Harris back on their roster, who would they pick and why?
Despite the Orlando Magic reverting back to old ways in recent weeks, fans should still be happy that the organization moved on from the terrible Rob Hennigan tenure.
His stint as general manager of the team was not a good one, culminating in that now infamous whiteboard picture that put the final nail in the coffin he’d been lying in for years.
So while the team struggles to get back to .500 once more, we should still be thankful that they at least have a component and functioning roster every night.
The new front office of Jeff Weltman and John Hammond has done a great job of giving the Magic a sense of direction, as opposed to the floundering mess they were when they came in last summer.
Over the course of every team’s progression from rebuilding unit to contender (assuming all goes the way it is supposed to), players will be lost along the way.
A lot of the time this is for the better, and sometimes it is not ideal but doesn’t hurt too much all at once. And then there are the guys who you wish you could have back.
In Victor Oladipo and Tobias Harris, the Magic may have two such players. Both guys had their moments in the pinstriped blue, but their losses weren’t mourned for too long.
Now, however, both individuals are playing the best basketball of their careers, and if one of them were still on the Magic’s roster, it’s interesting to think where this team might be.
With that in mind, let’s see which of the two it would make more sense to bring back, with the only condition being it would push out the player who plays their position on the team.
Victor Oladipo (Indiana Pacers)
Maybe there’s something in the water out in Indiana, but since going back to the state where he played his college ball, Victor Oladipo has been on fire.
Or it might just be the fact that at 25 years old, the guy is finally maturing into the player we saw flashes of during his three seasons with the Magic.
Oladipo is easily scoring the most points of his career this season (23.1), while grabbing five rebounds a night too, another career-high. The Pacers are shooting 39.8 percent from 3-point range too, behind only the Golden State Warriors.
https://twitter.com/Pacers/status/935318671261618176
The Pacers also have the sixth-best offensive rating in the league at 107.9. For a team that lost Paul George last summer, that is fantastic.
Oladipo has been integral to this, leading the team in scoring. To give you some idea of how prolific he’s been, Bojan Bogdanovic‘s 15 points per game is their next best number.
While in Orlando, Oladipo’s stroke never looked totally convincing from deep. It wasn’t that he couldn’t shoot, he was just inconsistent. To be fair to him, he didn’t exactly have guys like Terrence Ross, Jonathan Isaac and even D.J. Augustin who could spread the floor for him either.
Oladipo was a 33.9 percent 3-point shooter with the Magic, and while with the Oklahoma City Westbrooks, last season that number increased to 36.1 percent.
Orlando Magic
This season, however, Oladipo is shooting 44 percent from deep, and has been as deadly from distance as he is closer to the basket.
He’s getting to the line five times per game too, another career high. Maybe the Magic were right not to pay him $84 million over four years and did well to get out from under that.
You could argue he’s still not worth the money or that he isn’t the kind of player you build a team around. Only that’s exactly what he’s been for a Pacers outfit currently in a playoff spot.
Imagine him playing next to Elfrid Payton now, or even instead of him as he and Evan Fournier take turns attacking opponents.
Even if it meant losing Fournier (the team couldn’t pay them both), he sure would space the floor even more for guys like Isaac and Nikola Vucevic, given his hot hand.
The Magic might never truly regret letting Victor Oladipo go, but he’s looking more and more like the player they envisioned when they drafted him second overall in the 2013 NBA Draft.
Tobias Harris (Detroit Pistons)
Harris is seen by most as the player who personifies Hennigan’s time as GM of the team. He was traded to the Detroit Pistons for Brandon Jennings and Ersan Ilyasova (that hurts to even type).
Money wasn’t even totally a factor in this one either, as Harris had received his extension while still in Orlando (four years, $64 million). It wasn’t crippling the team either.
It took him a little while to find his feet in Detroit, but now in his second full season there, Harris is also averaging a career high in points per game (19.1). He is doing so on a Pistons team that at this stage has to be viewed as the surprise package of the season at 14-9. If the playoffs started tomorrow, they’d have homecourt advantage in round one.
Harris doesn’t deserve all the credit for that, as the addition of Avery Bradley was shrewd and Andre Drummond has reinvented himself. But Harris is a significant contributor.
He has started every game so far for the ball club and is shooting a scorching 46.4 percent from 3-point range himself. Range wasn’t something Harris was known for in Orlando (shot 32 percent from deep during his time there), but he has become the kind of modern 4 NBA teams love.
Even crazier is the volume with which he’s hitting these shots. With the Magic, Harris shot 2.9 3-pointers per game over the course of his four-plus seasons there. This season he’s attempting 6.1 per game, and still hitting them at a ridiculous rate.
It’s no surprise that his effective field goal percentage of 57.2 percent is once more the best number he has produced so far in the league.
Given how he has grown in so many areas since leaving, plugging him into the Magic’s existing lineup would be an enticing prospect. The only drawback would be that it would take minutes from Aaron Gordon, and likely would have resulted in Isaac not being drafted either.
Verdict
It’s really interesting to think where the Magic would be if they’d never let either of these guys go to different teams, especially when you consider the best player they ever got in return for the two of them was Serge Ibaka, who himself was flipped for Ross and a first-rounder.
While that’s depressing to think about, the team would have a few more wins this season if it had even one of those guys back. Given that Harris would have blocked the growth of Gordon, not to mention meaning Isaac likely never being drafted in the first place, Oladipo gets the nod here.
He was good when he was with the team, and has since taken his game to the next level. He would complement the players already on this roster, whereas Harris would only be replacing them.
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Still, it is cautionary tale of letting go of players too early into their careers, only to watch them blossom into borderline stars. The Magic should remember that when Payton and Gordon hit restricted free agency next summer.