Orlando Magic: 5 players they could regret letting go

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4. Mario Hezonja

Mario Hezonja is another tricky case for this Magic team, and it is because he already has one foot out the door. An unrestricted free agent this summer thanks to the team not extending him, the former fifth overall pick looks like he needs a change of scenery.

Most would have been happy to see him go. He’s failed to live up to the considerable hype he had coming into the league and hasn’t been given the chance to show what he can do either.

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To give you some sort of idea of Hezonja’s struggles to get any sort of real court time, he’s averaging 16.7 minutes for career and has started only 20 games.

Nine of these have come this season. For comparison, Greg Oden started 21 in his second, injury-plagued year with the Portland Trail Blazers and Nik Stauskas started 35 and 27 in his two full seasons with the Philadelphia 76ers.

Surely then, Hezonja barely ranks on the haunt-o-meter? That would have been true, until injuries crippled the team before the turn of the year and Hezonja got his chance.

What we saw was a guy with a much more confident stroke from deep and who could get into the lane with relative ease. Add in the defensive effort he always had and it was like having a new player.

His breakout game came in a loss to the Detroit Pistons in December. Hezonja finished with 28 points, hitting a scary 8-of-12 from 3-point territory while doing things like this:

He never got quite as hot again, but he did average 22.6 minutes per game in December. This has risen to 23.2 so far in January, with averages of 10.1 points and 4.0 assists per game.

Those numbers are miles better than his career averages of 5.8 points and 2.4 assists per contest. The point is Hezonja is getting better, and like Oladipo and Harris before him, he could be on the verge of turning a corner.

It may not be quite as dramatic as those guys, but it is also likely to happen with another team. Another uncomfortable thought.

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