Orlando Magic: 3 fun and outrageous free agent additions

The Orlando Magic are in need of some offensive punch for their postseason push, but would they go as far outside the box as these three free agents?

The Orlando Magic are facing into the remainder of the regular season with a fight on their hands to remain in a playoff position. They should have enough to get over the line, but once they do they figure to have a pretty short stay in the playoffs, especially if they come face to face with the seemingly all-conquering Milwaukee Bucks in the East.

Offensively is where they are in dire need of a boost, with the key guys on their roster such as Nikola Vucevic and Terrence Ross regressing on stellar performances last season. Do you know what else they could do with having some more of around the team? Fun.

Head coach Steve Clifford is the serious type, and with good reason as well. His style of defensive-minded basketball with sound fundamentals is how he builds his teams, and it has worked well for the Orlando Magic for most of his time in charge. Recently with some slippage in that area however, the offense needs to be able to produce more.

As a result of being built around defending, and with the aforementioned offensive game being painful to watch on a lot of nights, the Magic have become quite, well, boring to watch in recent times. This was also true for periods of last season, but that playoff run after the All-Star break helped fans to forget about that.

It could well be that this is exactly what happens again. The remaining schedule that the organization has left to play is favorable, and by this time in April we may once again be taking to social media to proclaim Clifford as the most underrated head coach in the NBA. For now though, “fun” is not a word that would be used to describe this team.

You know what though? There are a number of players on the free agent market that would inject a lot of giddiness into the franchise. The kind of players that would make coach Clifford tear his hair out if he had any, and who would frustrate and delight fans in equal measure with their shot selection. Venture over to the dark side with us to see what is out there in the wilderness.

3. Jamal Crawford

A relatively safe place to start in that Jamal Crawford is a professional, but he has not been seen on an NBA court since the final game of the 2018-19 season. On that occasion, he dropped 51 points. If you ask him about it, even he isn’t sure why he’s not on a roster right now. He wants back into the league, and the Magic would be an ideal landing spot.

He could do for the Orlando Magic what Carmelo Anthony has done for the Portland Trail Blazers. Namely come in, be pretty horrible defensively (and that’s being kind to Anthony), but score the ball in a myriad of different ways.

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Crawford would be doing this, like Anthony currently is, for an outfit that is trying to make it to the playoffs. He would be needed for 15-18 minutes a night, or until Ross has figured out how to get out of the funk he has been in all year. Crawford is a career 34.8 percent 3-point shooter, and has been knocking them down since before it was cool.

For a brief stretch during his first stop with the Chicago Bulls, he shot 44.8 percent from deep, and that was all the way back in 2001-02. Stephen Curry was 13. Bringing back Crawford might be reaching too far into the past, but he has always looked and carried himself like somebody who looks after their body. Much like Ray Allen looked when his career ended, although as you may remember he never officially retired either.

Crawford would not be a troubling influence on younger guys like Markelle Fultz and Jonathan Isaac, and he would come in knowing that this would likely be his last spin in the league. Imagine if he was able to sign off by making a couple more big shots in a playoff game, having helped fire the Magic to that spot in the first place? He never got his ring, so this would be the next best thing.

You also better believe that Orlando Magic fans would buy Crawford gear in their droves, and given that this is a fanbase that has had to suffer through a lot over the last eight years, that kind of excitement and buzz about having an OG of the game to cheer on for 27 regular season games would be cool. Exciting too.

2. Dion Waiters

Now we’re getting weird with it. Right off the bat Dion Waiters would be just an awful fit with coach Clifford, but as long as he was knocking down shots, would that matter? As with every player on this list, Waiters would be a black hole defensively, with the hope being the Magic are good enough as a team to make up for this.

Certainly any free agent brought in at this point would be coming off the bench, and alongside center Khem Birch and Michael Carter-Williams, guys like Waiters would see some of their mistakes and general disinterest with defending wiped away by their teammates. At least that would be the hope.

Waiters has a swagger that borders on outrageous. There isn’t a shot out there that he doesn’t like the look of. A cursory Twitter search of the now infamous “Waiters Island”, actually throws up fanboy accounts. The ridiculousness of Waiters is a real thing, and a lot of people can’t seem to get enough of it.

So while the excitement end of things would be covered, Waiters would actually have to help the Orlando Magic to win some basketball games. To that end Waiters would be an admittedly mixed bag, but before being moved out by the Miami Heat he was shooting a ridiculous 47.1 percent from deep on 5.7 attempts per game.

The fact he appeared in as many games for the Heat (three) as he got suspensions by the organization (three) however, is the risk you take. You would think brief time out of the league would make Waiters realize he could be out of chances, and take everything more seriously. Maybe not, but bringing in a former Heat player and watching him thrive would be too good an opportunity to pass up. Especially after some suspect Slam Dunk antics at All-Star weekend.

1. J.R. Smith

Has it really come to this? Surely the Magic can do better than a 34-year-old who has been one of the most unique and meme-worthy players of the last decade. If talking yourself into Crawford and Waiters was a stretch, this is even harder again.

But despite his shortcomings and ability to torpedo a team’s chances of winning a championship on the big stage, J.R. Smith has also won a title and spent a lot of his career around guys like LeBron James and Carmelo Anthony. Does that automatically qualify him as somebody you’d want to have around your young players?

Absolutely not, but as we’ve said already, the reality of being out of the league has a way of focusing players who have seemed erratic in the past. You only need to look at the Los Angeles Lakers and former player Dwight Howard to see this way of thinking in action. Howard wasn’t even all the way out, just on his last chance, and is now one of the best backup centers in the league.

Smith, like Waiters, has no problem taking all manner of shots, and he is certainly a smooth offensive player capable of scoring. In fact if he came off the bench for the Orlando Magic, he would be featured in a way that he hasn’t been for a long time now. A key person off the bench, perhaps even their sixth man for a stretch.

Smith is a career 37.3 percent point 3-point shooter, and has been in, and knocked down shots in, some big games. Thinking of Smith playing for a fanbase in Florida is almost too perfect of a combination. If Crawford merchandise sold well, and it would, imagine what Smith could do.

With the news that Kyrie Irving could be out indefinitely once again with a shoulder injury, the Orlando Magic should be even more invigorated to chase the Brooklyn Nets, and their seventh seed, above them. At the very least, they should be looking to solidify their positioning in eighth from would-be chasers as well.

The three players mentioned to help the cause are far out choices, who go against everything the front office has built to this point. But bending their rules for the final stretch of this season could provide the team with the offensive spark it needs.