Orlando Magic: 10 stars you forgot played for the Magic

1. Dominique Wilkins

We end with the strangest one of all. The greatest player in Atlanta Hawks history, Dominique Wilkins, finishing not only his NBA career with the Orlando Magic but his professional career period. It gets stranger than that, as Wilkins played for the Magic after two stints overseas. Firstly with Panathinaikos in Greece, where he was a EuroLeague champion, and then with Bologna of Italy.

To add to this, he played for the Boston Celtics and Spurs in between those stints in Europe, and after all of that, he found time to suit up for the Magic 27 times. He even started two games. Wilkins was 39 by this stage, and as you might expect he played like somebody who had battled Jordan in iconic dunk contests in the previous decade.

This was the 1998-99 season, a lock-out shortened year, when Jordan had retired a second time and the league didn’t know yet how to fill the void left by the fact he was gone again. This time seemingly for good. Amidst all of that, Wilkins game back, played for the Magic, averaged 5 points and 2.6 assists per game and then was gone for good himself.

Why the Hawks didn’t take him back to finish his career there is unclear, although you would think the fact that they finished fourth in the East (31-19) would have vindicated their decision that Wilkins would have been a distraction more than anything else. Except the Magic finished third in the East (33-17), with Wilkins playing a small part in that.

All it does is tie another end of a big man’s career to the Magic for reasons which don’t totally make sense. They have struggled to get big names to come to town when they haven’t been contending, which they certainly weren’t when all of these former greats came to play. Perhaps the thinking was that they could sell some jerseys before calling it quits for good.

Whatever it is, Dominique Wilkins playing for the Orlando Magic is among the weirdest team and player pairings in the history of the league, and it will go down for a long time as the strangest star player to ever lace them up in Orlando. Until a 42-year-old Joel Embiid decides to give it a go for 27 games in 2036.