Why trade Magic’s 25th, 35th picks?
Remember the names.
Anzejs Pasecniks. Caleb Swanigan. Derrick White.
The Orlando Magic passed up them and other prospects by trading away the No. 25 pick in the 2017 NBA Draft on Thursday night.
That move, as well as the decision to trade the 35th pick, left many Magic fans scratching their heads.
The Magic desperately need talent, right? So why did the Magic give up a late first-round pick and an early second-round pick in a deep draft?
“We felt that at a certain point that the draft flattened out, and once we got past that point, we had three more picks, and we didn’t want to bring four rookies in,” said Jeff
Weltman, the Magic’s new president of basketball operations.
“So what we did is we tried to identify kids that we thought could possibly be there later that we liked as much [as a] higher [pick]. And could we defer those assets [and] move them along to maybe turn them into future pieces and still come up with something that we liked?”
The Magic used the 33rd pick to select Kansas State wing Wesley Iwundu.
So Weltman essentially thinks Iwundu is comparable to whomever the Magic could have selected at No. 25.
This is a case where Weltman is counting on his own eye and on the evaluations of the Magic’s scouting staff of assistant GM Matt Lloyd, director of college scouting Prosper Karangwa and scout Anthony Parker.
If the Magic are correct, and if no one who was available at No. 25 or later turns out to be at least an upper-level rotation player, then the team made a defensible choice.
Bringing in four rookies at a time can be problematic, especially if you already have a relatively young roster, as the Magic have. Drafting subpar players simply to say you drafted players isn’t a valuable exercise. And the Magic also saved some cap space by not drafting a late first-round pick.
But if there is a hidden gem among the group of draftees who was picked 25th or later — someone similar to Draymond
Green, who was selected 35th in 2012 — then Weltman will never live down the trades.
Whether he acquired proper value for the 25th pick is another debate.
Let’s break down the deal:
The Magic drafted Pasecniks, a European center, and sent his rights to the Philadelphia 76ers.
The Sixers, in turn, agreed to trade the Magic a heavily protected firstround pick in 2020 that the Sixers were owed by the Oklahoma City Thunder. Here are the terms of that pick:
If the Thunder’s firstround pick in 2020 falls anywhere from 1st through 20th overall, the Thunder would keep the pick for themselves and instead would convey a heavily protected pick to the Magic in 2021.
If the Thunder’s firstround pick in 2021 falls anywhere from 1st through 20th, the Thunder again would keep the pick for themselves and instead would convey a heavily protected pick to the Magic in 2022.
If the Thunder’s firstround pick in 2022 falls anywhere from 1st through 20th, the Thunder once more would keep the pick for themselves. Instead, the Thunder would convey their 2022 second-round pick and their 2023 second-round pick to the Magic.
The Sixers also will send the Magic the less favorable of either the Brooklyn Nets’ secondround pick in 2020 or the New York Knicks’ secondround pick in 2020.
As mentioned earlier, the Magic also traded the 35th pick. In return, they received the Nets’ secondround pick in 2019.
Iwundu, the 6-foot-7 wing the Magic selected 33rd on Thursday, played four seasons at Kansas State.
Weltman said Iwundu is “a guy that just looks like an NBA player.”
“He’s got the length,” Weltman added. “He’s got the quickness. He handles the ball well. He’s an intelligent player. He’s an intelligent person. And he’s a gym rat. Those are really good ingredients. This guy’s going to be a multiposition defender, and he’s going to be a guy that we can grow and we feel can be a guy that we look back on and say, ‘We got a steal at that part of the draft.’ ” Perhaps so. But perhaps the Magic blundered by trading away the 25th and 35th picks.
The answer will start coming into focus within the next several years. Hindsight is flawless. Until then, everything else is just conjecture.