No shortage of opinions on Carlos Arroyo's move overseas, which surprises me, because I didn't think anyone else cared. Still, he'll make roughly $5 million U.S., and can opt out after each season. Not a bad deal for him, I suppose. To the links:

• The ubiquitous Matt Moore had so many thoughts on the signing that he couldn't confine them to one place: here's his take at Ridiculous Upside, and at FanHouse. From the FanHouse post:

  Arroyo started last season in contention for the starting spot for the Magic, then went to a backup role behind Jameer Nelson, before eventually not appearing hardly at all except to make sure Jameer Nelson didn't hurt himself by playing too much. When you lose your job to a guy who was heavily responsible for the Magic's self-destruct versus the Pistons and who the Magic had not interest in retaining, yeah, a change of scenery might be nice.

• Rob Mahoney, who is not Matt Moore, chimes in at Hardwood Paroxysm.
• FreeDarko briefly notes Arroyo's departure in its first-ever daily links post:

  So many teams need a point guard, and Carlitos can't even get more than 2.5 mil? Dude has become, like the Puerto Rican Steve Francis in terms of a fall from grace.

• The Heat, rumored to be one of Arroyo's suitors, will have to look elsewhere for a backup point guard. The Peninsula is Mightier doesn't have a problem with that.

Stay tuned for bullets regarding the day's other Magic stories.

Carlos Arroyo, arguably the best point guard left on the free-agent market, is taking his game overseas. Brian Schmitz has heard rumblings that Arroyo signed with Maccabi Tel Aviv. He cites a report from Haaretz, an Israeli newspaper. I can't find the particular report on the paper's website, though, but Schmitz is a credible enough source.

The Magic had no plans to bring Arroyo back, as he fell out of favor with Stan Van Gundy at the end of last season. Still, the team could have done worse than re-sign Arroyo as a backup. The Magic's finances are dwindling, as is the league's free-agent pool. If they're going to bolster their point guard rotation, they might just have to make a trade.

UPDATE: Arroyo's name now appears on the team's official roster. He joins some fairly familiar names, as Maccabi Tel Aviv also employs Marcus Fizer, the fourth overall selection in 2000; Lior Eliyahu, a former Magic draft pick whose rights were traded to Houston; Esteban Batista, a former Atlanta Hawk; and D'or Fisher, who played for the Magic's summer-league team last month.

A reminder: if you missed Team USA play Team Russia in a pre-Olympics exhibition this morning at 3 AM, ESPN2 will re-broadcast the game at 7 PM. I don't want to spoil the outcome, but I will say it was, by far, Dwight Howard's weakest effort as a member of Team USA. In fact, Chris Sheridan believes Howard may lose some of his minutes to Chris Bosh. Ouch.

The Spurs re-signed Kurt Thomas, the forward/center whom the Magic coveted at the deadline. Meanwhile, a day after acquiring combo guard Keyon Dooling from Orlando, the Nets sent backup point guard (and object of Magic fans' affection) Marcus Williams to the Warriors for a future first-round pick.

Oh, and the Magic's chances of re-signing Carlos Arroyo -- already a long shot -- took a big hit when he tore a leg muscle during an Olympic qualifying tournament.

But Javaris Crittenton, long connected to the Magic in trade rumors, is still in play. The Grizzlies' young combo guard is likely the odd-man-out in Memphis, which wants to focus on developing O.J. Mayo, Mike Conley, and Kyle Lowry. I think Crittenton would be a home-run acquisition for Otis Smith and the Magic. For one thing, he's tall (6'05"). For another, his presence would make both J.J. Redick and Keith Bogans more expendable than they already are... assuming they weren't the guys dealt for Crittenton in the first place. Finally, it would mean fewer minutes for Anthony Johnson, the Magic's 34-year-old current backup, whose talent level befits that of a third-stringer.

Could Mikki Moore be an option? The Kings spent their full mid-level on the veteran power forward last summer, but might look to unload him to free-up playing time for youngsters Spencer Hawes, Shelden Williams, and Jason Thompson. Kings fan pookeyguru, whom you may know from his participation in the Sactown Royalty community, would swap Moore for Redick and Brian Cook.

I still support the idea of swapping Redick and Cook for Jeff Foster, but I doubt the Pacers would part with him now that they've dealt Jermaine O'Neal to Toronto for T.J. Ford, Rasho Nesterovic, and riff-raff.

Maybe we overestimate the Magic's need for another player at the power positions. After all, Tony Battie will make his return this season, and figures to steal some minutes from Adonal Foyle (at center) and Rashard Lewis/Cook (at power forward). And Marcin Gortat, who played in more post-season games than regular-season ones, showed promise. But you'll forgive me for feeling nervous about a big-man rotation that includes Lewis, Battie, Gortat, Foyle, and James Augustine.

What's the Magic's biggest area of need? Whom should they target to fill that need?

You may remember this post from May, in which I tried to navigate the NBA's salary cap to see what the Magic could do this summer in free agency. Now that we're closer to the beginning of the free-agent signing period (Wednesday, July 9th), I thought I'd take another look at it. I've presented my findings in a Q-and-A format. For this post, I consulted Larry Coon's NBA Salary Cap F.A.Q., Storyteller's Contracts, ESPN's 2008 NBA Free Agent list, and the Orlando Magic's official roster page. We hope you find this guide helpful.

Question: How many players do the Magic have under contract next season, and what are they owed?

Answer: Currently, the Magic have 11 players under contract, owed a total of $60,553,339 next season. While the league has yet to release its official salary-cap data, we can say with absolute certainty that the Magic are over the salary cap. Here's how everything breaks down by player...

Note: for this table, "Age" refers to a player's age as of October 31st, 2008, when we expect the NBA season to begin.

... and by position...

Make the jump to read the rest of the Q-and-A.

Continue reading this post »

Throwing a wrench in the Orlando Magic's free-agent plans, Chris Duhon has agreed to a two-year deal with the New York Knicks, reports Sean Deveney of Sports Illustrated. Deveney's source reports that the deal is worth the full mid-level exception, which is considerably more than the Magic were willing to offer.

Orlando will now likely turn its attention to Keyon Dooling, who has come off the bench to play both backcourt positions for the Magic in the last three seasons. A New York Post report earlier today, before Duhon's signing was announced, said Dooling was indeed the Magic's "fallback plan" in the event Duhon signed with New York.

I was never thrilled with the idea of the Magic replacing Dooling with Duhon, so this news comes as a relief to me. But if the Magic are unable to retain Dooling -- at least six other teams have contacted him -- they will have no other choice but to target shaky veterans like Jason Williams or Anthony Carter to back-up incumbent point guard Jameer Nelson. More likely, they'll wait to see what swingman Corey Maggette, the biggest remaining prize in this year's free-agent market, does before making an offer to anyone else at any position.

UPDATE: John Denton's version of the story includes reaction from Keyon Dooling:

"No, (the Magic) haven't given me an offer yet, but it is what it is," Dooling said Friday. "I've gotten a lot of interest, but what's interest without an offer. It's like a Catch-22.

"I understand that it's still young in the free-agent process and some of the bigger names have to go before I do. But I do think Duhon going (to New York) clears up some things for me (with Orlando)."

Aside: Denton also notes that Jameer Nelson will get married tomorrow, and that Dooling will be part of the ceremony. Congratulations, Jameer.

Other teams interested in Dooling include Miami, which won't offer a contract longer than two years, and Golden State, which needs to replace Baron Davis. I suspect Denver is in the mix as well, although apparently it prefers to sign Carlos Arroyo.

UPDATE: One final, interesting detail, this one from Brian Schmitz:

Bradbury [Kevin Bradbury, Duhon's agent] said Duhon himself called Magic General Manager Otis Smith to tell him he signed with the Knicks.

Huh. Nice guy, that Chris Duhon.

Free-agent point guard Chris Duhon, formerly of the Chicago Bulls, will receive a three-year, $10 million contract offer from the Orlando Magic.

File photo by Chuck Burton, the Associated Press

Tim Povtak and Brian Schmitz report the Orlando Magic will offer free-agent point guard Chris Duhon a three-year deal worth around $10 million. Duhon could decide by the end of the week if he will accept the offer, and his agent, Kevin Bradbury, says he wants his client to work quickly to make a decision.

As Povtak and Schmitz note, signing Duhon would end any possibility of the Magic signing free-agent swingman Corey Maggette, who's drawn interest from nearly every NBA team.

It's unclear whether Duhon will accept the Magic's offer, having received a two-year, $7 million offer from the New York Knicks just yesterday (link found via Posting and Toasting). Orlando's proposal gives him a lower average salary, but an extra year of job-security. It also gives him the opportunity to play for a contending team.

UPDATE: Thanks to 3QC reader travelerkt for pointing out the Magic have Keyon Dooling's Larry Bird Rights, and can thus exceed the salary cap to sign him. Keep that information in mind when reading the rest of this post, which I've amended with strikethroughs when appropriate.

What I'm more interested in knowing is how Duhon's potential signing affects the status of the Magic's incumbent backup point guard/best perimeter defender/sixth-man, Keyon Dooling, also a free agent. It's doubtful the Magic could retain his services, as Duhon's salary ($3.3 million, which is more than half the mid-level exception) leaves just $2.5 million for Orlando to use to keep Dooling, who earned $3.5 million last season and who now seeks a raise. It could mean Orlando could re-sign shooting guard Maurice Evans, who earned $1.5 million as a starter last season.

I'm disappointed by Orlando's offer to Duhon; although he's an above-average defender, he's also an offensive liability who struggles to his 40% of his shots. Opposing defenses will leave him open to double-team Dwight Howard. Although Dooling was not a great outside shooter either, he at least got to the basket and created offense for himself. I'll liken him to other recent Magic backup point guards in this way: he combines Dooling's defense with Carlos Arroyo's passing ability and Jacque Vaughn's "marksmanship." He's certainly not worth $10 million over three years, nor is he worth losing any hope of signing Maggette or Dooling, who are is a far superior players.

Once again, Magic management baffles me with its decision-making. Even with Jameer Nelson's relatively steady play, and with Dooling's career-best season, the Magic had one of the worst overall backcourts in the league. It just got appreciably worse.

I updated this post to reflect the fact that the Magic lost Grant Hill in free agency last summer, which I somehow overlooked earlier. Thanks to commenter OVERWADED for bringing that serious oversight to my attention. Additionally, I updated the list after the jump to reflect the Phoenix Suns' potential interest in one of Orlando's current free agents.

With all the draft nonsense last week, it was easy for us at 3QC to lose sight of the fact that the NBA's free-agency period starts Tuesday.

So I'd like to thank Barry Jackson of the Miami Herald (via Dee Gugel of the Orlando Sentinel) for shocking us out of our stupor with today's Florida Sports Buzz feature. Apparently, the Heat have their eyes on some of our free agents (emphases Jackson's):

Riley said he still might trade for a point guard, with Memphis (Kyle Lowry, among others) considered in play. Otherwise, the Heat believes it can find a stopgap starter from a free agent group including Chris Duhon, Carlos Arroyo, Keyon Dooling, Anthony Johnson, Tyronn Lue, Jannero Pargo and Anthony Carter. And the Heat likes restricted free agent Sebastian Telfair, though Minnesota can match any offer.

[....]

[Heat GM Pat] Riley pointed to the potential to lure a player from ''teams that have three or four unrestricted free agents.'' Keep an eye on Orlando (Arroyo, Dooling, Maurice Evans) and Golden State [...]

Last year, the Magic only lost two three players to free agency: little-used point guard Travis Diener to Indiana; more notably, backup power forward Darko Milicic to Memphis; and swingman Grant Hill to Phoenix. Nobody expected Diener or Hill to come back, and although Milicic's departure surprised plenty of people, we should have expected the Magic to ignore him if it meant focusing on signing Rashard Lewis, which they did.

But the circumstances surrounding its summer -- limited cap space, high expectations entering next season, the higher quality of its own free agents -- will magnify the impact of any Orlando's free-agent losses, especially if they eventually sign with archrival Miami.

What follows after the jump is a list of Orlando's free agents, what they can provide, and which teams might be interested in them.

Continue reading this post »

... did it actually happen?

• The Magic held private workouts with at least three players today, all of them power forwards: Joey Dorsey from Memphis; Marreese Speights from Florida; and D.J. White from Indiana. No word from any of the usual suspects as to how the workouts went, so, uh, that's all I've got. If you're really curious, DraftExpress has the measurements of almost every player in this year's draft class. Dorsey is the only one of the guys the Magic worked out today to appear on that list, though. He's 6'7.25" with shoes.

• Interesting reaction to Otis Smith's contract extension from Matt Watson:

  The Magic improved by 12 games this year to finish with 52 wins, their most since 1996 when Shaquille O'Neal and Penny Hardaway carried the team all the way to the NBA Finals. GM Otis Smith deserves a lot of credit for the turnaround, first for bidding against himself to sign Rashard Lewis and then having the foresight of knowing Tony Battie would get suffer a season-ending injury to open up playing time for the soon-to-be Most Improved Player Hedo Turkoglu. For that, he was rewarded with a three-year extension.

  [....]

  Smith is hardly the worst GM in the league, but I'm convinced the Magic are where they are despite his efforts, not because of it.

• By the way, the schedule for 3QC's Orlando Magic player evaluations is as follows:
  • Monday, June 2nd: Carlos Arroyo
  • Tuesday, June 3rd: Keith Bogans
  • Wednesday, June 4th: Keyon Dooling
  • Thursday, June 5th: Maurice Evans
  • Friday, June 6th: Adonal Foyle
  • Monday, June 9th: Dwight Howard
  • Tuesday, June 10th: Rashard Lewis
  • Wednesday, June 11th: Jameer Nelson
  • Thursday, June 12th: Hedo Turkoglu
  • Friday, June 13th: James Augustine, Brian Cook, Pat Garrity, Marcin Gortat, and J.J. Redick.

We now return to your regularly scheduled early-summer doldrums, already in progress.

This summer, 3QC will take a look back on each Magic player's 2007-2008 season. The first nine posts will evaluate, on an individual basis and in alphabetical order, the players who played in at least 20% of the team's total minutes; the final post will briefly evaluate the five players who appeared in less than 20% of the team's minutes.

Today, our focus is Carlos Arroyo.

Going into the season, all the Magic expected from Carlos Arroyo was that he play smart, steady basketball backing up Jameer Nelson. For the most part, they got that. He did what was asked of him, and sometimes came up big when it counted. His performance in two of his twenty starts this year particularly stand out.

In a December game versus Charlotte, Arroyo started for Nelson, who was injured. The Bobcats, and Jason Richardson in particular, got to a hot start and looked ready to blow-out the Magic in Orlando. But Arroyo, playing within the flow of the offense, answered each of the Bobcats' baskets with one of his own. In the first 6:43 of the game, Arroyo totaled 8 points and 2 assists, and the Magic ended the period trailing by only one point. They ended up winning the game by 9.

In a March game against New York, Arroyo was the only point guard in uniform, with Nelson and Keyon Dooling nursing injuries. Arroyo shone during Latin Night with 13 points and 8 assists, taking the pressure off Hedo Turkoglu, the Magic's only other healthy playmaker. Turk scored 25 points of his own and the Magic won in a rout.

But Arroyo isn't without his flaws. Rajon Rondo abused him defensively in the Magic's dramatic 96-93 over Boston in January, forcing him to commit 6 turnovers, including the one that lead to Ray Allen's game-tying trey in transition. And, although Arroyo played more under-control this year, he still shot too early in the shot clock (39% of his shots were within the first 10 seconds of a possession) and took too many jumpers (77% of his shots, although that's down from 81% last season). His solid yet unspectacular play, taken into account with his age (29), salary ($4 million last season), and dropping off the face of the earth (7 DNP-CD's in February, virtually no significant minutes the rest of the season) makes it unlikely the Magic retain him.

Yes, I originally gave Arroyo a B-, but upon further consideration, I realized I was too generous. If Arroyo's performance this year is a B-, well, almost everyone else's would be an A.

Briefly:

• The Lakers and Celtics are set to meet in the NBA Finals again and I couldn't care less. As someone who wasn't even alive was barely a year old the last time these two teams played for the title, the history means nothing to me. As far as I'm concerned, these teams' history concerns two games from the 2007-2008 season. That's it. The only thing these Lakers and Celtics teams have in common with their historical counterparts is the wordmarks on the uniforms.
• That said, Lakers in 6.
• ... with no disrespect intended to Celtics coach Doc Rivers, who coached the Magic for the first part of this decade.
• The Bulls' all-but-official hiring of Doug Collins as their head coach makes no sense from a common-sense perspective, but perfect sense to John Paxson, their GM. And to think everyone once praised the guy for drafting Kirk Hinrich, Ben Gordon, and Luol Deng. As far as I'm concerned, he's the boob who traded LaMarcus Aldridge, overpaid for Andres Nocioni, and failed to trade for Pau Gasol.
• The Pistons as we know them are probably dead, as all signs point to them firing Flip Saunders and trading Rasheed Wallace. Their likely breakup saddens me; in spite of everything they did to the Magic this decade, I wanted them to win the title this year. The thought of the Lakers, Celtics, or Spurs winning it instead was just too awful to stand.
• Speaking of the Spurs... I'm not losing any sleep over their demise. And I'm glad that Robert Horry is done. Pretty soon, we won't have to listen to him say ridiculous things like "I'm smarter than probably 98 percent of this league."

Magic player-by-player evaluations start tomorrow with Carlos Arroyo and will run Monday-Friday for each of the next two weeks. See you then.