The Orlando Magic sound as if they have some big plans this summer.
The organization is being quite transparent about their plans to be active players in free agency under new coach Frank Vogel.
“The first part of the plan and the process is to develop your own [players] and grow your own [players],” said Magic CEO Alex Martins, via Josh Robbins of the Orlando Sentinel. “And when you inject veterans at the wrong period of time, it has an impact in the way that you’re trying to develop your corps of young players. It can’t just happen immediately. It’s got to happen at a certain point in time — after your players have matured and developed. And we always believed that this summer and next summer were going to be the two summers of free agency for us that we needed to focus on after developing our young guys.”
Orlando could potentially have $46 million in cap space to use during the summer. Robbins believes it is unlikely that Dwight Howard will be one of the targets.
Instead, Robbins lists Al Horford as a potential fit. The Hawks center will hit free agency this summer, and he went to the University of Florida, thus making it something of a homecoming.
Howard was reportedly open to returning to Orlando, but it doesn’t sound like that interest will be reciprocated. The links to Horford have been reported before and is probably more realistic.
