Otis Smith's Huge Mistake

On July 3, it was widely reported that Rashard Lewis gave Orlando a verbal commitment that when free agency opened on July 11, he would sign with their franchise. On the first day of free agency, the Orlando Magic signed Rashard Lewis to a six-year maximum dollar contract and renounced the rights to Darko Milicic, who then proceeded to sign with the Memphis Grizzlies. The Magic should be commended for signing a young, wing player like Lewis, who will make a great duo with Dwight Howard. However, Magic general manager, Otis Smith, clearly made a mistake with the way he went about this series of transactions.

Smith was fortunate to be able to get a commitment from Lewis before free agency began. Once he locked up Lewis, Smith decided that he would not be able to afford Milicic, so he renounced his rights allowing him to become an unrestricted free agent and taking away the opportunity to match any offer he receives.

So what’s wrong with this? From the time Lewis committed to Orlando, Smith should have began to either work on a sign-and-trade with Seattle or make a move to trim their payroll by trading away some of their players who are in the last year of their deal. With Lewis' new, large contract coming onto their payroll with Howard and Nelson's new extensions abou to be signed, Orlando needs to consider where they stand. The Magic have three players who are in their last year of their deal and making near $4,000,000 in: Carlos Arroyo, Pat Garrity, and Keyon Dooling. Otis Smith and the Magic could have tried to trade a group of these players to Seattle along with draft picks, or look to trade these players to another team. Moving two of the three of these players would have allowed the Magic to both add Lewis and bring Milicic back.

Instead, Smith did not give himself a chance to put out a Lewis, Milicic, Howard frontline because he unnecssarily renounced the rights to Milicic before he needed to. In the end, the Magic sent Seattle a conditional second-round pick and also acquired a trade exception believed to be in the $9,000,000 range. On July 11, Milicic signed a new contract with Memphis for three years and $21,000,000. So where did Smith make his mistake? If he would have forced Seattle’s hand earlier and let Milicic and his agent, Marc Cornstein, know that he was committed to signing him but needed time, the Magic could have ended up with a great, young frontcourt. Smith got flustered too quickly and renounced the rights to Milicic which essentially was waving the white flag on the possibility of bringing him back. Did Smith really think the SuperSonics would take nothing over something? The Magic would not have been risking losing Lewis because they were going to be paying him significantly more money than anyone else. Lewis would have waited a few days into free agency for everything to work out for his new team.

At the same time, Cornstein and Milicic would have had no choice but to wait for Smith to finalize a deal with the SuperSonics or another team to clear the cap space to bring back Milicic. As a restricted free agent, Milicic was not free to sign with another team without the Magic having the option to match it. At the minimum, Smith should have held onto Milicic and when Memphis wanted to sign him, at least get compensation in return. A future first round pick or a young, post player like Alexander Johnson would have been better than nothing. Johnson is a good leaper and shoots the ball well, but tends to be foul-prone. He played in 59 games for the Grizzlies last season, including a stetch in December where he played well. In the end, the Magic received no compensation for Milicic, after acquiring him last season from Detroit for Kelvin Cato and a first-round pick.

Smith completely dropped the ball here and now Tony Battie, Marcin Gortat, and James Augustine are Orlando's only other big bodies outside of Howard and Lewis. If you add in the critiscm that many have made that Smith threw in an extra, sixth year at close to $24,000,000 for no real reason, the series of transactions becomes even more perplexing. At the end of the day, what could have become a spectacular front line for the next six years, has now become a team that will be struggling to put together a competent rotation.