Soooo....
At one point or another all of us die hard Magic fans will have their "A ha!" moment when they decide who they want as their top choice in the draft. This season has been hard to watch the Magic continue to lose, but the reward is having the chance to pick near the top of the Draft.
I have floated around who I've wanted up to this point, but I have finally settled in on the man named, Dante Exum and here's why...
1) AA is not the ideal fit for this team.
Even though I have been a strong supporter for AA since Day 1, there are couple of things that don't sit well with me.
1 - His prime years are limited and not ideally aligned for our rebuild. As a player in his own right, I fully believe that AA can be a key cog on a Championship team. Unfortunately, not according to the young make up of this team. He's better suited to a team that is closer to being a contender and with brighter stars around him.
2 - Our ceiling with him is limited. You might remember the thread I made on Lance Stephenson as a FA target for us. It's not just because Lance is a young budding star with an all around game, but because he gives us a major advantage in something that AA doesn't. BALL MOVEMENT. The game of basketball is so beautiful when the ball is being handled by players with accute passing vision. Stephenson will command big money in the offseason, but Dante Exum can be our solution to this.
2) Exum at SG not PG.
All along I have been thinking of Exum as our PG of the future IF we were to draft him. Then the light came on! Exum can be our SG of the future! The more I see of the Oladipo PG experiment, the more I get convinced that he can pull it off. That thought solidifies even more when I think about putting a SG next to him with good ballhandling and passing skills. With Exum we can have exactly that! Being taller (and I assume longer) than Dipo, it's a natural fit. I no longer have the ire against him being a "scoring PG" rather than a "pure PG". Putting him at SG plays him at his strengths and mitigates Oladipo's weaknesses as a PG. Together they are a powerful combination.
3) The 2 PG rotation match up.
Playoff basketball always boils down to match up advantages. Unique match up combinations tend to have their moments in time until other teams catch up. Remember the ole 4 out, 1 in philosophy we ran with Dwight? At first there was a huge question mark on how Rashard and Turk would play together on the floor at the same time, but in time it became a strength for us. The reason was because we were able to take advantage of the Stretch 4 using Shard's great marksmanship. Traditional teams were forced to weaken their post defense and Dwight penalized them for it.
A 2 PG rotation of Oladipo and Exum is starting to get back us back to beating opponents using a unique match up problem. No other team in the NBA has the ability to put two big guards next to each other where both players can pass the ball AND both players pose nightmare problems on the offensively AND defensively. Our length and speed would be hard to match up against. Our options for moving the ball would be doubled. Explosive would be an understatement!
We have been seeing a few teams experimenting with this with some success as Golden St did in the playoffs last year with Curry and Jack... and Phoenix did earlier this year with Bledsoe and Dragic... and the obvious, but not really obvious one is the Pacers with Hill and Stephenson. Having a guard at the 2 spot with PG vision is a match up strength that the Magic can execute with the backcourt of Oladipo and Exum. Nobody has fully executed it in the way that the Magic could and THAT can reap major dividends.
4 - Exum's own potential
There are players in this draft with higher floors than Exum. There are players in this draft that have proven more than Exum. There are players in this draft that are farther along in their development than Exum. There are players in this draft with far less risk than Exum. All that said, Dante Exum is the one player in this draft that I believe really has unlimited potential.
Jabari Parker has a high floor, but is capped athletically and trapped in the form of a SF/PF tweener. Not explosive enough for NBA SFs and not big enough to defend NBA PFs. Andrew Wiggins has the skills, but no fire. He lacks the hunger in his demeanor to want to have it all. He's too comfortable settling and needs to find that eye of the tiger. Embiid has unlimited potential in my mind, but the game is going away from needing a superstar big man. On the other hand, you most definitely do need and have ALWAYS needed a superstar wing.
Exum's potential reminds me of the time when we debated about who was better... Okafor or Howard. I fully remember how close and heated a debate it really was. But the Magic chose the guy with the unlimited potential and it was the right choice. I hope we do the same thing and go with Exum. He could be that once in a decade type talent that many once believed that Wiggins was supposed to be. I might be writing Wiggins off too early, but the one time that they were on the same team together, Exum stole the show. Exum has that fire that when I see it in the guy, I want him on my team. He's just a kid now, but when he grows into his man suit, he's gonna be something special. I just feel it.
5 - Next year's draft class is full of big men.
Last year, I bashed on Nerlens Noel pretty hard. Probabaly more than he deserved. I do think his upside is that of a Tyson Chandler-ish type of player in the league and that's not bad at all. But I was also looking ahead at this year's class and saw several big men candidates.... including Joel Embiid. Nobody really thought he was going to end up surpassing Wiggins and Parker or Randle... in fact that kind of talk was ridiculous. There were others Calley-Stein, Austin from Baylor, Montrezl Harrell, even Aaron Gordon at PF was a thought. Basically, I felt there were options in the future if we passed on Noel. Not knowing how they would turn out, still I knew we'd have a chance to put someone next to Vucevic without being forced to draft Noel.
This year, I feel almost the same way about Embiid. I definitely think Embiid is better than Noel, but I feel the same in the idea that I would be ok without him. Yes, it's true that I made a thread not long ago about KOQ possibly being our PF of the future. It was a nice discussion, but next year's draft sports the names of Jahlil Okafor, Cliff Alexander, Myles Turner, Marcus Lee, Brice Johnson, Karl Towns and I'm sure others will emerge as they usually do. Those are 6 big men with major potential (some of them have a lot of growing to do) and they won't all go in the Top 6. There are players at other positions that will have a say about that! So what I'm saying is that we won't necessarily have to be in tank mode to get one of them. So let's get Exum and get this show on the road!
If I'm really enticed... I might even trade AA and our WoNK pick for an unprotected 2015 1st rounder to a team like the Bucks! This year's draft is already not looking to be as strong as it once was considered. This year we get Exum, next year we get... say... Myles Turner...or Karl Towns. WOW. Talk about PERFECTION.
[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NoX6y2PJeq4[/youtube]
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