Seven years ago on NBA draft night, the Denver Nuggets and Orlando Magic struck a seemingly minor deal swapping Evan Fournier to Orlando in exchange for Arron Afflalo. That same night, the Nuggets traded back in the draft and selected Gary Harris (and Jusuf Nurkic). Twenty-two picks later, they drafted a pudgy center from Serbia.
Both franchises, non-glamour teams to say the least, were still dealing with the fallout from the 2012 trade of Dwight Howard from Orlando to the Los Angeles Lakers. The deal had turned Orlando from contender to also-ran. The Nuggets snared Andre Iguodala as part of the four-team Howard mega-trade, and enjoyed a one-season leap in 2012-13 -- winning 57 games and playing at what was then considered a hyperspeed style centered around Iguodala, Ty Lawson, Danilo Gallinari, and Kenneth Faried.
Iguodala left for the Golden State Warriors in free agency, and Gallinari missed the entire 2013-14 season recovering from injury -- the first of four consecutive sub-.500 seasons in Denver.
The two teams, and several of those same players, intersected again at Thursday's trade deadline -- only with the franchises at opposite ends of the NBA hierarchy. The Nuggets sent Gary Harris, R.J. Hampton, and a top-five protected future first-round pick to Orlando for Aaron Gordon and Gary Clark.
The Nuggets are going all-in around the trio of Jamal Murray, Michael Porter Jr., and Nikola Jokic, that 2014 draft steal -- striking with Jokic having just turned 26, entering his prime as perhaps the favorite for Most Valuable Player.
The Magic have been wandering the NBA wilderness since the Howard trade, pivoting from one quirky failed vision to the next before finally burning it to the ground on Thursday.
The difference between their fates since 2014, as it often is for the non-glamour markets, is all in the draft. The Magic haven't exactly blown the draft. Several of their picks -- notably Gordon and Victor Oladipo -- were more or less the "right" picks at the moment given who was available and what NBA thinkers knew (or thought they knew). Even some of their whiffs -- including Mario Hezonja, taken at No. 5 in 2015 -- were defensible at the time. (The five picks after Hezonja: Willie Cauley-Stein, Emmanuel Mudiay by the Nuggets, Stanley Johnson, Frank Kaminsky, and Justise Winslow.)
The Magic never had any lottery luck, perhaps having used up all their good will with the lottery gods in selecting Shaquille O'Neal and then Chris Webber (traded for Penny Hardaway) No. 1 in back-to-back drafts in the early 1990s. They badly wanted Kristaps Porzingis in the Hezonja draft -- Rob Hennigan, their GM at the time, had tried to persuade Porzingis to enter the draft a year earlier -- but couldn't trade up for him. Three (long) years later, they had no ready means to move up for Trae Young or Luka Doncic -- settling instead for Mo Bamba, who just watched the Magic trade for the center picked right behind him (Wendell Carter Jr.).
The Nuggets hit with Murray at No. 7 in 2016, but Murray alone isn't changing an entire franchise. He's a very good player, but he has yet to make an All-Star team. Nabbing Jokic at No. 41 in 2014 reoriented everything. He is the reason the Nuggets preyed Thursday on the remains of the post-Howard Magic -- the reason they can survive the kind of occasional missteps that can set teams like Orlando back years.
In navigating recent injuries to Paul Millsap and JaMychal Green, the Nuggets discovered to be true something that they had long suspected: They are unguardable with Porter at power forward -- faster, with better spacing around the Jokic-Murray two-man symphony. But those lineups had a flimsy defensive backbone, with nothing close to an answer for Kawhi Leonard, LeBron James, and Doncic. Harris and Will Barton are too small or slight. Porter is improving on defense -- and putting in more effort -- but he's not ready for that.
The ideal starting forward partner for Porter is big enough to defend those players, but skilled enough on offense for Denver to mimic the effects of the Porter-at-power-forward construction. The Nuggets scoured the league for that player. They engaged the Houston Rockets on P.J. Tucker, sources said, but never got that close on a deal. They contacted the Sacramento Kings about Harrison Barnes, sources said, but the Kings were determined to hold on to him.
Of course, the Nuggets had precisely such a player in Jerami Grant, currently averaging 23 points for the Detroit Pistons and shooting 35% on an ultra-tough diet of 3s -- suggesting he could shoot much better on the open stand-still looks he would have gotten (and did get) in Denver. (Also on the Pistons: Mason Plumlee, Jokic's former backup in Denver. The Nuggets traded Nurkic and a first-round pick to the Portland Trail Blazers for Plumlee, and we barely remember it now. Having a superstar is a forgiving cushion.)
The Nuggets matched Detroit's $20 million-per-year offer for Grant; he walked anyway. They traded real stuff -- Harris, Hampton, that pick -- for a Grant replacement in Gordon. Couldn't they have just outbid Detroit for Grant, and hung on to all those nice things?
Maybe, in theory. The real world is not so neat. Remember: Most NBA insiders -- including executives across the league -- thought Detroit had overpaid wildly for Grant. Imagine the reaction had Denver paid even more? This was also about more than money. Grant wanted a new role in a new place. He would not be content in Denver.
Gordon has hit 37.5% from deep this season, but he's at 32% for his career. Grant is a better shooter. Millsap might be, too, having hit 34.5% on 3s for his career -- and above the league average in each of the past three seasons.
But spacing is about more than shooting. Gordon is on another planet athletically from Millsap. He can slice to the rim -- on backdoor cuts, or after screening in any number of plausible pick-and-roll combinations -- in a blink. He is the first real, consistent vertical target Jokic has had since Faried -- a minor player in the Jokic era. Denver has been missing that kind of ingredient -- that athletic ferocity. Grant is a good athlete, but not nearly as explosive as Gordon. At times, his off-the-bounce game can be almost laborious.
Barton is probably a more reliable long-range threat now than Harris, who is mired in a yearslong slump. Three-point accuracy might be a wash between the Barton/Gordon and Harris/Grant pairings.
Gordon is also a snappier playmaker than Grant with the ball in open space. He is stouter as a one-on-one defender, and on the glass.
He might end up a better fit than Grant. Even if that best-case scenario happens, is the difference equivalent to Hampton, Harris, and a first-round pick? Probably not, but Denver is operating in the real world, and that was the price of doing business.
(A word on Harris: He was a big part of what the Nuggets built. He helped keep that locker room together. He was proof of concept for how Jokic could lift teammates who were willing to cut -- a baseline menace. The Nuggets do not rally from 3-1 down against the Utah Jazz in the first round last season if Harris does not return from injury to stabilize their defense in Games 6 and 7. It was Harris who poked the ball away from Donovan Mitchell on what appeared to be Utah's final possession of Game 7, setting off the unforgettable chain of events leading to Mike Conley's in-and-out triple for the series. And if Denver loses that series, are we at this moment today -- with Denver believing it can make a real run? Harris also made some big shots in Denver's comeback wins over the LA Clippers in the next round.)
Gordon has never quite tapped into that jack-of-all-trades version of his game. Some of that is on the Magic for shoehorning him into a wing role. Some of that is on Gordon for clinging to ambitions of ball dominance he cannot achieve at this level.
Denver is betting that will change, and it's a sound bet. Before Nikola Vucevic turned into an All-Star, Gordon could look around the Magic locker room and convince himself he was the guy. Who is the best point guard Gordon played with in Orlando? In Denver, his role is clear. Jokic and Murray have dominated playoff series; Jokic is the MVP front-runner. Porter is the anointed prodigy.
In a similar vein, JaVale McGee will probably stop jacking 3s and loopy hooks now that he's on a good team. He catches lobs and protects the rim -- a meaningful upgrade over Isaiah Hartenstein at backup center. Both Millsap and Green can play that role in certain matchups, and work alongside Gordon in some ultra-switchy defensive looks. Both will continue to fill some minutes at power forward. Denver retained Barton and basically every other member of its rotation: PJ Dozier, Monte Morris, Facundo Campazzo, and the intriguing rookie Zeke Nnaji.
The Nuggets have a chance to win the West now. They were already closer than their record appeared. Despite all the hand-wringing about Grant's departure, they have a much fatter scoring margin than they did a year ago. They won't be favorites over a healthy Lakers team, but they have a chance. You go for it when you have an MVP candidate in his prime.
Gordon's contract expires after next season, at the same time as Porter's rookie deal. That gives Denver a season and a half to look at Gordon up close before deciding whether to re-sign him -- before deciding whether the Gordon-Porter-Murray-Jokic foursome is worth a big luxury tax bill. Grant's long-term deal would have given them no such timetable flexibility. The Nuggets have avoided the tax, but ownership is willing to pay it down the line for a contender, sources said. What they'd like to avoid is the dreaded repeater tax, sources said, but that is a long ways off.
The Magic are now a long ways off from mediocrity, where they have lived since the Howard deal. They are going to be awful for the rest of the year, and that's part of the point. Injuries destroyed their season, and now they are seizing that as an opportunity to chase a high pick. The revamped lottery odds make tanking much less of a failsafe, but some chance is better than no chance, and this draft is deep at the top.
The Magic got about the best they were going to get for Gordon. The rest of the league saw all those flaws -- all those outsized ambitions. Dealing Gordon now saved them from the fate they experienced with Fournier: settling for less on a player about to hit free agency. Two second-rounders from the Boston Celtics is a disappointing return for a solid player in Fournier.
Sending Vucevic to Chicago for Carter, Otto Porter Jr. (in the deal for salary reasons only) and two lightly protected first-round picks -- Chicago's 2021 and 2023 selections -- will be polarizing among fans. It is not a gargantuan, eye-popping return -- not the bonanza of picks and swaps the New Orleans Pelicans extracted from the Milwaukee Bucks for Jrue Holiday, who has made one fewer All-Star team than has Vucevic.
But the Holiday deal happened under unique pressurized circumstances, with Giannis Antetokounmpo's supermax decision in the balance. Holiday is a wing. The whole league wants two-way wings. Vucevic is a center with some pretty stark defensive limitations. He's also 30. I'm not sure anyone who can only play center (i.e., not counting Anthony Davis and Zion Williamson) in the modern NBA outside Jokic, Joel Embiid, and Karl-Anthony Towns is netting a Holiday-sized return. Maybe Bam Adebayo, and he's 23 -- his whole career in front of him, already having accomplished more in the postseason than Vucevic. (Adebayo is also versatile enough to defend power forwards.) How many teams even need centers right now?
Vucevic has turned into a fantastic, superstar-level offensive player. He's also probably a better regular-season player than postseason player, though to be fair, it would be nice to see him enter the postseason as part of a first-round favorite -- instead of as the centerpiece of an underdog, facing the full wrath of an elite defense.
Maybe the Magic could have squeezed Chicago for one more asset -- first-round swap rights in some targeted season -- but two picks and an interesting prospect is fair. Carter is redeemable. He might never hit his potential, but he could turn into a serviceable starting center.
The Bulls are exuberant today, and the Vucevic-Zach LaVine pairing will be dynamite on offense. Vucevic's offensive game should age well. He will relieve LaVine, Tomas Satoransky, and Coby White of some playmaking responsibility.
But Chicago took some risk here. This is the kind of trade you make -- jettisoning two first-rounders and a third-year player for a 30-year-old center -- to build a contender. The Bulls are not a contender, and may never grow into one over what remains of Vucevic's prime. Will Patrick Williams, the most important young player on the team, rise before Vucevic declines? He's 19! The Bucks, Brooklyn Nets and Philadelphia 76ers aren't going anywhere. The Celtics will right themselves. The Miami Heat will always prioritize winning today. Building a workable, playoff-ready defense around LaVine (improving, but still) and Vucevic will be a challenge.
The Bulls are not done, of course. They are deep. Williams is a nice building block. White might be. Lauri Markkanen will either develop in Chicago, or net something in a trade. Chicago will be good, and maybe a good team in Chicago will attract a third big name to pair with LaVine and Vucevic.
Chicago has a coherent medium-term vision at least. Orlando hasn't really had one -- or at least a realistic one -- since the Howard deal. The Magic went all-in on size, somehow managing to roster Vucevic, Serge Ibaka, Bismack Biyombo, Jeff Green, and Gordon at the same time. They failed to recoup enough value (and in some cases, any value at all) from several young players -- Oladipo, Tobias Harris, Ryan Anderson, Maurice Harkless, others. They overspent on backups.
They flailed, basically -- a team in search of a keystone player from which some organizing principle might flow.
Do they have a vision now? That depends on if you consider "be really bad for a bit" a vision. (Only in sports does "be really bad" count as a vision.) Perhaps their two most important remaining players -- Markelle Fultz and Jonathan Isaac -- are injured, with murky futures. Isaac could be Defensive Player of the Year one day. But what is he on offense? Can he stay healthy? Fultz's jumper is still unreliable, and it's unclear if he will ever be a top-15 NBA starting point guard.
Cole Anthony is crafty and fearless. Chuma Okeke has a sweet stroke, and will get every chance to prove himself now. They could flip Terrence Ross later.
That nucleus could turn into something. They could nab a high pick in this draft, get healthy, and be friskier than expected next season. But getting good again will take a long time, and an injection of talent. The Magic could have kept this team together and finished this season with a solid chance at a high pick -- allowing them to potentially live the best of both worlds next season: stay pretty good in the present, with a potential future star already on board.
They bailed out of that plan. One result is to increase their chances at the top pick this season, and in at least one additional season.
A star prospect is a vision -- a guiding light for every decision that comes after. Orlando hasn't had one in almost a decade. The Nuggets snared one in Jokic. The Magic have to sell hope now. The Nuggets have it.