2025 Off-Season Thread

[Murphy13]

9 hours ago, jmmagicfan said:

The mid-level exception rules are fairly complex, but to simplify it, if you’re below the first apron you have up to about $14.1M; but if you’re already above that 1st apron and under the second, you get slightly under $5.7M. This is important to us right now because of where we stand currently. If we exercise our options on Moe and Caleb, and keep/sign pick #25, we will be at about $193M in salary with 13 contracts, which is under the first apron (sort of). We currently have “cap holds” for both McClung and Queen of about $2M each, which effectively puts us over the 1st apron and limits us to the smaller MLE. If we release either or both, we’d sneak back under the 1st apron and have access to most of the MLE ($12M) before hitting the 2nd apron.  If we can move Jett for either a late 1st, or an early 2nd with little or no salary back, it makes the numbers a lot easier to work with. 
 

Obviously we can decline Moe, and the numbers look a lot better, but it doesn’t give us any more money to spend, because our payroll would still limit us to the MLE, so we’ll effectively have only the $14.1M and vet or rookie minimums to fill out the roster.

This deserves a thumbs up but that function seems to be disabled.  Haven’t been around much lately so maybe I missed something.

[jmmagicfan]

Building off my earlier post, I think we need to exercise Moe’s option and keep him on the roster. I have multiple reasons, in no particular order:

1) he was a legitimate sixth man playing some of his best basketball before going down. If he comes back healthy, he will still be a valuable addition to the team.

2) We can’t decline it to use for someone else. If we decline, we open up a roster spot, but have limited options to fill it. If we keep him, we can use him in a trade later as an expiring contract if we want.

3) It’s a good PR move with Franz (and the rest of our guys, saying we value the player). Plus he is a great guy on the bench supporting our team. I would expect that carries into the locker room as well.

[jmmagicfan]

Caleb Houstan is a toss-up for me. He played fairly well towards the end of the season, he does a lot of little things to complement the team while he’s on the floor, and he doesn’t really make mistakes when he’s playing. On the other hand, he doesn’t really do anything great. His salary is pretty minimal, but could we replace him with a better player at the vet minimum? Maybe. The problem is, we have to decide on him before 6/29.
 

The same thing is true for me with Trevelin Queen. To sign him to a roster spot is about the same as a veteran minimum.

Problem is, you don’t know who is going to still be available for the veteran minimum until much closer to camp.

[MagicMan1979]

6 minutes ago, jmmagicfan said:

Building off my earlier post, I think we need to exercise Moe’s option and keep him on the roster. I have multiple reasons, in no particular order:

1) he was a legitimate sixth man playing some of his best basketball before going down. If he comes back healthy, he will still be a valuable addition to the team.

2) We can’t decline it to use for someone else. If we decline, we open up a roster spot, but have limited options to fill it. If we keep him, we can use him in a trade later as an expiring contract if we want.

3) It’s a good PR move with Franz (and the rest of our guys, saying we value the player). Plus he is a great guy on the bench supporting our team. I would expect that carries into the locker room as well.

Great stuff man this is so complex. I was listening to a Podcast from Orlando Magic Dailey about our cap mechanics this summer. I was under the impression we should decline Mo and Caleb to get the max amount of money (15.7 million was the podcasts number).  Then resign Mo for about 10 million a year but give him an extra year so he has that security coming off an injury. Then we would have the remainder to work with to sign a PG or other free agent. 
 

What are your thought on just brining Mo back on a two year deal?  Does their math add up in your opinion?

[CTMagicUK]

58 minutes ago, jmmagicfan said:

Caleb Houstan is a toss-up for me. He played fairly well towards the end of the season, he does a lot of little things to complement the team while he’s on the floor, and he doesn’t really make mistakes when he’s playing. On the other hand, he doesn’t really do anything great. His salary is pretty minimal, but could we replace him with a better player at the vet minimum? Maybe. The problem is, we have to decide on him before 6/29.
 

The same thing is true for me with Trevelin Queen. To sign him to a roster spot is about the same as a veteran minimum.

Problem is, you don’t know who is going to still be available for the veteran minimum until much closer to camp.

Caleb makes less than the vet minimum.

The vet minimum for someone signing a deal with 3 years of service is 2.378 mil. Caleb is getting paid 2.187 next season provided his option is picked up. For that reason alone, unless they legitimately think they can replace him with a rookie or they need the 2mil to get under the tax to use the full MLE, I can't imagine they'll decline his option, especially because they've been very patient with his development and it finally started to show up in games towards the back end of the season. 

EDIT: actually I have a feeling that Caleb's salary will have to be the minimum and can't be lower so ignore that first part but I think the general perspective still stands 

[Luke_FfS]

I apologize if it was already posted, but around minute 37, and for 15 minutes, Lowe and his guest talk about the Bane trade, and then the Magic in general.

https://www.youtube.com/live/X7vT-ROFBts

[Chosen54721]

13 hours ago, MagicFanDan said:

I heard that as well and laughed. i actually looked up this stats. They are actually better than I expected. But Magic won like 20 games that year and there was nobody else, so I don’t count those seasons. 
 

The other names I was considering were Victor Olidipo or 33 year old Vince Carter. 
 

Main takeaway, Magic haven’t had an all-star quality guard in 20+ years. Glad we finally do and glad Weltman finally had the guts to push all his chip in. 

Without question Sir, we really haven't had many guards that were memorable or affective, I am still crying in my soup over Alfred Payton, for Gods sake! -}

[MagicFanDan]

1 hour ago, Chosen54721 said:

Without question Sir, we really haven't had many guards that were memorable or affective, I am still crying in my soup over Alfred Payton, for Gods sake! -}

And Mario. 

[Shine88]

3 hours ago, MagicFanDan said:

And Mario. 

Blast from the past. I remember Devin Booker was damn near begging Orlando to draft him that year.

[matthi32]

Any chance the Rockets would trade Reed Sheppard to us for Jett Howard?

[MagicFanDan]

5 hours ago, Shine88 said:

Blast from the past. I remember Devin Booker was damn near begging Orlando to draft him that year.

Painful. 

[MagicFanDan]

5 hours ago, matthi32 said:

Any chance the Rockets would trade Reed Sheppard to us for Jett Howard?

Not straight up