The Orlando Magic are in a very bad place

I am getting pretty sick of writing about and to be very honest thinking about professional sports league lockouts. Beyond the ridiculousness of millionaire athletes needing a labor union. By and large, most sports fans do not care about this kind of stuff. However, I get paid to analyze things so I have to dig deep into both the NFL lockout, which hopefully is near an end, and the NBA lockout that is going to be here for a while.

The NBA lockout is going to be around for a while because of a lot of factors. The first and most important one being many NHL owners, who will claim a victory in the lost 2005 NHL season, think they can do the same with the NBA. Secondly, the NBA financial model is severely broken and the curios case of the Orlando Magic is proof of that.

They have tried and tired to build a team around Dwight Howard, and in failing to do so they now have 3 million dollars committed to payroll before they even get to resigning players or adding new ones. Since their roster is aging, they do not have any tradable assets, and if the 2011-12 NBA season is lost they may see Howard walk out of the door as a free agent. Not a great place to be in.

Sure, we can make the argument that this situation is their own fault, and it is. However, the Magic have tried to do it the right way. They got a valuable player, tried to build around him, and while that didn’t work out should the NBA allow Howard to leave and watch as the Magic waste 10 years trying to rebuild? What good would that do?