<div class="quote_poster">Quote:</div><div class="quote_post">The Magic will go into Thursday night's NBA Draft with no first-round pick. As Pat Williams used to say, it's like going to the prom without a date. Really the pick has already been used. The Magic traded it to Detroit 16 months ago for Darko Milicic and Carlos Arroyo. At 21, Milicic is right at the age most players are when they enter the NBA, even if he has already been in the league four years. And like your typical first-round pick, it is Milicic who holds the key to Orlando's chance of improving its roster this year. The 7-foot Serbian has shown just enough improvement to be considered intriguing, but not enough to qualify for a huge guaranteed contract. He is a restricted free agent this summer, which means the Magic have the right to match any offer made to him by another team. Milicic made $5.2 million in his fourth NBA season while averaging 8.0 points and 5.5 rebounds. He ranked 14th in the NBA in blocked shots despite playing less than 24 minutes per games, and he was one of the few Magic players to play well in their first-round playoff loss to the Pistons. The Magic would prefer to keep Milicic, pairing him with Dwight Howard in a young big-man combination no other team in the Eastern Conference can match. But not at any cost. If another team comes up with a five-year, $50 million offer, Milicic will be playing somewhere else next season. Matching such an offer would consume most of what the Magic have available to spend on free agents this summer and make it nearly impossible to upgrade their backcourt. Only a handful of NBA rivals would be capable of making that kind of offer, and it is questionable whether they would offer it to Milicic. He has yet to come close to justifying his No. 2 selection in the 2003 draft, a pick that is really starting to hurt the Pistons now. Carmelo Anthony, Chris Bosh and Dwyane Wade were picked immediately after Detroit took a chance on Milicic; put any of those players on the aging Pistons roster today and their outlook would be quite different. Big men tend to take more time to develop than other players, and Milicic is still only 21. He has shown just enough flashes of potential to make it impossible to write him off as a bust. He can block and alter shots and he can get the basketball to open shooters, and there are 10-year NBA veterans who can do neither of those things. "I always make the argument that if we had our pick this year, would that pick (15th overall) be Darko Milicic?'' said general manager Otis Smith. "I don't think he would be around where we're picking this year, so in that case we gained a pick by acquiring Darko.'' Unless they lose him, of course, in which case they gain some money to spend on a guard and/or a scorer. Milicic will get a four- or five-year contract from somebody, and then it is not too difficult to envision his career going either way. He could be an asset with useful skills on both ends of the floor, or he could go down as another overpaid, long-term mistake. Those questions will be answered later. For now, the question is where.</div> Source: The Ledger
It better be in Orlando. If we let Darko walk for free then he will get put on the ever growing list of players that turn good-great after they leave Orlando. Why don't we give him an offer now so that his market value doesn't get spiked up after talking to other teams? He is the PERFECT complement to Dwight Howard. We absolutely can not lose him. If we lose him, the little trust that I have in the organizations management will go out the window.
That's for sure. If the organization doesn't want him, at least do a S&T. We could get some definite value for him.
