14. "I'm going to punch you in the ovary, that's what I'm gonna do. A straight shot, right to the babymaker." To the Magic ... this was probably their reaction after No. 1 pick Fran Vazquez told them he was staying overseas for another season. Normally, you would think that a team passing up Danny Granger and Gerald Green to get double crossed by a foreign big man named "Fran" would be the lowlight of the past 12 months -- but this is the same team that gave away Tracy McGrady and has Steve Francis, Kelvin Cato, Doug Christie and Mrs. Christie to show for it. Sorry, that's gonna take precedence. http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/page2/story...=simmons/050804
I?m tired of defending the trade the Magic did for Francis, Mobley, and Cato. Honestly had they waited longer, and not been able to pull off a deal I am sure this same guy would be writing an article about how the Magic never seem to be able to get compensation for stars who want out. There were two quality offers for Tracy on the table one from the Suns for Shawn Marion or Amare Stoudamire, and one from the Rockets for Steve Francis, Mobley, and Cato. At the time the Magic felt they were going to be able to get both Marion and Stoudamire for Tracy, but that did not happen. Amare had an injury whittled season that year despite averaging 20 points the Magic did not want to run the risk of getting another Grant Hill. So they went, and got a nice center and two proven scorers. Who did they expect Orlando to get? Kobe Bryant? Kevin Garnett? The NBA trade market is strange it is rare that you will ever see an equal superstar for superstar trade go down. A lot of times teams will trade a superstar for a star with a little less talent, and a nice scorer to help further compensate for the lose of that star notably Francis and Mobley, and Lamar and Butler. It is often rare that both those players stay on the team. The team will tend to pawn off the reliable scorer to fill voids the team needs to address. Lakers with the void at power forward and the Magic needed defensive help, and at the time who could have suspected Christie would turn into such a disgruntled player who also happened to be injury prone. The Magic made the best out of a bad situation when they traded Tracy. There was no better offer, and I?m sick of hearing people dwelling on it.
<div class="quote_poster">Quoting Best Kept Secret:</div><div class="quote_post">The Magic made the best out of a bad situation when they traded Tracy. There was no better offer, and I?m sick of hearing people dwelling on it.</div> Agreed. I'm sick of people dwelling in the past, speaking not only of the T-Mac trade but also other things like drafting Howard over Okafor (meaning discussions like who is the better player or would've been Okafor the better player for the Magic...) and drafting Fran. That's all in the past, we have to live with it and it's nothing which affects us personally in any big way now. We need to just hope that at one point the owner wakes up and makes big changes in the front office and gets rid of all those underachievers and gets some real basketball minded people to get things going.
