Just a thought, if you’re going to compare this off-seasons free agency situation to last summers, you might want to add Grant Hill to that list.

Even if we lost all of our free agents this summer (which we won’t), I still don’t think that would be equivalent to losing Grant and Darko.

In my opinion, Dooling is the most important player to resign. Unfortunately, he’ll be the most difficult to keep. If Dooling goes, we pretty much have to resign Arroyo, unless they have another backup PG in mind. I know Lee played point guard for one season in college, but that isn’t something he won’t be ready for.

I like Mo Evans, but he is totally expendable. Despite subtle differences, Bogans is close to a carbon copy. With that said, I think he has the best chance of resigning. I’m not sure how I feel about that right now. I guess it just depends on who the other options are. I personally hope the Magic take a look at Mickael Pietrus. And I’d probably rather see Redick get a shot, than Evans out there again. Nothing against Evans, we just need more from that position.

In the end, I think the shooting guard position will come down to three players. Two of them are already known with Bogans and Lee. The only question left is who will be the other, Redick, Evans, or a free agent? If I had to guess, I’d say Evans.

As for the point guard spot, Nelson is the starter, no question about it. The question is who will be his backup, Arroyo, Dooling, somebody else? And I say that knowing Dooling is known as a combo guard, but by the end of last season, I think Stan had made it clear where Dooling was going to get the majority of his playing time. I want Dooling back, but I think he’ll want more than Otis will give him.

Moving up, I know everyone talks about getting a "true power forward", but I don’t see our starting forwards changing. Even if rebounding was an issue at times, they caused far more problems on the other end night in and out. Turk and Lewis were very consistent, and brought something good to every game. The same can’t be said for our backcourt which was as inconsistent as they come.

So as for bigs, I think we need some size and force that we can bring off of the bench when needed. Battie will help a whole lot, pending he comes back healthy. What we saw from Gortat at the end of last season was a pleasant surprise. Cook also showed he could help us here. We have to remember we didn’t have Battie or Cook against the Pistons. Not to say that they would be the difference, but they both would have helped us in that series.

I’ll wrap this up by saying; don’t expect Otis to do anything drastic. He’s shown us time and time again that he likes playing it safe. While I would like to see him "make a splash", I’m just not expecting it.

P.S.-You have a sweet blog. I used to comment on it before you changed over to SBN. Since then I’ve just been a reader. Finally today, I broke down and signed up.

It’s not that those four guys you mentioned didn’t contribute last year that has me laughing, but more the fact that they could possibly be integral to our success this coming year. I’d argue that they are almost all expendable and easily replaceable. The one glaring need that I see right now is getting a backup point guard, and re-signing Dooling to fill that roll would be sweet, but if we can’t it won’t be a game breaker. Duhon, Williams, or even Arroyo would be just fine. As for Evans, he and Bogans are just taking away playing time from J.J. and if they both stuck around again this next year then they’d do the same to Lee. No thanks. Foyle also won’t see any playing time due to the emmergence of Gortat. So to sum it up, Dooling or Arroyo can be re-signed, but the other guys? Bye bye.

in all of those guys… especially Dooling…. but more than likely we wont be able to get much done with you guys, unless it is a sign and trade type deal.

I’m sure this will be talked about eventually here but Maggette has reportedly expressed heavy interest in playing for the Magic next season. If the Magic could get him he would have to take at least a 1.2 million dollar pay cut a season. To get him Orlando would lose their entire MLE, which IMO would ruin any chance of resigning Dooling. It probably not going to happen but it’s worth mentioning going into tomorrow.