You may remember this post from May, in which I tried to navigate the NBA's salary cap to see what the Magic could do this summer in free agency. Now that we're closer to the beginning of the free-agent signing period (Wednesday, July 9th), I thought I'd take another look at it. I've presented my findings in a Q-and-A format. For this post, I consulted Larry Coon's NBA Salary Cap F.A.Q., Storyteller's Contracts, ESPN's 2008 NBA Free Agent list, and the Orlando Magic's official roster page. We hope you find this guide helpful.

Question: How many players do the Magic have under contract next season, and what are they owed?

Answer: Currently, the Magic have 11 players under contract, owed a total of $60,553,339 next season. While the league has yet to release its official salary-cap data, we can say with absolute certainty that the Magic are over the salary cap. Here's how everything breaks down by player...

Note: for this table, "Age" refers to a player's age as of October 31st, 2008, when we expect the NBA season to begin.

... and by position...

Make the jump to read the rest of the Q-and-A.

Continue reading this post »

	vs.
8-21		19-11
AmericanAirlines Arena
7:30 PM
FSN Florida
Probable starters:
Dwyane Wade	PG	Jameer Nelson
Ricky Davis	SG	Keith Bogans
Dorell Wright	SF	Hedo Turkoglu
Udonis Haslem	PF	Rashard Lewis
Earl Barron	C	Dwight Howard

The Heat are having a truly awful season. Just two years after winning the NBA title, the Heat are dead last in the Eastern Conference and will have to go 33-20 the rest of the way just to reach .500 at season's end, which might earn them a playoff berth. On top of that, they've lost backup center Alonzo Mourning to a career-ending knee injury and backup guard William "Smush" Parker to a career-ending case of mental flatulence. Shaq might take his annual injury vacation due to sore hips. Starting guard Jason Williams has a sore knee. Chris Quinn, Williams' backup, has a sprained left ankle and may not be available tonight. Yes, the Heat indeed may be without a true point guard tonight. But look on the bright side, Heat fans: as Ira Winderman notes (thirteenth bullet), your team has five centers under contract this season. Hooray!

The Magic should indeed be heavily favored in this game, but they can't afford to overlook any opponent, especially one that fields a starting five which includes Dwyane Wade and Shaquille O'Neal. And as boneheaded as Ricky Davis is, he's also a threat to pop off for 40 points at least once a season. Yahoo!'s Kelly Dwyer looks at the Heat's most recent loss, a 96-85 setback in Philadelphia, and concludes that Pat Riley the coach deserves just as much of the criticism as Pat Riley the GM. Basically, they're better than their record lets on, and perhaps they'd be more successful with a different coach. It should be noted that the Heat are 4-6 in their last 10 games. Is that impressive? Lord, no, but it's also one game better than our 3-7 mark in that same span.

We handled the Heat fairly well the last time we matched up with them; in fact, it might have been our best game of the season. Basically, the Heat don't have anyone who can shut down both Hedo Turkoglu and Rashard Lewis. Also, Shaq is too slow and too old to hang with Dwight Howard defensively, although he played well on the offensive end (20 points, 8-15 FG) against Dwight in November.

The game is on FSN Florida, which means most of us won't get to see it. Thank you, NBA Audio League Pass.

UPDATE: Shaquille O'Neal is active for tonight's game, but will not start, reports ESPN.com.

Slow news day yesterday. That wasn't the case today. Let's get to it.

• Via TrueHoop's Thursday Bullets: John Hollinger's new Playoff Predictor projects that the Magic's final record will be 60-22, that the Magic have a 100% chance of making the playoffs, a 100% chance of winning the division, a 17.6% chance of capturing the East's no. 1 seed, a 23% chance of winning the East finals, and a 14.6% chance of winning the NBA title. Holy crap!
• Carter Blanchard of FreeDarko pardons the Magic for the Lewis signing:

  While Orlando paid way more than they should have had to, and the $23m owed in 2012 is going to hurt, what is relevancy in the NBA for the next half decade actually worth?  Rashard for that team is the difference between sneaking into the playoffs and making perennial runs at the Finals. Couple that with the fact there was no other option available that would have provided this kind of boost and it seems clear that the initial consensus of the signing needs some reevaluating. But my guess is that even if the Magic can sustain this early success, Rashard will continue to fail to live up to the burden of his contract.
  [....]
  Overpaid players can win you games just as easily as underpaid players can lose 'em (see: Parker, Smush). Rashard Lewis might never deserve his $110 million, but when all's said and done, he'll have been worth it.

• Brian Schmitz has this news roundup in today's Sentinel. Clearly, the best news is that Carlos Arroyo's ill daughter is feeling better, which allowed Carlos to rejoin the team at practice yesterday.
• From Schmitz's blog:

  Unless Dwight Howard catches a Grant Hill curse or other players wind up getting fitted for walking casts, the Magic should post their best record since the 1995-96 season.

  That year the Magic, with Shaq and Penny, wound up a franchise-best 60-22. Orlando won 57 games the season before that.

  The franchise's top record since Shaq left in 1996 is 45-37, posted by the 1996-97 team that still had Penny, Nick, Dennis and Horace on the roster.

  Look at it like this: The Magic are 16-4 and if they go 31-31 the rest of the way, they'll have 47 wins.