The NBA draft is complete and free agency is set to open this weekend across the league, including for the Orlando Magic.
Starting Friday at 6 p.m. ET, teams can start negotiating with free agents in order to potentially bolster their roster.
Those players, however, can’t officially sign until 12:01 p.m. ET on July 6. The time between July 1-6 is known as the Free Agency Moratorium, which serves as only a negotiation period.
The Magic are set to have only one free agent and that’s center Moe Wagner, whose 2-year contract for $3.6 million signed in 2021 is expiring this summer.
While Wagner is expected to be the lone free agent for the Magic, that could change. Ahead of free agency, Thursday is the deadline to exercise the team options for Goga Bitadze, Michael Carter-Williams and Admiral Schofield.
If those team options aren’t picked up, that means they’ll become unrestricted free agents, meaning they can sign with any team when free agency starts.
Friday is important for a few more players, too. The contracts of bib man Bol Bol ($2 million) as well as guards Markelle Fultz ($17 million) and Gary Harris ($13 million) become guaranteed if the players are simply on the roster.
As for free agency itself, the Magic are projected to have $22,801,227 in practical cap space, the sixth-most in the league, according to Spotrac. Just seven teams are projected to have financial flexibility — Houston ($50.7 million), San Antonio ($37.4 million), Indiana ($32.1 million), Detroit ($27.8 million), Utah ($25 million ), Orlando and Oklahoma City ($16.6 million) according to Spotrac.
The available cap space gives the Magic an opportunity to add key pieces that could help push Orlando over the edge and into the playoffs next season.
It’s already known the team will need to improve in shooting. Although the Magic drafted two guards in Anthony Black (30.1% from 3) and Jett Howard (36% from 3), Orlando likely will need more help from the perimeter after finishing last season 24th (34.6%) in the NBA in 3-point percentage.
“Every team is looking at shooting these days — it’s just become [a] too important part of the game,” Magic president of basketball operations Jeff Weltman said in May. “For sure, we need to get better [at] shooting the ball.
“But that can come from a lot of different avenues. That can come from internal growth over the summer, working individually with our players. It could come from the draft. It could come from discussions with other teams. It could come from shot selection. These are all parts of a growing team.”
The Magic might not need to look far to find a possible solution for their shooting woes. According to Yahoo!Sports, Orlando is one of the teams considered to “be in play” for Miami Heat swingman Max Strus.
The 6-foot-5 small-forward is a 37.1% career 3-point shooter who averaged a career-high in minutes (28.4) for the Eastern Conference champions this past season.
Indiana and Detroit are reportedly two other teams interested in signing the Miami sharp-shooter, who could get $15 million annually in his next contract, Darren Rovell of The Action Network reported.
Beyond improving in shooting from beyond the arc during free agency, the Magic could look to add to their front court depth.
Although it’s clear who will serve as starters in the front court this season — last year’s NBA Rookie of the Year Paolo Banchero, Franz Wagner and Wendell Carter Jr. — what’s less clear is the bench.
While the Magic would like to continue to develop frontcourt players such as Bol, Schofield, Bitadze, Wagner, Jonathan Isaac and 2019 first-round pick Chuma Okeke, it’s certainly possible that the team could turn toward free agency for help.
Possible options in free agency include Mason Plumlee, Dwight Powell or Thomas Bryant, among others.
Orlando could use its available $7.7 million midlevel exception to sign a backup big man. That exception is for teams below the cap and can be used for contracts up to 2 years in length, according to Spotrac.
Of course, the Magic could also decide to run things back with what they have and continue to have financial flexibility in the future while continuing to develop their own players.
“We want to move the team forward,” Weltman said last Monday before the draft. “We want to play better basketball. We want to make better decisions. We want to have our awareness and maturity level really start to elevate itself and become more of a veteran team.
“That said, not at the expense of doing what we’re doing. Which is growing a team organically with young, talented, high-character players and trying to maintain as much flexibility through the process as possible. Another way of saying: no skipping steps.”
