A Deeper Look at how the 2005 Draft Decimated YOUR Orlando Magic

With the NBA season, amongst many other things, being on hold due to COVID-19 outbreak and current quarantine, I have had a lot of freetime. Some of it has been spent productively on things like: creating digital lessons for my students, cooking new recipes, and laundry, but I’d be lying if I said most of my time didn’t revolve around thinking way too deeply about movies, TV, and basketball.

My best friend Erik and I debate about a lot of things. Most of them are good-natured, like our collaboration over Billions and Succession. Sometimes they’re truly hurtful, like when we talk about Fantasy Football and he reminds everyone of his 5 championships in our league that we’ve had since 2007.

My favorite of our debates revolve around past Orlando Magic decisions, especially when we’re wrong. He wanted to draft Emeka Okafor over Dwight Howard. I thought, if I’m being honest with myself still think, we broke up the 3-headed monster of Dwight Howard, Steve Francis, and Cuttino Mobley too soon. We both agree that drafting Fran Vazquez number 11 overall in the 2005 draft is THE WORST PICK EVER in Orlando Magic history. With this extra time, I wanted to dig a bit deeper, and what I found was absolutely disgusting. Before diving headfirst into this dumpster fire, let’s take a bit of time to lay the groundwork. Like most things Orlando Magic related, we’re going to start with false hope.

2004: The Beginning of Potential Greatness

After making the playoffs for 3 straight years led by the most underrated star this millenium Tracy McGrady, and being bounced in the first round 3 straight times, injuries, losing, and drafting Dwight Howard, T-Mac asked to be traded. The Orlando Magic obliged, acquiring Steve Francis, Cuttino Mobley, and Kelvin Cato. Francis went ballistic in his first season with The Magic, averaging approximately 21 points, 6 rebounds, and 7 assists per game, but trading Mobley and other issues derailed Stevie Franchise. He was traded for Trevor Ariza next season, paving the way for Jameer Nelson to start at point guard.

The 2004-05 season ended with the Magic just missing the playoffs, and gave the Orlando Magic two extremely important things; a competent and young core of Dwight Howard, Jameer Nelson, and newly signed free agent Hedo Turkoglu, and cap space. With a young core and plenty of flexibility to move forward, hopes were high in Orlando going into the 2005-06 season…

The 2005 NBA Draft

Retrospectively speaking, this draft was loaded. Featuring five all-stars (Chris Paul, Deron Williams, Andrew Bynum, David Lee and Danny Granger) and five All-NBA players (Chris Paul, Deron Williams, Andrew Bynum, David Lee, and Andrew Bogut), this draft also had a bevy of role players: Marvin Williams, Raymond Felton, Channing Frye, Gerald Green, Nate Robinson, Jarrett Jack, Ersan Ilyasova, CJ Miles, Monta Ellis, Amir Johnson, and Marcin Gortat. This draft was so deep, it only featured 5 players to never log an NBA minute, which is an extreme rarity. The Orlando Magic had the 11th pick in the draft, meaning they had no shot at the consensus big four in this draft: Bogut, Paul, Deron Williams, and Marvin Williams. When it came time for their pick, the Magic lucked into two stud options to draft: Danny Granger or Gerald Green. Both offered upside as versatile 3 and D wings who could also get to the rim. Both Granger and Green were projected at times to go as high as #5 to the Charlotte Bobcats, but Michael Jordan took guys from UNC that didn’t completely fit their roster. The Orlando Magic with these options on the table really couldn’t mess up…until they did. With the 11th overall pick, the Orlando Magic select Fran Vazquez from Spain.

This was just plain out awful. Vazquez was a 6’10 Power Forward/Center hybrid, with a game that relied on size and strength. Now it’s possible that the Magic thought that he’d be a great complementary piece to Dwight Howard, and they could be some form of “twin towers”, but based on skill sets alone they were the same prospect and this wouldn’t have worked. If you include that he wasn’t the best player on the board this seems worse. Here’s a draft grade from that fateful night in 2005:

As the ramifications of this pick unfolded, it became a complete disaster. Vazquez announced he was not going to come over initially, a lot of Euro players take extra time to develop their skills so this wasn’t a shock, and this could be better for Howard, as it would’ve led to more minutes for him to develop. Earlier, I wrote that there were just 5 players drafted this night to never play in the NBA, Fran Vazquez was the highest picked of them all. This was a pick that was just thrown away, yet we had years of talk that he was coming over. He constantly used the Orlando Magic to get a better contract overseas, and our leadership played into it everytime. Later in the 2nd round, we took Dwayne Wade’s former Marquette teammate Travis Dienar, who averaged just 4.8 points in 179 career games, two picks before Golden State took Monta Ellis, a volume scorer who averaged just under 18 points and 5 assists a game over a 13 year career. A few picks later, we took Martynas Andriuškevičius, who never scored in just six appearances in his career, one pick before Philly took Lou Williams, 3x winner of the Sixth-Man of the Year Award who averages 14.5 points a game for his career and is still a key piece for the Los Angeles Clippers. Though both Ellis and Williams were high school prospects, their shooting would’ve been perfect for the Van Gundy Magic teams built around Dwight Howard.

Danny Granger on the other hand, went to the Pacers and made both the playoffs and the All-Rookie team after falling out of the lottery to pick 17. During his early days with Indiana, Granger became a solid wing scorer. During his six year peak, he averaging 20.4 points and 5.3 rebounds per game, shot 38% from beyond the arc, won the NBA’s Most Improved Player Award, and made an all-star game. Eventually his Pacers, with Roy Hibbert and a young Paul George, became the biggest challenge to Lebron, Wade, Bosh, and the rest of Miami superteam. His knees gave out on him shortly after and his career was over in 2015 at the age of 32. Though he will never be considered an all-time great, he did give us this gem.

What Granger Could’ve Meant to Orlando

Now I know hindsight is 20-20 and there are far too many variables to come into play here to predict what would’ve really happened if the Magic drafted Granger, but it’s all I have as an Orlando fan and there’s no actual basketball anyway. The Orlando Magic made the playoffs every season from the 2006-07 to 2011-12. This stretch happens simultaneously with Granger’s peak years. Dwight Howard and Danny Granger could’ve been one of the league’s best 1-2 punches during that run, as their complimentary skills would’ve made each other better. The 2008-09 season just so happened to be Granger’s only All-Star appearance as he averaged 25.8 points shooting 40% from 3-point range, these could’ve been even better with the attention Howard drew inside. During the 08-09 NBA Finals, the Magic came up short against the LA Lakers. Most Magic fans still lament about Courtney Lee’s missed alley-oop or the chemistry-killing decision to play Jameer Nelson over Rafer Alston, but I can’t help but wonder if the outcome would be different if the Magic had another All-Star scorer and a high-level defender in Granger to throw at Kobe Bryant during these finals.

Drafting Danny Granger not only would’ve given the Orlando Magic a deadly core of: Howard, Jameer, JJ Reddick, Hedo Turkoglu, and Granger, but it would’ve also stopped them from making the salary cap-crippling signing of Rashard Lewis and his 5-year $110 million contract. Lewis helped Orlando make the playoffs during that same peak stretch of Granger’s, but he had nowhere near the production, nor the defensive ability of Granger. The signing of Lewis hamstrung the flexibility of the Magic for years which led directly or indirectly to a slew of bad trades: the acquisition of Vince Carter, Big Baby, and Gilbert Arenas all come to mind. Eventually, this iteration of the Magic collapsed as Dwight Howard was traded and the team was forced to rebuild for the better part of the last decade. With no conclusion in sight for the 2019-20 season, nor any rings for Orlando Magic fans to reflect on, this “what if?” scenario might be the next best thing. That is, until next season…