Orlando Magic: Would a Russell Westbrook trade help?

Could Russell Westbrook help the Orlando Magic?

The 2016 NBA MVP, Russell Westbrook has just had an Orlando bubble from hell.

He had his moments, but overall, he didn’t play as well as we’ve seen him in the past. In fairness he was battling through an injured right quad, among other things, in the midst of a full-blow playoff battle against the Oklahoma City Thunder and then Los Angeles Lakers.

On top of this, Mike D’Antoni couldn’t wait until the plane landed to leave his position as head coach of the Houston Rockets.

Things are changing in Houston and general manager Daryl Morey isn’t opposed to making moves if his past is any indication.

I don’t think much can be drawn from these recent playoffs: a pandemic stopped the league for months, injuries held their starting point guard back however hard to quantify and their newly acquired forward Robert Covington only got to play 22 games with the team.

But I don’t think the team they are now can win a championship. Here’s a trade that could reshape their roster, give Morey some major trade chips and build more around the league’s leading scorer, James Harden:

Why does Houston do it?

When James Harden has the ball, starts dribbling between the legs for 10 seconds and waits to lull his defender to sleep before hitting them with his step-back? Nothing.

To be fair, nobody does anything, but we say defenders sag off Russell Westbrook this season and playoffs, ignoring his 3-pointer for other areas of the court.

This trade nets the Rockets a good-to-great shooter in Terrence Ross who just hit 35 percent of his 3’s on 7.3 attempts per game. While that’s pretty pedestrian conversion rate, he did it on a team that’s 25th in 3-point attempts and 18th in 3-point percentage according to Cleaning the Glass.

Aaron Gordon is everyone’s pick for Most Improved Player each year which probably says more about how he has never broken out than his potential to, but in a spread out Houston system, if any year is his year to break out, it’s setting screens for Harden and switching everything on defense next to PJ Tucker.

And finally, Jonathan Isaac, the fringe Defensive Player of the Year candidate who will miss the entire 2020-21 NBA season after an ACL injury in the bubble. While he won’t make an on-court impact for the entire season, he potentially has the highest trade value in the whole deal, giving Morey an elite defender on a rookie deal that he can swap for more present value.

Why does Orlando do it?

This might be the sticking point for the deal. It’s quite rich but these pieces are needed if the deal is to go through at all, Westbrook’s deal is just so damn rich.

The Magic can look at their team as similar to the 2016-17 OKC team, one built around Russ and not much else. He averaged a triple-double, hit game-winners, walked the pre-game runway every night and gave his all.

It ended in a first-round playoff exit in five at the hands of the Rockets, but how far does a Westbrook team take a team in the East?

Would they still be in the seventh or eighth seeds with Russ? Does it push them out of the treadmill of mediocrity? The team would still have Nikola Vucevic, Markelle Fultz, Al-Farouq Aminu, and Evan Fournier (he has a player-option for 2021) under contract.

Add Russ to that and it’s an undersized but fun starting unit. But if it’s just for fun, that’s not the best reason to trade away two building blocks for the future.

Imagine a Vucevic/Russ pick-and-roll: one of the better scoring bigs in the league attacking the holes one of the most explosive guards in the league creates. Both those players come off the books after the 2022-23 season (Russ has a $46.7 million player option which umm… I think he’s going to pick up).

Sadly, I think it’s Orlando that says no here. Since Houston has no young trade chips (adding money from their end just makes salary matching harder) and the only first-round picks they own are theirs in 2022 and 2023 which I’d assume they’d like to keep. The optics get hard as they attached draft compensation to Chris Paul when trading him for Westbrook, so moving him again while giving up picks is too hard a pill to swallow.

But it’s a good thought exercise. Can anyone say that any of the players on Orlando’s roster currently have a ceiling at or higher than what Westbrook can bring to the table? Should they be looking to push all their assets in for a big name in a trade?

I believe Isaac has the highest ceiling on the roster as a guy who can guard all five positions (and is a fantasy team wet dream with his steals and blocks) but who knows how he’ll return after a devastating injury. His value around the league may only drop from here.

On the other side, is there a trade that nets Morey a number of serviceable role players and tradeable players? It would signal their intent to build solely around James Harden which isn’t a terrible way to go.