Rob Hennigan really did have some greatest hits

Now that we’re in the crucible of the playoffs, it’s time to finally address one of the most pressing issues in the NBA: where did the Orlando Magic go wrong? Last week’s dismissal of general manager Rob Hennigan surprised no one. Across Hennigan’s five years of decision-making, the team cycled through four head coaches, did not finish better than last year’s 35 wins, and still appear far, far away from substantial improvement.

Although it looks like the Magic have simply been wandering around in circles of blandness for a basketball generation now, the 2014 version of me would have been totally flabbergasted to hear that Hennigan’s tenure piddled out this way. Three years ago — and, honestly, even more recently than that — I believed totally that Hennigan was investing his time at the bottom of the standings in building a championship-caliber core. A core that would make its first meaningful playoff noise in, oh, 2017.

I was one of the only people outside of Orlando to share this opinion. But I was not the only one. There is a years-old video from the Magic’s website that I have watched half a dozen times — a video that has, for some reason, been scrubbed from the team’s website — of Kevin Durant, visiting Orlando with the Oklahoma City Thunder, before or after some bleary mid-morning shootaround, talking to a tiny scrum from a courtside seat. Durant says, basically, that he expects the Magic to contend shortly because of Rob Hennigan.

Durant’s words are carrying weight here because he and Hennigan spent four crucial, nucleus-forming years together with the Thunder. Hennigan was, after all, the Director of College and International Player Personnel when the team drafted James Harden and Serge Ibaka. And before that, Hennigan was the Director of Basketball Operations for the San Antonio Spurs — the San Antonio Spurs, the Mecca of good decision-making — at age 25. Hennigan had been in the room for more good deals before age 30 than some executives make before retirement. The Magic were destined to succeed, eventually. Until they didn’t.

For maybe the last two years now, a kind of background panic seemed to lurk underneath Orlando’s transaction sheet. Hennigan appeared to be frantically searching for Band-Aids to patch up leaks instead of building wholeheartedly from the foundation. The moves for Ibaka, Jeff Green, Brandon Jennings, and Ersan Ilyasova all delivered exactly the minimal, short-term impact that we all expected the moment they were announced.

This wasn’t always the case with Hennigan’s moves. At the beginning of his tenure, Hennigan made trades that — even though they were also widely roasted — gave Orlando, circa 2015, its best shot at looking like a future contender. Let us appreciate these keen deals now, and keep them in mind when Hennigan lands at his inevitable next stop, and begins working up the ladder again:

Evan Fournier for Arron Afflalo

At the time this deal came through in June 2014, everyone was mystified why the steady veteran Afflalo would ever be considered an equal of the unproven bench piece Fournier. Three years later, and Afflalo’s once-cerebral career has taken many an uninspiring bounce around the Association, and Fournier has increased both his assists per game average and scoring average each of the five years he’s been in the NBA.

The Denver Nuggets, after acquiring Afflalo, even managed to get a first-round pick for him at the 2015 trade deadline, courtesy of the Portland Trail Blazers. Last summer the Nuggets invested that pick in Malik Beasley. For all of Fournier’s shortcomings, I’d definitely prefer to have him over Afflalo or Beasley.

For as long as Fournier has been around, I even still hold out hope that the 24-year-old still has room to grow into his prime. Fournier has 34 career games with at least three assists and three made 3-pointers. Through age 24, Kobe Bryant had 28 such games, Chris Paul had 27, and Russell Westbrook had 24. No, Fournier will never match those players at his apex. But man he could still end up being a fantastic pace-and-space weapon as a third or fourth scoring option.

Tobias Harris for JJ Redick Rental

This deal is the all-time example of why a team fighting for an eighth seed should never make a trade that sacrifices their future. In the first full season of Hennigan’s tenure, he dealt Gustavo Ayon, Ish Smith, and the expiring contract of J.J. Redick to the Milwaukee Bucks in exchange for Doron Lamb, Beno Udrih, and — the real prize — Tobias Harris. Harris had spent the first year-and-a-half of his NBA career averaging an uninspiring 11.5 minutes and 4.9 points per game under the direction of stern Scott Skiles. Harris immediately averaged 17.3 points per game in his first half-season for the Magic — a perfect example of a rebuilding team unearthing talent just by being willing to give guys a shot.

(Think about this alternate history if Milwaukee had held onto Harris: with a high-scoring 6-foot-8 swingman already in the fold, Milwaukee passes on Jabari Parker in the 2014 Draft and takes Joel Embiid instead, pairing Giannis Antetokounmpo with The Process.)

Harris’ instant success once he got out from underneath Skiles’ thumb makes it all the more confusing that Hennigan hired Skiles before the 2015-16 season, which would see Harris in yet another new uniform before the season ended.

The Dwight Howard Megadeal

After seeing that there was such visceral and unanimous criticism of Hennigan after this trade, and then seeing how wildly far ahead the Magic ended up in the deal, I’m willing to give literally any NBA trade — okay, almost any NBA trade — the benefit of the doubt.

In fact, this four-team monstrosity of a deal is notable because it really, totally destroyed the other three teams involved in the deal, none of whom have managed to make a full recovery.

• The Sixers, after landing Andrew Bynum, bottom out so hard that setting in motion the league’s most audacious-ever rebuilding strategy was their best bet at getting back into contention.
• The Nuggets received a productive year from Andre Iguodala — until he acted as a double-agent for Denver’s first-round playoff opponent, the Golden State Warriors. The Nuggets haven’t had a winning season yet.
• The Lakers set a new record for locker room drama in their one season with Howard, chewing through three head coaches. Los Angeles had had four straight seasons of missing the playoffs with below-.500 play since then. In the first 65 years of the franchise’s history, the Lakers had missed the playoffs five times total.

Actually, the Lakers have been bent so far out of shape by the Howard deal that it could very easily come around to hurt Orlando. In the five years since the Howard trade, Los Angeles has owed a first-round pick to the Magic — a pick transfer that’s been made even more complicated by the other first-round pick that Los Angeles dealt, this time to Phoenix in the trade for Steve Nash. (Phoenix has since traded the pick to, of all teams, Philadelphia.) Now, if the Lakers end up with the fourth overall pick or later in this year’s lottery — there is a 46.9 percent chance of this happening — they surrender their 2017 first-rounder to Philadelphia and their 2019 first-rounder to Orlando. But, if Los Angeles does land in the top three, the terms of the Howard trade from 2012 dictates that Orlando lands with the bitter consolation prize of the Lakers’ second-round picks this year (#33 overall) and next year. (For as much heat as other rebuilding/tanking teams have gotten, no modern team will have benefitted more from losing than the Lakers if the ping-pong balls bounce their way next month.)

The point is: Orlando still has draft assets incoming from trading Dwight Howard, while none of the players traded to the Lakers, Nuggets, or Sixers have been with those teams for years (i.e., Chris Duhon). In the deal, Hennigan also got Nikola Vucevic, Elfrid Payton, and Fournier (via Afflalo, who was moved to Orlando in the Howard deal) out of the trade. While that may be far from the awe-inspiring return we once expected for a formerly dominant player like Howard, Vucevic alone has outscored Howard since the deal was done.

Next: Matching Kendrick Lamar’s ‘DAMN.’ lyrics with every NBA team

As much goodness as there once was in Hennigan’s trade record, what’s gone down for the Magic in the draft has been, uh…another matter.