Thoughts on Magic future from CourtsideTimes.Net

CourtsideTimes.Net: "Orlando Magic: Where are the Magic going? Well, they have one of the stud young big men to build around in Dwight Howard (John Weisbrod’s one good decision) and a mish-mosh of players. Does Steve Francis fit into the team? Over a year has passed and we don’t really know. Does Grant Hill fit into the team? Probably not. At this point, the Magic’s future is Howard and possibly Jameer Nelson. The key question is whether to hang onto to the 28-year old Francis and see if he can stay at his peak while Howard grows or whether they should dump Francis in case he declines while his salary continues to rise (he’s due almost $50 million for the next three years after 2005-06).

According to Basketball-Reference, Francis’ top comps at age 27 were Ray Williams, Ron Boone, and Andre Miller. This is hardly a decisive list. Williams suffered injury and a quick decline and was essentially out of the NBA two years later. Boone hung around for a quite a while and Miller’s career has yet to be written as he’s only a year older than Francis. In Basketball Forecast, John Hollinger states that Francis’ top comp is Sam Cassell, which would obviously be a good indicator for Francis’ future as Cassell is still going strong at age 36. My inclination would be to deal Francis before he got too expensive because he is flawed as a point (6.5 apg to 3.8 topg for his career)–assuming you can get decent value."