Do you believe in Magic? Grading Kentavious Caldwell-Pope’s deal with Orlando

The Orlando Magic were expected to be major players in free agency, and they made their mark early by landing Kentavious Caldwell-Pope. The Athletic reports that it’s a three-year contract worth $66 million. We’ll take a closer look at how Caldwell-Pope made out here, and how Orlando stands to benefit from his addition. All statistics are sourced from Basketball Reference.

It’s an intriguing change of scenery for the shooting guard, who has been one of the best role players in the NBA in recent years. Sports Illustrated predicted that Orlando would make a hard charge, and the monetary value of the deal is a big win for Caldwell-Pope. As we’ll touch on later, the on-court fit might be a different story.

There’s no questioning Caldwell-Pope’s ability to contribute to a winning team, but it’ll be fascinating to see how Orlando accommodates him this year. There’s little doubt he’ll start, but how it affects the minutes of Cole Anthony, Anthony Black and potentially Jett Howard will be something to monitor. It’s possible Orlando doesn’t really see that as a problem, given the investment made in Caldwell-Pope.

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Caldwell-Pope won his first career NBA title in the bubble with the Los Angeles Lakers. To that point, it was a little uncertain as to how good he could be on a strong team, but proved to be a lynchpin of that team. Sporting News believes that not retaining Caldwell-Pope after the championship is one of their biggest regrets.

After one season with the Washington Wizards, Caldwell-Pope took his talents to the Denver Nuggets. In his first year with the team, Denver won the NBA title. According to Bleacher Report, the shooting guard had a feeling good things were in store for them when he signed, predicting that Denver would win it all the following season.

One of the most fascinating aspects of Caldwell-Pope’s move to Orlando is his decision to leave one of the greatest teammates in the NBA. Nikola Jokic makes the game exponentially easier for his teammates, and Denver has an established culture of winning. Caldwell-Pope elected to depart one of the most stable situations in the league.

FanSided and others have written about how bright Orlando’s future is, and how they appear to be a realistic destination for players like Caldwell-Pope with established NBA resumes. It speaks to how well the organization has rebuilt the team, and how good of a job head coach Jamahl Mosley has done.

According to The Athletic, the Nuggets made a strong push to retain Caldwell-Pope, but fell just short. In fact, the report indicates that Denver also offered a three-year deal, and was very close on the dollar value. This seems to indicate that the ball, literally and figuratively, was in Caldwell-Pope’s court since the deals were pretty comparable.

Caldwell-Pope figures to form a pretty formidable defensive tandem with Jalen Suggs, who has become one of the best young defenders in the NBA. Orlando might be copying the blueprint that the Boston Celtics used to win a title, which featured Jrue Holiday and Derrick White at the point of attack.

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The Magic can feel good about having Caldwell-Pope in their lineup for the majority of their games. He’s one of the most reliable players in the NBA, averaging nearly 76 games played per campaign over his 11-year career.