Magic face the calm before the NBA trade deadline's storm - Orlando Sentinel

Orlando Magic General Manager John Hammond has lived in Florida for less than a year. But he's seen enough of the weather here, and spent enough years in professional basketball, to make an accurate comparison between the buildup of a tropical storm and the buildup to the annual NBA trade deadline.

"Today, it's basically it's nothing more than a beautiful day in Florida," Hammond said, referring to this year's trade deadline, which will expire on Feb. 8 at 3 p.m.

"But there sometimes is a calm before the storm, and history shows the storms start coming in your direction maybe three days before or four days before, and the storms really start hitting 48 to 24 hours before. That doesn't mean that we're going to be in the middle of a storm, but we could."

The injury-ravaged Magic are 15-35.

With the playoffs all but impossible, the widely held assumption throughout the NBA is that Magic President of Basketball Operations Jeff Weltman and Hammond will try to trade some of the established players on the roster they inherited — perhaps 25-year-old swingman Evan Fournier and 27-year-old center Nikola Vucevic — to aid in a rebuild.

In an interview, Hammond would not categorize the Magic as sellers. But he also acknowledged that if the team does make a move, it would not be for a quick fix and would likely be "to improve ourselves for the future."

So if the Magic trade anyone, the Magic likely would be interested in acquiring young players or draft picks or a combination of both.

Indeed, the Magic appear strongly disinclined to seek veteran help.

Although the website Basketball Insiders reported the Magic attempted to initiate trade discussions with the Los Angeles Clippers to acquire 28-year-old power forward Blake Griffin, multiple league sources told the Orlando Sentinel that report was inaccurate.

Griffin ultimately was traded to the Detroit Pistons — a signal that if the Clippers and Magic discussed a possible deal involving Griffin, any discussion probably was initiated by the Clippers.

To acquire someone with Griffin's résumé, the Magic likely would have to give away some of their best young players and best long-term assets: some combination of first-round picks and either forward Aaron Gordon or forward Jonathan Isaac. A quick-fix trade for a veteran in which the Magic would give away most of their best long-term pieces — draft picks and their most promising young players — seems highly unlikely this year.

A deal the Magic made on Feb. 21, 2013 — just minutes before the 2012-13 season's trade deadline expired — seems similar to what the Magic would consider doing now.

The Magic traded 28-year-old J.J. Redick and two other players to the Milwaukee Bucks for 20-year-old Tobias Harris and two other players. Redick was a veteran on an expiring contract who was supposed to help the Bucks in the short term, and Harris was on the second-year of a rookie-scale contract and could grow with the Magic for the long term.

These days, the Magic have just one severely problematic contract on their books: Bismack Biyombo's.

Signed in 2016, when Rob Hennigan was the team's general manager and Scott Perry was one of the team's assistant general managers, Biyombo is tied with Fournier for the highest salary on the team. Biyombo is due $17 million during the 2018-19 season and will receive $17 million for the 2019-20 season as long as Biyombo doesn't decline his 2019-20 player option.

It seems almost impossible that the Magic would be able to trade Biyombo without receiving a player with a similarly undesirable contract in return.

Hammond would not comment on specific deals the Magic might be interested in making.

But he was willing to characterize the overall trade market.

Hammond said this year's market currently is unbalanced, with more teams wanting to divest players than teams wanting to acquire players.

"In any kind of market, there are going to be two groups," he said. "There's going to be buyers and there's going to be sellers. And I think right now there's a larger group of sellers than there are buyers. So if the market is outweighed sometimes, it makes it a little more difficult to make a trade or to get a deal done. I'm not putting us in a category.

"We like the fact that our players have value," Hammond added. "The reason our players have value is because they are good players and they are under fair contracts. So they are valued [by other teams]. But we value them for that same reason."

jrobbins@orlandosentinel.com. Read his blog at OrlandoSentinel.com/magicblog and follow him on Twitter at @JoshuaBRobbins.