I get the sense that J.J. Redick is on his way out, or at least that he will be this summer.
From Brian Schmitz's recap of last night's win:
The club has the midlevel exception (roughly $6 million a year), but that attracts few stars. Short on bigs, [Magic GM Otis] Smith said he'd like to add another power forward "to protect Dwight."
And from Schmitz's blog today, emphasis mine:
Magic General Manager Otis Smith flatly refused to trade J.J. Redick before this season's trade deadline, but he is a little more open to moving the unhappy Duke icon now.
Smith told me that he'd look at dealing Redick either in the June draft or in another trade this summer.
Redick, frustrated with his lack of playing time, requested a trade early this season. Smith now says he doesn't rule out dealing Redick this summer, but would prefer he remain patient and stay with a promising team.
Smith might be looking for another shooting guard on the market, although Maurice Evans played well since arriving in a November trade from the L.A. Lakers.
"All of our free agents had good years," Smith said.
I'm not a math major, but I do know how to add two and two. Smith's new stance regarding Redick leads me to believe he thinks Maurice Evans is good enough to be this team's starting two-guard, and that Redick is the Magic's best trade asset to acquire what the team needs most: a true power forward, a point I drove into the ground back in February.
All that said, I doubt Redick has as much value as we think he does. If Otis thinks he can use Redick to move up in the draft, he can probably forget it. The Magic, who will probably pick in the 20s, certainly can't expect to receive a lottery pick for a little-used, undersized, two-guard who is a defensive liability... can they?
A more realistic option is trading J.J. for an established role-player. TravelerKT from Denton's board suggests shipping J.J. and Marcin Gortat to Portland for Channing Frye (stats). Those per-36-minute numbers sure are pretty, as is the PER of 14.7, which makes him a "pretty good player" according to John Hollinger's rating scale. As a bonus, his rebound rate (the percentage of available rebounds he grabs) is 15.5, 47th in the league this season.
Not much is certain about the Magic's offseason maneuvering, and with the playoffs and draft still to come, it's probably too early to speculate. But it indeed appears as though J.J. Redick's days as part of the Orlando Magic are nearing an end.