Willie Cauley-Stein should be Orlando's pick in the draft. I have reasons, but I decided to get the ending out of the way first.

For the last several years, since the new regime took over, the franchise has seemingly elected to take the best player available at our weakest position, which usually resulted in defensive-minded athletes with a high ceiling. This has worked to a point, as the Magic are a team who posses a core of young players with talent and potential, but it has resulted in an oddly-constructed roster that will have a lot of difficulty making any headway in today's NBA. This is the season in which fit, not BPA, should be considered the highest priority.

I have three reasons for wanting to draft Willie Cauley-Stein as a best fit player, as opposed to the best player available.

Reason 1: There isn't a clear-cut BPA with the 5th overall pick

Assuming the draft shakes out in the way it's apparently supposed to, the top four prospects will be off the board by the time the Magic pick (whether NYK drafts or trades down, it seems like the top four will drafted first in some combination). A lot of mock draft sites have all kinds of different options for the Magic at the #5 spot. Justise Winslow, Kristaps Porzingis, Willie Cauley-Stein, Mario Hezonja, Stanley Johnson, and even Frank Kaminsky have all been floated as potential draftees at that spot. It's true that, eventually, one of these players will rise above the others over time in the NBA, but at the moment, the difference between the best player and the worst player among these six is razor-thin. Drafting BPA at this spot is essentially a crapshoot.

In a case such as this, drafting for fit should be the deciding factor. With the current roster's construction and the desire to compete for a playoff spot next season, the Magic cannot afford to stockpile more assets and figure out the roster later.

Of course, none of this explains yet why WCS is the best fit for the Magic. Don't worry! I'm getting to that right now. Check the next headline!

Reason 2: WCS fills more problems than any other prospect

Willie Cauley-Stein offers the most fixes to the problems that Orlando possesses. He does not fix the BIGGEST problem that the Magic face, which is shooting, but he accomplishes the MOST problems that the Magic are currently not capable of doing themselves.

I've used Basketball-Reference as a tool for this section. We're going to go over a couple of statistical problems here, and how WCS resolves those problems.

ORB%

The Magic finished 27th in offensive rebounding percentages, posting a paltry 23.1% of all available offensive rebounds. Vucevic, as great he is at defensive rebounding, has never offered too much help on the offensive boards. Part of this is due to Vaughn's insistence of getting back on defense as quickly as possible, but a lot of it is due to Vucevic's positioning on the court when a shot is taken.

For his collegiate career, Willie Cauley-Stein posted an ORB% of 11.9%. If he posted that in the NBA this season, he would have finished in the top 20 of all qualified players. During his final year, he posted an ORB% of 11.1%, but this decline in numbers can be attributed to the arrival of Karl-Anthony Towns, whose ORB% of 14.2% all but dominated the SEC. Even with a post player as dominant as KAT, Cauley-Stein was still capable of gobbling up offensive rebounds of his own.

As a side note, I'd like to at least bring attention to the fact that WCS is not a great defensive rebounder. In terms of this team, that's okay! We already have one of the best defensive rebounders in the game with Vucevic!

FTr

The Magic finished 29th in free throw rate, offering an abysmal .230 free throws for every field goal attempt. Elfrid Payton had .302, Victor Oladipo posted .295, and Nik Vucevic finished with a horrifying .191. Dewayne Dedmon, the team's best player in terms of FTr, managed to post a .395 with a FT% of 53.1%.

Cauley-Stein, on the other hand, posted an exceptionally efficient free throw rate of .542 during his junior campaign. That's over one trip to the free throw line for every two shot attempts! There are a few knocks to this statistic, as WCS only shot 6.1 shots per game for his career while posting a below-average 61.7% from the line. However, don't let these two stats keep you up at night. Even if WCS continues to shoot only six shots per game, and continues to shoot 61% from the line, he still offers six-to-seven additional free throw attempts per game, which could offer somewhere between three to four additional points per game. This is extremely important for a team that very rarely receives anything but a contested shot.

Opponent eFG%

This is arguably the most important statistic for the Magic right now (though our own shooting is also highly debatable).

The Magic finished the season with a defensive eFG% of 51.4%, which was good for 28th in the league. The team was poor at defending shots across the board (and the court), ranking 26th in 2PT% and 29th in 3PT%. They were average at avoiding shooting fouls (19th in the league for the FT:FGA ratio), but when they did give up shots, they wouldn't stop going in.

I am of the belief that, in order to improve the defense, it has to start with the interior. In my eyes, the main reason why the Magic were so bad at defending the three point line this season was because perimeter players, such as Aaron Gordon and (especially) Victor Oladipo, would often buckle into the paint in order to dissuade the driver from shooting around Vucevic. This often left players on the perimeter to open shots, killing any sort of defensive gameplan that Vaughn and Borrego had in place.

Willie Cauley-Stein is not a player that a player can so easily drive around. He is a defensive anchor; a top five defensive talent who is more than capable of anchoring a defense in the same way someone like Joakim Noah or Tyson Chandler can. With WCS in the paint, the supposed necessity of wing defenders sagging into the paint is no longer true, allowing Oladipo the preferred situation of sticking with his shooter.

WCS led the ENTIRE NATION in defensive win shares this season, and he left college as one of the best in the ENTIRE NATION in defensive rating, second only to his frontcourt mate Karl-Anthony Towns. There is nobody better than Cauley-Stein to protect the paint, in my opinion, and I am certain that his success in college will translate easily to the pros.

I can definitely concede that Cauley-Stein does not offer more shooting, a sorely needed talent on this roster. But I will absolutely argue that, with his particular skill set, he offers more fixes to the roster's issues than any other player that will be available to the Magic at #5.

Reason 3: More Roster Flexibility

Cauley-Steins offers even more roster flexibility than ever before, thanks to his defensive talent. In college, WCS was capable of defending all five positions on the floor, and I see no reason to believe why he isn't capable of being a moving part between C and PF. This flexibility unlocks new and unique combinations to the team in ways that weren't previously available, especially when paired with positionless talent such as Aaron Gordon and Tobias Harris.

During the early part of the season, a common rotation was to bench Vucevic early and move Frye to the center position, a common Vaughn strategy in order to switch to small ball. This was fine, but the issue was that Frye was no better than Vucevic at protecting the rim.

In my ideal world, Orlando's starting lineup next season would be something like:

Payton / Oladipo / Harris / Cauley-Stein / Vucevic

When was time to bring out the reserves, Vucevic would be the first to sit, sliding Cauley-Stein over to the center position:

Payton / Oladipo / Gordon / Harris / Cauley-Stein

This trend could continue as more reserves were swapped in, and positionless players like Gordon and Harris could be shifted up or down as needed:

Payton / Fournier / Gordon / Frye / Cauley-Stein
----->
Payton / Fournier / Harris / Frye / Vucevic

(Yes, for the purposes of this rotation, Payton is playing 48 minutes every night. Please maintain this suspension of disbelief until an adequate backup point guard is hired).

Nicholson might also see a renaissance in this situation if Cauley-Stein is patrolling the paint, offering even more roster flexibility.

The different lineup combinations simply by adding one defensive anchor would be truly astounding. This is very similar to the rotation when Dedmon would start at PF, except Cauley-Stein has a much higher level of talent and potential.

Miscellaneous and Conclusion

My conclusion is the same as it was in my opening statement: Willie Cauley-Stein should be Orlando's pick in the draft. If the team believes they can trade back and still draft him, then by all means, pick up additional assets. But make sure you are absolutely in a position to draft him.

The Magic need to draft for fit this offseason, not talent. WCS offers a bunch of fixes that the Magic need, the quantity of which is more important than the quality of offense and scoring. WCS is also a positionless talent who blends in seamlessly with the rest of the team's core.

I don't believe that WCS is necessarily an all-star talent, and I don't believe that he is the best available player when the Magic will make their selection. But for the sake of the franchise, Cauley-Stein has to be the pick in order to maximize immediate success. The last two drafts have seen the Magic go for players with floors as high as their ceilings, so it would be ideal to draft a player who doesn't appear to be any worse than a solid starter in the NBA.

That's about all I had to say. If nothing else, I hope this was a worthwhile read. Thanks for your time!