The Redemption Of Gary Harris’s NBA Career

Of the 17 players who ended the 2022/23 NBA season on the roster of the Orlando Magic, as many as 14 returned to start 2023/24. Considering the fact that they finished with only a 35-47 record last season, missing the playoffs for the third consecutive season, and have finished with only an above-.500 record once since 2010-11 – the 42-40 record they posted in 2018/19 – this seems counterintuitive at first glance.

However, the Magic posted that 35-win total with one of the youngest teams in the NBA, and it was a season in which they exhibited enough internal growth to justify seeing where it goes. And in adding only one veteran (signing Joe Ingles as a free agent to a two-year, $22 million deal) compared to two first-round picks over the summer, plus two-way contract signee Trevelin Green, they are planning on staying young.

In light of the fact that his NBA career has yet to truly begin, it is of note that Queen, born in February 1997, is the third-oldest player on the roster. The only two genuine veterans, then, are the newcomer Ingles and the holdover, shooting guard Gary Harris, who is beginning his fourth season with the team.

At the time of his acquisition from the Denver Nuggets, Harris’s value was at perhaps its lowest ebb. Despite the strong start to his career as an extremely-efficient off-ball scorer and useful defender – to the point that he had averaged 17.5 points per game in the 2017/18 season, his fourth as a professional – Harris’s play had subsequently fallen off, concurrent with starting a four year, $84 million extension that Denver had quickly come to regret. A sizeable amount today, it was particularly large back then, and a contract that became prohibitive to Denver’s (since realised) championship aspirations.

It was therefore necessary for Denver to provide future draft capital in order to trade Harris, which they did at the 2021 trade deadline when they dealt him, young guard R.J. Hampton and a future first-round pick to the Magic in exchange for Aaron Gordon and Gary Clark. Hampton did little for the Magic and is now far down the bench of the Miami Heat, while Clark is out of the NBA altogether; the trade was essentially therefore one of Harris and the pick (still unconveyed, and due to be sent in 2025) for Gordon.

Considering that Gordon was a hugely important part of Denver’s championship roster, the Nuggets certainly got everything they wanted from that trade. They won it. It bears a mention, though, that across that same time period, Harris has redeemed his career from financial burden to desired veteran.

Last season, while he appeared in only 48 games and 42 starts, Harris recorded averages of 8.3 points and 2.0 rebounds per game fuelled by 43.4% three-point shooting. An Orlando team that struggled in all aspects offensively was not ideal for a player of Harris’s type, a spot-picker and off-ball shooter who does not create with the ball in his hands from a standing start. Yet his excellent floor spacing, solid defence and extremely mistake-free play was a reliable asset for the more impetuous young talents of Jalen Suggs, the returning Markelle Fultz, Cole Anthony and Rookie of the Year Paolo Banchero to work alongside.

It can only aid young player’s development if at least one player alongside them requires little guidance to support them. In providing some value with his positioning and shooting without taking away from the on-the-job training opportunities required by those earmarked for the future, Harris – without ever doing much remarkable, or, on some nights, much of anything – had a useful role to play. And furthermore, with the departure of former stalwart Terrence Ross, that role figured to be there to fill this season as well.

To that end, the Magic re-signed Harris in the summer of 2022 to a two-year, $26 million deal, and although that new contract had his $13 million 2023/24 salary fully unguaranteed if waived at the end of last season, they opted not to do that. They are therefore into their fourth consecutive season of choosing to give above-average money to a player who was once an afterthought, a cast-off whose primary purpose in trade was as salary filler. The Nuggets would likely have wanted to keep Harris were money not an obstacle, but to them, it was. In Orlando, where it has not been, Harris’s usefulness as a player is more important.

This is not to say that things will stay this way hereafter. As both a solid three-and-D veteran and a $13 million expiring salary, Harris will have value on the trade market from today until the trade deadline in a little over three months time, and there exists a strong possibility that he will not get to season five in Orlando. Regardless of the future, however, there exists purpose to the present. As evidenced in his 11-point, 5-rebound performance on opening night, in which he picked his spots to drive and never disrupted the flow of proceedings, Harris knows what to do and what not to do. A young 35-win team can always use some of that.