It’s going to be a long year for Arron Afflalo and his Orlando Magic teammates. They are going rack up a lot of losses and they have to know it going in — management’s plan is for them to suck so they will have a higher draft pick.
But you might want to pick Afflalo up on your fantasy team, because he will be one of the leaders of this team and he will be putting up career best numbers (he averaged 15.2 points per game last year). Just watch.
At his introductory press conference Thursday Afflalo said all the right things about joining the Magic after he was shipped out of Denver in the Dwight Howard trade. He talked about being a veteran leader on a young team. Via NBA.com.“Change always brings mystery,” Afflalo said. “It always brings doubt. But on the positive side it brings a lot of opportunity...It’s a good time to really come together and build something special.”
“The idea is to kind of set the tone a little bit for what it means to have the right approach to the game,” Afflalo said. “Working hard. I kind of take pride in having my career mirror that type of an example. On how to come from the bottom to the top a little bit and continue to push forward.”
Afflalo is a great guy to bring in as a leader. A guy who can defend (although that slipped last season for him as it seemed to do for all the Nuggets) and put up points with outside shooting. He and Jameer Nelson are going to bear the brunt of the scoring and leadership burden. And there will be more shakeups to that roster on the way.
But Afflalo looked and sounded like a veteran leader on Thursday. We’ll see how that carries over to the court.