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Penny Hardaway says he was 'spoiled' with the Orlando Magic: 'I took it for granted'
By the time Anfernee “Penny” Hardaway was traded away from the Orlando Magic in 1999, the team’s fledgling would-be dynasty was long over. It died in an instant in July 1996 when Shaquille O’Neal left the franchise as a free agent to join the Los Angeles Lakers, leaving his teammate of three years to play out three more fitful seasons with the club before asking to move West himself.
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The Magic made the playoffs three times and the NBA Finals once in three seasons with Hardaway and O’Neal playing alongside each other, and they seemed fit to rule the league landscape even with Michael Jordan returning to the Chicago Bulls after an 18-month sabbatical spent mostly playing minor league baseball. In May, 1995 the Hardaway and O’Neal-led Magic downed the Jordan-paced Bulls in the Eastern Conference semifinals. A year later Penny and Shaq would play their last game together as a revenge-minded Bulls team swept the pair out of the playoffs.
On Friday, Hardaway returned to the team on the night of his enshrinement into the Magic Hall of Fame. He used the occasion to rue, exactly, where things went wrong with the pinstriped expansion team from Florida. From Josh Robbins at the Orlando Sentinel:
“That was just an emotional kid just being spoiled,” Hardaway said. “That’s not even my element or my norm. I usually try to fight through things, and I didn’t fight through. And I regret that to this day. I would have cherished [it] more here because we had some really awesome teams, some super teams, and I took it for granted. I thought we were going to be together for the rest of our careers. I never thought Shaq would leave, and then after that, everything just fell apart.”
If Penny never thought Shaquille O’Neal would leave as a free agent, he was among the few. This isn’t to say that the Orlando Magic didn’t have a chance to re-sign the 24-year old superstar, he did genuinely like playing in Orlando and the team was clearly with its merits, but the Lakers could offer just as much money (or, as we found out later, more cash) and Los Angeles intrigue alongside a just-as-fetching roster. A roster that looked like a championship contender in-waiting ever before we discovered just what the hell a “Kobe Bryant” was.
Penny soldiered on following the dissolution of the pairing with O’Neal, which was documented in a recent “30 for 30” on the duo and their passive/aggressively-led fallout of sorts.
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Buoyed by what looked like an MVP turn early in 1995-96 (with Shaq missing the first 22 games of the season with a broken thumb) Hardaway seemed to be fit to dominate the O’Neal-less Magic as the lone star on a so-so team, what with Felton Spencer and then Rony Seikaly (because, remember, back then you had to have a center on the court, apparently) replacing the new Laker in the middle. It felt like Penny Hardaway was due to explode.
Those Russell Westbrook-styled hopes took a shot early in 1996-97, with Hardaway looking snakebitten from the outset of the season due to encroaching knee issues. He would go on to miss 23 games that campaign, and his 20.5-point, 4.5-rebound and 5.6-assist totals looked pale in comparison to Westbrook’s modern output, or even that of a Penny-era sidekick-averse superstar in Grant Hill, who contributed 21.4 points, nine rebounds, and 7.4 assists on a punchless Detroit Pistons squad.
Those Pistons, despite losing Allan Houston in free agency the previous summer, would go on to win 54 games under coach Doug Collins. Hardaway, it was rumored, emerged behind the movement that forced coach Brian Hill out in Orlando after a 24-25 start with the team, with assistant Richie Adubato taking over for the team’s 21-12 finish to the season. Adubato (with Seikaly, Danny Schayes and Derek Strong seeing large minutes up front, for some reason) kept Hardaway at point guard in his holdover lineup, but reserve point man Darrell Armstrong was finding his legs in big minutes off the pine.
Armstrong wouldn’t start in that year’s playoffs, but he did average 11.4 points in 28.6 minutes a contest in Orlando’s five-game series loss to the No. 2 ranked Miami Heat. Playing mostly shooting guard, Penny Hardaway went off for averages of 31 points, six rebounds and 3.4 assists in 44 minutes a contest, including two 40-point games.
When he was allowed room to move, and healthy knees to work with, the man was all-world:
The Magic held serve entering 1997-98, as they had to due to the squad’s swamped salary cap situation, as Hardaway’s knees got the better of him in his first year under new coach Chuck Daly. Penny played just 18 times in the season, sidelined due to knee setbacks during the season while needlessly rushing back midseason to cash in on the fans’ vote for his inclusion in the starting lineup of the 1998 NBA All-Star Game.
Behind an all-world year from Armstrong and a steadier turn from Hardaway (playing in each of the team’s 50 games in the lockout-shortened season), the Magic rallied under Daly to tie (with Miami and Indiana) for tops in the East in 1999. However, the team was swept by the upstart Philadelphia 76ers in the first round, with Hardaway shooting just 35 percent in the series.
It’s true that the Magic were (technically) amongst the best the East had to offer in the first season without Michael Jordan around, but the team was less than inspiring. Hardaway averaged just 15.8 points, 5.7 rebounds and 5.3 assists on a team that seemed set to allow him to take off for greater heights. Chuck Daly’s pace (ranked 16th in dreary 1999, with a possession count that would rank 36th out of 36 teams today) won the team no new fans, as Daly was champing at the bit to return to retirement, and the Magic front office seemed happy to ease him off of the bench.
The same went for Hardaway, who would be a free agent in 1999. Acting as one of the first NBA clubs that chose to burn the village in order to save it, in response to the Chicago Bulls’ 1999 tanking commitment (which resulted in a top overall draft pick), the Magic looked to clear considerable payroll in advance of the 2000 offseason, which featured (among others) Tim Duncan, Hill, and Tracy McGrady as free agent possibilities.
To do that, they couldn’t commit to Hardaway, who was by then still only about to turn 28 years old. With several free agent suitors swarming, the Magic took a page from the Chicago Bulls’ playbook yet again, encouraging a sign-and-trade move with Hardaway that would see him sign with the Magic for the full price allotted to a veteran of his caliber (seven years, $86.67 million), prior to being immediately dealt to the Phoenix Suns for a package of draft picks, young assets, and salary cap fodder.
The Magic received second-year stretch four Pat Garrity and veteran Danny Manning for Hardaway, two sound gets in exchange for a player that was going to leave as it was anyway. Adding to the haul were two first round picks that would later turn into Jason Collins (2001) and Amar’e Stoudemire. Too bad, for Orlando fans, that the team by then had decided to deal away those picks for, in essence, Salary Cap Space (Collins) and Salary Cap Space + Jud Buechler (Stoudemire).
The Suns, despite fielding what at the time Shaquille O’Neal would refer to as the league’s backcourt of the future in Hardaway and incumbent point guard Jason Kidd, would hardly spring over the top in Penny’s presence.
Winners of 54 percent of its games during the lockout season, the team popped up to a 64 percent winning percentage and 53 wins in 1999-00 with the duo on hand, though not before costing coach Danny Ainge his job after a slow 13-7 start. Led by Scott Skiles, the team would go on to take a series against San Antonio (working without an injured Tim Duncan in its hamstrung title defense) before losing in the second round to the eventual champion Lakers.
Hardaway was second (to Clifford Robinson!) on the Suns in scoring at 16.9 a contest that year, with 5.8 rebounds and 5.3 assists per contest to his credit alongside 1.6 steals. He and Kidd were 33-16 together in 1999-00 when the pair were healthy (Kidd, like Duncan, also missed time toward the end of the regular season and playoffs), but Hardaway’s relative luck wouldn’t last: Penny played just four games in 2000-01 due to two microfracture knee surgeries.
The next season saw the 30-year old play in 80 games, but in a diminished role and sometimes off the bench for the 36-win team. Phoenix made the playoffs again in 2002-03 due to the emergence of Stephon Marbury (since acquired in exchange for kid) and the addition of Amar’e Stoudemire, but Hardaway’s legs were gassed at this point. By 2003-04 he was dead weight, but with a rather significant three years and nearly $44 million owed to him on the deal.
Penny was dealt to New York during that season as salary cap-clearing move for the Suns. Unable to make an impact with the Knicks amongst the several bloated salaries that then-general manager Isiah Thomas had no issue taking on, he was finally dealt back to Orlando before the trade deadline in 2006, with the Magic only referring to Hardaway as “the contract of Anfernee Hardaway” in the press release announcing the move.
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It was a rather chilling re-introduction, just seven years after the initial parting of ways. It felt succinct and sadly appropriate, though, for a player who was kept at arm’s length from fulfilling what his potential suggested due to those crippling knee woes.
The Magic waived Penny Hardaway two days after acquiring him in 2006. The team announced plans to use his expiring contract, alongside that of Grant Hill’s, to capture the fancy of the free agent market in 2007, just as they wanted to seven years before. The team would go on to sign Rashard Lewis to a six-year, $118 million contract. Orlando dealt Hardaway and acquired Grant Hill, Tracy McGrady and Lewis all on sign-and-trade deals for the full amount available, but could only muster one Finals appearance (in 2009) out of the largesse.
Anfernee Hardaway would not go on to play another NBA game after the Magic waived their former All-Star. Now 45, he has various business interests working within his hometown of Memphis.
Penny Hardaway’s technical move away from the Magic took place in 1999, but it was just as unsatisfying and sad as the unofficial breakup with the team all the way back in 1996, following Shaquille O’Neal’s departure. Penny didn’t exactly sleepwalk through his three seasons with the team, he made two All-Star Games and would have been voted into a third had the league held one in 1999, but it’s an era few remember much about.
For good reason, sadly.
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Kelly Dwyer is an editor for Ball Don’t Lie on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at KDonhoops@yahoo.com or follow him on Twitter!
