Confirmed: Rashard To Orlando! Yee Haw!

I'm usually not in the business of taking photos directly from the Orlando Sentinel, but this photo above really conveys the situation perfectly.

As initially reported last night, and now confirmed by the Magic front office, free agent stud Rashard Lewis will sign with the Magic when allowed by the league to on July 11. This is fantastic news for those fans who thought what the Magic were missing was a perimeter scorer. On the other hand, many fans had grown fond of Darko Milicic and it now appears that the chances are super small that we will have the funds necessary to resign him. -Even if we do have the funds, Darko will probably be annoyed that he was cast aside in favor of a prettier prospect. Darko's agent has already said that the Magic plan to make him an unrestricted free agent or involve him in a sign-and-trade with Seattle. Already many fans are wary of this move because losing a big man with a decent skill set isn't the most reassuring thing.

While I myself am a big Darko supporter, I could not be happier with this move to acquire Rashard Lewis. We got a guy who averaged 22.4 points last year, is young (27), and pretty damn tall for a shooter in 6 foot 10 inches. Most of all Dwight really wanted him, and you could tell at times last year that Dwight was thinking, "I don't need another big man to clog up things down here. I need someone on the outside who can take these double teams off!" I remember having Rashard Lewis on my fantasy basketball team and watching as he almost single handedly carried my team. The guy tries to do it all with rebounding, scoring, and three pointers, which is fantastic to have in a player. I opened the offseason with a wish to get him and had it answered by the Magic.

As for Darko, it stinks that he looks like a goner, but we have a good player overseas in Marcin Gortat that could slide into the role of backup PF nicely. In addition, we can probably find a decent big man on the market to help Dwight out. None of the free agents have Darko's potential, that is a given, but at a certain point you have to stop gambling on potential and get a guy you KNOW will produce for you. The Magic have Ariza, JJ, Nelson, and Diener (for now) playing for them under the moniker "this guy isn't that good now, but he's got a ton of potential", which is quite a lot. Having Darko around and praying he works out is more on that heap, and it would appear Otis preferred to have someone proven to help lead his young squad.

-That being said, I'm still holding out hope we somehow find a way to hold on to Darko.

Pick up those glum faces, Darko fans. We got the best possible free agent, which should help ease the pain of Darko exiting. You can look at as if we traded Kelvin Cato and the #15 pick for Carlos Arroyo and Rashard Lewis, which is something so beautiful...it makes you want to light up a victory cigar.

I will be writing later with the Transformers review, as promised. Toodles.