Marcin Gortat Wants To Retire In Orlando Despite Playing With The Magic For Less Than Four Years

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After starting 8-4, the Orlando Magic are in a tailspin, and the team appears to have a real chance to finish with the NBA’s worst record this season. However, a former player appears to have a particular affinity for the franchise, to the point where he’s already talking about rejoining the team later in his career in an effort to retire in a Magic uniform.

Marcin Gortat, who is in year four of a five-year, $60 million contract, revealed on Friday that he (still) has his eye on Orlando, and frankly, that is a bit strange. After all, Gortat spent fewer than four years with the club at the outset of his NBA career, and since then, has risen in prominence to the point where he has been an intriguing piece on a playoff team in Washington.

Still, Gortat said in a recent interview that he “would love to join the team for maybe two or three months” near the end of his career, and that wasn’t all that the 34-year-old was willing to offer on the subject.

Via Josh Robbins of the Orlando Sentinel:

“I’m going to be a old guy, so I don’t know if Orlando would be interested or not. But I would love to join the team back again just to wear the uniform, put the white and blue stripes again on me and be able to say I’m a Magic again and just come back home where I belong. That would definitely be a dream come true to do that for me. Whatever the team wants to do — play me, just be in the rotation or just be a bench player — I would definitely be there for the team.”

In the same interview, Gortat said that he is “afraid that next year might be (his) last year,” and given his advanced age, that wouldn’t be overly shocking. In the same breath, the noteworthy part about this is a player currently employed by a playoff-bound franchise openly pining for another, and that is doubly perplexing given how ugly the present situation is for the Magic.

It isn’t clear exactly how serious Gortat is about this whole thing, but he clearly enjoyed his time in Orlando to the point where he seems to cherish it even more than his stint in Washington. Apparently, 175 games was enough for Gortat to get hooked, and we’ll keep an eye on him as his career winds down.

(Orlando Sentinel)

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