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We're still waiting for the big names to make their decisions, but some smaller deals continue to get done. Let's continue rolling through the agreements that have been reached — "reached," but not completed, as no deal can become official until after the July 10 end of the league's annual moratorium on trades and signings — starting in Central Florida. *** • The Orlando Magic and big man Channing Frye agreed Monday on a four-year, $32 million contract, according to Yahoo Sports NBA columnist Adrian Wojnarowski . It's a straight four-year deal, with no team or player options of any kind, according to Josh Robbins of the Orlando Sentinel , and the $8 million average annual value represents a nice come-up from the $6.8 million Frye would have made in Phoenix in the final year of his prior contract had he not exercised his player option for the 2014-15 campaign. First thing's first: This is awesome for Frye, who missed the entire 2012-13 season after a September 2012 physical revealed an enlarged heart that threatened to end his entire career. After a year away, the 6-foot-11 forward/center was cleared to play and brought back into the fold on a Suns team that few expected to do much more than lose games and develop young talent. They did a hell of a lot more than that, staying in playoff contention in the loaded Western Conference until the last days of the season thanks to the go-go two-point-guard backcourt of Goran Dragic and Eric Bledsoe, a stellar coaching job by first-year bench boss Jeff Hornacek, and strong play by a host of role-players ... including Frye, who started all 82 games, chipping in just over 11 points and five rebounds in 28 minutes per game, and picked up where he left off as a lethal offensive space-creator. Frye drilled 37 percent of his 3-point attempts — actually a tick below his 38.5 percent career mark in eight NBA seasons — and took a career-high 6.7 deep attempts per 36 minutes of floor time. His threatening presence off pick-and-pop actions tilted defenses, pulling opposing big men out of the paint and creating all sorts of driving room for the always-attacking Dragic and Bledsoe, who took full advantage en-route to turning in career-best seasons. Frye's gravity on the perimeter was an integral part of a Suns offense that shocked league observers by scoring an average of 107.1 points per 100 possessions, the eighth-best offensive efficiency mark in the NBA last season. Just how integral shows up when looking at Frye's on/off-court numbers — Phoenix scored at a rate that would've ranked No. 1 in the league (110.4-per-100) with Frye on the floor last season, and at the equivalent of a bottom-10 rate (102.5-per-100) when he sat, according to NBA.com's stat tool. Among Suns regulars, only point guard Dragic — an All-NBA Third Team selection — made a bigger difference on Phoenix's offensive efficiency. (Frye's additive impact also showed up clearly when considering the production of players like Dragic and fellow frontcourt rotation member Markieff Morris with and without Frye, as detailed by Upside and Motor's Sam Vecenie .) The eight-year veteran will be asked to provide the same sort of across-the-board benefit for a Magic team whose offense appears likely to be predicated on the backcourt slashing and playmaking of rising sophomore Victor Oladipo and 2014 first-rounder Elfrid Payton, and that looks to be dreadfully short on shooting. Orlando's offense was abysmal last year, ranking second-worst in the league in points scored per possession. Their lack of long-range proficiency was one big reason why, as the Magic finished 21st among 30 NBA teams in 3-pointers made and attempted last season, and tied with the Memphis Grizzlies and Milwaukee Bucks for 19th in overall long-distance accuracy. Compounding matters, in the early stages of this offseason, the Magic promptly bid farewell to four of the top five 3-point shooters on their roster, trading starting shooting guard Arron Afflalo (42.7 percent on 3s last year, the sixth-best mark in the NBA), waiving both little-used reserve Doron Lamb (40 percent) and longtime starting point guard Jameer Nelson (34.8 percent), and rescinding their qualifying offer to reserve E'Twaun Moore (35.4 percent). The only returning member of the Magic who shot above-league-average from 3-point land last season was swingman Maurice Harkless, who canned 38.3 percent of his triples as a sophomore. Evan Fournier, whom the Denver Nuggets sent over in exchange for Afflalo, has hit from deep at a 38.1 percent clip in his two NBA seasons, but as Evan Dunlap of Orlando Pinstriped Post notes , the 21-year-old French guard figures to be less of a stationary spot-up shooter than a ball-handling, facilitating playmaker in Orlando. Ben Gordon ... I mean, maybe , but I'll need to see it to believe it. Frye adds a real-deal reliable long-range weapon whose mere presence could help Oladipo and Payton find their way to the rim, and could give frontcourt players like Nikola Vucevic (who took 63.5 percent of his shots inside the paint last season) and Tobias Harris (who's more of a bully-block player that likes to try work his way toward the rim from midrange, and is also Frye's cousin ) more room to operate in their respective comfort zones. There's value to that, and there's value to adding a respected, reputable veteran like Frye to a Magic locker room teeming with young players. That said, $8 million per year worth of value seems unlikely. Frye's a better defender than you might think given his slender frame, but he's not really a top-flight two-way player, and while his shooting-dependent game should age well as his contract wends its way toward his mid-30s, it doesn't seem reasonable to expect him to provide significantly more production over the next four years than he did in Phoenix last year. And while some will argue that the rookie-contract-heavy Magic are overpaying guys like Gordon and Frye because they've got to pay somebody, they don't really have to spend their way up to the salary floor; if a team's total payroll comes in under 90 percent of the salary cap (projected to be $63.2 million this year ), all said team has to do is distribute the shortfall among the players on their roster , which is barely a penalty at all. (And kind of a nice bonus for those rookies, too.) Still, it's difficult to get too worked up about Orlando overpaying Frye. He should help the Magic offense take steps forward, he should help head coach Jacque Vaughn's messages filter throughout the young locker room, and he should help Orlando win more games over the next couple of seasons without wrecking the future roster-building flexibility of a Magic team that doesn't look ready to meaningfully compete just yet. ***
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