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Vogel: Gordon is going to be the Magic's small forward

Mike Stobe / Getty Images Sport / Getty

Aaron Gordon was a starter for the Orlando Magic for much of the latter half of the 2015-16 campaign. However, with the arrival of Serge Ibaka from the Oklahoma City Thunder this offseason, the power forward position is no longer his to have.

That doesn't mean he's going to be demoted to the second unit, though, as new head coach Frank Vogel still has big plans for the Arizona alumnus.

"If Serge Ibaka weren't here, Aaron Gordon would be my power forward," Vogel told ESPN's Zach Lowe. "But Serge is here. Aaron is going to be playing (small forward). We are going to put the ball in his hands a lot. We're going to use him like Paul George."

Manning the three spot isn't uncharted waters for Gordon, as he played 40 percent of his minutes at small forward last season and 33 percent the year before, despite hovering around the 6-foot-10 mark.

Even so, Gordon is truly one of the most physically gifted players in the entire association, so it's worth a roll of the dice on Orlando's part to see if they can get this experiment to work.

In his second year with the Magic, Gordon averaged 9.2 points and 6.5 rebounds, shooting 47.3 percent from the field and a paltry 29.6 percent from 3-point range. He'll need to develop more of an outside shot, but in the meantime, he can help pound the ball down low alongside Ibaka, Bismack Biyombo, and Nikola Vucevic.

"In today's small-ball NBA, we think we can beat the (expletive) out of teams in the paint," Vogel said.

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