Orlando Magic must embrace the unknown to succeed

Nobody can quite get a handle on or predict where the Orlando Magic will end up this season. The first thing they must do is embrace their uncertainty.

The Orlando Magic’s season is getting real.

The coaches are ramping up their final preparations. Players are slowly returning to town and preparing for the beginning of training camp. Many have already begun filming their promotional videos.

Hearing anyone around the Magic begin to talk about the season coming up and there is the usual amount of optimism. There is a belief the team will achieve its goals — making the Playoffs first among them — and these pieces will find a way to fit. They are thinking big and they believe they can reach these goals.

Ask anyone outside the Magic and the picture gets all the more cloudier.

There are those who believe in the team. Then there are those who just cannot figure out how to get everything to fit. And that uncertainty leads many to believe the team could fall short of its goals.

A roundtable at Today’s Fastbreak was so varied one writer had the Magic winning 25 and another had them winning mid-40s and in the Playoffs. And both were perfectly reasoned and plausible.

Because the reality is nobody — not even Frank Vogel and his staff or Rob Hennigan and his staff — have any clue how this whole thing is going to work out for the Magic. The team truly is just as likely to make the Playoffs this year as they are to remain a 30-or-so-win team.

Certainly everyone has their reasons for believing the Magic will fit whatever expectation or prognostication they will have this year. And they truly are all perfectly valid and reasoned.

A week ahead of training camp, so much remains unknown about the Magic. Who will be their top scorer? Can the team come together defensively? Which players will step up and show improvements to bolster the team?

And the Magic must embrace all those questions. The answers right now do not matter.

The Magic, Orlando and their fans must embrace the unknowns of this team and enter the season a purely blank slate. Nobody has a clear picture of what will happen. And so there are truly unending possibilities –both for success and possible failure.

To a certain extent, this should make watching the season that much more enjoyable for fans. Truly anything is possible. Any prediction anybody makes is as good as any others. They can truly watch this season unfold without any consequence.

For the team, it is also quite liberating. It is almost as if the team had no expectations to go off of. If anyone wants to use the lower end of the expectations as motivation, they can. If anyone wants to use the higher end of the expectations as a confidence boost they can. Any cliched motivational tactic can work.

But none of that matters. What matters is the work and process ahead of this team from the coaches. The Magic have to commit to an identity and a process to succeed. The answers to these unknowns and questions.

It is difficult to enter a season that has so much on the line without any kind of certainty. It is certainly uncomfortable knowing the Magic are playoff or bust and not being able to say definitively whether this is a Playoff team or not.

Then again, no one really knows about any team — even among the contenders. The 82-game schedule is long and arduous.

Early on in the season, as the Magic are establishing their identity, they must embrace these unknowns. Embracing the unknown means buying into what the coaching staff preaches and the philosophies they teach.

It will take a lot of trust for sure.

And that is what matters. The Magic must enter this season with all these questions. And they must trust the coaching staff to have all these answers. Or at least provide a guide and a framework to find all these answers.

Faith is a difficult thing. Fandom by its very nature is a test of faith. Fans put their complete trust and emotion in something they cannot control. This season will be as much about faith as anything else. From fans and players alike.

The unknown of this team will require a lot of faith and a lot of trust.

For the Magic to have success this season, they will have to embrace their unknowns and the potential answers they have to solve them.

It is not an easy thing to do. Especially in a season that carries so much weight in it.

Yet, the Magic will have to go into this season a clean slate. And completely unknown how they will work out together. They will have to trust their coaches to deliver the right message and strategy to succeed.

Next: Frank Vogel: Orlando Magic a 'sleeping giant'

That is the place they are at. And everyone will have to enjoy the ride to see where it comes out.