The Orlando Magic have had an impressive 30 years that would be the envy of other expansion franchises. But there is still a lot for the team to accomplish.
The Orlando Magic will celebrate their 30th anniversary season during the 2019 season. It will be a big celebration of the team’s history and past. Part of that celebration will come with wearing Classic Edition uniforms — the blue pinstripes they started wearing during the 1995 season — and other plans are surely in the making too.
Like it was five years ago, the team will not have the celebration on the court to match the one off the court. The Magic are not likely to make the Playoffs and could find themselves once again competing for ping pong ball.
It is a low point in the Magic’s history. But also a point where the Magic are truly beginning to examine and reform the way they have done business for most of their 30 years.
On The Step Back last week, Josh Eberley ranked franchises by their history and all-time starting five. It is always a fun ranking project — one that will surely create some debate.
For a team that has not won the title and has such a relatively short history, the Magic come out fine. They ranked 21st on the list. Only the Miami Heat are ahead of them among the late 1980s expansion teams. And for obvious reasons.
As Eberley writes, the Magic have had an “abundance of talent” that many of the teams at the bottom of his rankings could only dream of.
That is both what makes studying Magic history so exciting and simultaneously disappointing.
Orlando has had some incredible fortune throughout its franchise’s history. In its third year in existence, it struck gold. The Magic won the Lottery when a top-10 player happened to be coming into the league. Shaquille O’Neal truly transformed the team in one year, taking them from perennial bottom feeder to Playoff contender.
Winning the Lottery again in 1993 was simply gravy on top. It helped make the franchise a truly elite team with Anfernee Hardaway in the fold.
Everything came easy.
It is this ease that has probably set the Magic back as much as anything — both in drawing fan support and setting fan expectations and setting their own expectations on how to build a team. They were victims of their own success, getting elite status quickly before the team really set its culture and understood the value and work it took to be great.
As the Magic’s first run of elite players died down — even after Shaquille O’Neal left, the team made the Playoffs with Anfernee Hardaway on and off the shelf with various foot and ankle injuries.
And only after a year of rebuilding, the Magic turned in a free agency coup, signing Tracy McGrady and Grant Hill. that set the Magic up for relevancy for the next four years, even with Grant Hill’s injury. Tracy McGrady manned the boat and was a top player in the league.
And when Tracy McGrady decided to move on, the Magic won the Lottery and picked up Dwight Howard to anchor their second run to the Finals in 2009.
Success and relevance always came easy for the Magic. Until Howard left. That changed everything.
And with each star departure and change in era, the Magic quickly recovered. Never really learning the lessons of their mistakes because they recovered so fast — only to make them all over again.
The team’s plan to rebuild seemed to follow the same path of the team’s previous quick fixes. Orlando management from the beginning aimed to be more deliberative and aim for something higher. They would not settle for mediocrity and take the pain necessary to build what they said would be sustainable. Management said a lot of the right things.
The execution was poor. The Magic lost their patience and seemed to believe things happened on a set timeline, regardless of the decisions they make. They tried to force things and ended up digging themselves into a deeper hole.
Orlando had to start over.
But not only did the team have to start over, it had to realize the franchise had to change much of the way it operated. Through all the success the Magic had, much of it came because of the bounce of a ping pong ball or seemed to come as a short-term fix.
The Magic always had the easy solution and put themselves on the clock to win quickly. They never had to put in the work to build a strong basketball organization. Things always just seemed to work out.
They did not this time and so the basketball and developmental infrastructure failed the team. Orlando’s impatience and frustration in building things showed just how inexperienced the organization truly was in building a roster from the ground up.
Every success the Magic had happened quickly and easily. They did not go through the struggles of misfortune and of plans derailed. Their direction was always relatively simple.
Only in the building of that 2009 team did the Magic have some doubt of their purpose and the players around their budding star. There were bumps in the road and some free agency risk that took hold. But even that quickly disintegrated as the Magic tried desperately to keep their perch.
Orlando got quickly knocked off and things fell apart disastrously. There was no process organizationally and those warts eventually cost the Magic a second hall of fame center.
Right now, the Magic are not even sure they have their star.
The Magic indeed have accomplished a lot in their 30-year history. A lot more than their sister team the Minnesota Timberwolves. And a lot more than the Charlotte Hornets, Memphis Grizzlies and Toronto Raptors. They are at a low point, but they have a lot of history to be proud of.
But building a future is going to mean departing from the path and mode that brought the Magic so much success before. That path is not sustainable and difficult to repeat. Lightning struck twice, they cannot count on it happening again.
It is simply impossible to rely on copying that previous success. It will take a new path.
That is the path Jeff Weltman and John Hammond are trying to build. They are working on changing the franchise’s culture by rebuilding its infrastructure. They are trying to create an environment where players can truly grow.
Orlando is trying to do something completely different this time than they have ever done before. And they hope that will strengthen the organization to take whatever fortune hand them and to grow into contenders again.
As Orlando celebrates its 30th anniversary, there is a lot to be proud of in the Magic’s history. But there is clearly a lot more the franchise has to figure out and accomplish.
The team will not be able to fix all of that and accomplish all of that in one season. It will be a multi-year process. One that has already begun with the transformation Weltman and Hammond have started behind the scenes and the beginnings of the roster they want to construct.
The team hopes the next time it celebrates an anniversary, they will have a clearer future to point to for the many years to come in Orlando.