How many games in to the season do you think it’ll take for Gordon, Isaac and Bamba to see significant minutes together?
— Mikey Clark (@mikeyclark87) September 10, 2018
Injuries really kept the three players from sharing the floor much during the preseason. So we still have not seen it. It already looks like Aaron Gordon and Jonathan Isaac are going to slot in as the starting forwards. So they will see plenty of time together.
Last year, the Gordon and Isaac duo played just 135 minutes together. The defensive results were impressive in those lineups — 87.1 points allowed per 100 possessions. The offensive results were not — 90.0 points per 100 possessions. But that was generally the case with every lineup Isaac was in. And most of the time the team had a positive net rating with Isaac in.
There is enough to at least continue to try and build around it. Isaac was really inefficient last year as he tried to get comfortable in his rookie year and then recovering from injury. And Gordon was also still figuring out what his role should be and how he should balance his own scoring with other aspects of his game.
A lot of this growth will continue throughout this season most likely. So any combination of those lineups merely needs to show promise for continued growth rather than anything firm and permanent. If there are flashes of brilliance this year, that will be enough to continue the experiment.
Orlando Magic
Eventually, the Magic will want to see Jonathan Isaac, Aaron Gordon and Mohamed Bamba all on the floor together. But that will ultimately come down to how quickly Bamba develops and is ready to play.
That is the part that is not quite clear yet.
Bamba is not going to start away. His minutes are going to be still pretty limited. And the Magic even played him pretty sparingly in the preseason — 20.7 minutes per game. That is probably about where he will end up for the early part of the season.
Bamba’s offensive game is certainly more advanced than everyone anticipated. He is quickly learning and improving on defense too. That is where he will make his biggest impact when he is fully developed. But Bamba is not quite there yet.
I do not know when Bamba reaches that point. I imagine by the quarter pole of the season (roughly 20 games in) the Magic will want to see all three of those players out on the floor. It will be something the team has in its back pocket if the team is struggling early. And the hope is that by the All-Star Break, it will be hard to keep Bamba off the court.
But maybe that does not happen. Bamba still needs a lot of work and the Magic do not seem to be in any rush to throw him into the lineup.
Considering how much growth Isaac and Bamba still have to make, this is probably not the year to see a ton of the B-I-G combination on the court together.