The Orlando Magic are firmly entrenched in the playoff race. But plenty of questions remain for the next quarter that will determine the team’s future.
In some ways, the Orlando Magic’s season has gone exactly how a lot of people thought it would.
The team has one of the 10 best defenses in the league but an offense that struggles to keep up with it. Orlando is hovering around the .500 mark and comfortably in the playoffs. But the Magic are still well behind the top six teams.
In a lot of ways, the Magic’s season has not gone any way anyone thought.
Injuries overran the team. It was the big story through the first half of the season. Nikola Vucevic missed 11 games. Aaron Gordon nursed an ankle injury and attendant soreness for much of the season after his sprained ankle in late November.
D.J. Augustin is now out until at least early February with bone irritation in his left knee. Al-Farouq Aminu is out likely for the season after tearing his right meniscus and requiring surgery. Michael Carter-Williams has been in and out of the lineup with various injuries too.
The biggest absence, of course, is Jonathan Isaac. He has a posterior lateral corner injury in his knee that will have him out until at least late February or early March when he will be re-evaluated. The team’s brightest star and best defensive player is potentially done for the year.
Those are a lot of key players lost to injury for major parts of the season. The Magic have had to find a way to keep winning and make their mark on the league.
Through the first half of the season, they have. For all those ups and downs and perhaps unrealized potential, the Magic find themselves in the playoff picture. Comfortably in the playoff picture, actually.
In that sense, the Magic appear on track to achieve one of their primary goals. They wanted to be back in the playoffs and the team is more than on track to get back there.
Yet, the season still feels empty. The injuries have certainly set the team back, but the team has also failed to play with a consistent urgency that characterized the best times of that playoff run. They did not hit the ground running.
In other words, there still feels like some untapped potential in this team. It feels like Orlando has fallen short of its best version, even if that still means the Magic are right where they are in the 7-seed.
For sure, for the big picture, the Magic look like they have a ceiling to what they can accomplish. And this is the time of year with the trade deadline on Feb. 6 that teams begin to think about their big-picture moves for the offseason and beyond.
In all, the Magic are ahead of last year’s pace (so to speak) as they hit the halfway point of the season. The questions and expectations are great, however. And in the next 20-or-so games, the Magic will have some bigger questions to answer that will shape both their season and their future.