Orlando Magic Daily Mailbag Volume 40: The winds of change are near

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The Orlando Magic have rallied and shown fight in Game 2. But Game 3 will separate reality from theory. (Photo by Kim Klement-Pool/Getty Images) /

The Orlando Magic’s season is right around the corner. There are a lot of questions to answer as the team’s future starts to come into some focus.

The NBA’s offseason has seemed longer than usual. Probably in part because we had an offseason’s worth of time between the the stop of the season and March and the league’s resumption of the season in late July at the campus at Disney.

The end of the playoffs last month gave way quickly the mystery of when the 2021 season would begin. It still does not seem 100-percent clear when that will be — the owners pushing to get things started by Christmas while the players seem to prefer a Martin Luther King Day start.

Regardless of when the league tips off once again, the league will have an expedited offseason.

The NBA Draft will take place on Nov. 18. From there, free agency is expected to start after Thanksgiving near Dec. 1. And training camp is likely to begin only a week or two after that.

Things are going to come together quickly for teams. All those well-laid plans that have been throught about and considered since the season originally went on hiatus in March are going to have to come together very quickly now.

For the Orlando Magic, there has been a lot to stew on since the team came from home from the Disney Campus in August.

The team once again made the Playoffs — comfortably this time — but had a worse record. That has led to whispers that the team has reached its ceiling as a group. And there might be something to that. There is enough to get back to the postseason again. But perhaps not enough to advance much further.

And now with Jonathan Isaac out for the entire 2021 season, the Magic’s future and long-term hopes are put somewhat on hold. The team will not be the full team it could or wants to be in 2021.

This seems like the time then to prepare for the future. Even then, it would probably still be time for the Magic to look ahead to their future and start to build their team for its future.

It feels like change is in the offing for Orlando. At some point, it will have to turn the corner and build for something more than a first-round cameo. That time might very well be during this hurried offseason.

There is a lot to consider. And the Magic have to get a lot of key decisions right to set up their long-term future.

So let’s start answering some of those questions. It is time for the latest edition of the Orlando Magic Daily Mailbag. Let’s dive in and see if we can find some answer to the big questions the Magic face.