Orlando Magic will need to be ready early with difficult start to 2022 season

The Orlando Magic are a young team with a rookie head coach. They are a group that is going to need some time to season and get used to each other, their new coach and the league itself.

The NBA schedule makers are not going to afford the Magic much time to get settled in this season.

The thing that pops off the page for the Magic as you look at their 2021-22 season schedule is how difficult it will be to start — especially a brutal stretch that runs from Thanksgiving until mid-December and Christmas.

Orlando will have to hit the ground running if it wants to accomplish much and stay in the playoff race — or stay within contact for what looks like an easier finish to the schedule.

The NBA released the 2022 season schedule for the Orlando Magic and it features an especially difficult start to the season that they might make up at the end.

The Orlando Magic will start their season Oct. 20 in San Antonio against the San Antonio Spurs, marking their first road season opener since the 2015 season. They start their home schedule at the Amway Center on Oct. 22 against Evan Fournier and the New York Knicks.

Things will not be easy for the Magic from the jump. And that is even before considering the difficult road to start.

Orlando is starting from scratch having reset the franchise at least year’s trade deadline. The team exited last season with the fourth-youngest roster in the league. It added a rookie coach in Jamahl Mosley and will have two key rookies to integrate into an already-young roster.

On top of all this, the Magic still have not made clear the status of injured starters Jonathan Isaac and Markelle Fultz. While it is expected Isaac will be ready before training camp, Fultz’s return is not so clear. In either case, both players will be spending the year — and especially those early games — re-acclimating to the NBA game.

This is a recovery year for them, just as it appears this is a rebuilding and development year for the Magic.

So the start to the season is looking especially difficult.

Orlando opens the season with six of its first eight games on the road. Things do not get much easier from there. The Orlando Magic have a five-game homestand from Nov. 3-13 that features matchups with the Boston Celtics, Utah Jazz and Brooklyn Nets before beginning the real gauntlet of the season.

From Nov. 15-Dec. 26, Orlando plays 16 of 22 games on the road. That includes a pair of five-game road trips — an East Coast swing with trips to New York (to face the Knicks and Nets) and Milwaukee (for a pair of games with the defending champions) and the traditional early December West Coast trip that sees the team through California.

In the middle of that stretch, Nikola Vucevic makes his first return to the Amway Center with the Chicago Bulls on Nov. 26 and Aaron Gordon returns for his lone visit with the Denver Nuggets on Dec. 1.

According to one measure, things only get worse from there:

But at least the home and road games even out from there. The stretch especially around Thanksgiving until just after Christmas feels especially brutal. And for a young team trying to get its bearings, the team might be struggling to stay above water consistently.

This is not a schedule that is seemingly made for a team like the Magic to get out to a hot start. If the team has any playoff aspirations, it either needs to stay in contact with the race early or those dreams could get snuffed out early.

Several notable home games come just after Christmas. The Orlando Magic will host the defending champion Milwaukee Bucks in consecutive games at the Amway Center on Dec. 28 and 30. The Los Angeles Lakers also come to town on Jan. 21.

Orlando takes its second West Coast road trip, a four-game trip to Phoenix and the Northwest, from Feb. 8-14, just before the All-Star Break.

It is there the Magic might finally get a break and build some momentum — surely at a moment when the team will feel more comfortable and might be coalescing behind confidence both in their place in the league and the health of their key players.

If the Magic have a run in them after the All-Star Break, the schedule is set up for them to do so just as it was in 2019.

Orlando Magic

Orlando plays 15 of its final 21 games at home including four of its final five games at the Amway Center. The Magic play consecutive games on the road just once after the league breaks in Cleveland in late February.

This includes a season-long six-game homestand from March 11-22. There are only three likely playoff opponents in that run too — the Philadelphia 76ers (March 13), Brooklyn Nets (March 15) and Golden State Warriors (March 22).

In all too, the Magic close their season with nine of their last 12 games against teams that missed the playoffs in 2021. Obviously, some of those may change and it is impossible to predict what the end of the season looks like.

But that sure sets up on paper for the Magic to build confidence and pick up wins heading into the offseason.

That is, if the team stays healthy and if it does not pursue a tanking strategy once again to increase the team’s Lottery odds. Maybe then this seemingly easier road to the finish line could harm the Magic in the end.

Orlando will operate in anonymity too as it continues through the season.

The team is slated for a league-low four national TV appearances (all on NBATV). And three of them occur in March — March 11 vs. the Minnesota Timberwolves, March 17 vs. the Detroit Pistons and March 20 vs. the Oklahoma City Thunder. It is easy to see all three of those flexing to other games if the schedule allows with possibly all three out of the playoff race.

This is a schedule that surely would frustrate the team to some degree. But everyone takes the schedule they are given even if there are some grumblings.

In the end, everyone plays the same 82 games. The beauty of the schedule is that these things do swing back.

There are always easy and difficult parts to every schedule. And to win at the highest levels in this league, teams have to be able to win in both good times and bad times.

Orlando certainly will get thrown to the wolves this season. The Magic are going to have to gain confidence in themselves early as theirs sets up especially difficult to start.

Orlando did not get any favors here.