Predicting Orlando Magic ratings on NBA 2K22

This is the doldrums of the NBA calendar.

The 2021 season is over but the 2022 season has not quite begun. The league is quiet — perhaps, too quiet — and there is not likely to be any more moves. Something might creep up — like the Lauri Markkanen sign and trade to eliminate the last major free agent on the market — but there is nothing much going on.

Training camps do not begin for another month. The NBA’s 2022 season became a little real with the release of the schedule last week. But it does not become real for a lot of fans until the release of the next edition of NBA 2K.

That is coming very soon and fans of both the Orlando Magic and the game are eager to see where the team ranks. It at least gives casual fans a sense of how good the team might be or present conceptions of the team.

The Orlando Magic could well be the worst team in the upcoming NBA 2K22. We break down what players might be rated as the game nears its release.

The Magic have not been a great NBA 2K team since Dwight Howard left. That is the reality of being a team without a clear star and without much relevance in the national landscape. Orlando has struggled to start the year with any players ranked better than 84 — a middling number that is a borderline All-Star.

The best Magic players are on the historic teams or in the deeper cuts of MyTeam — Orlando had nine players get a perfect 99 card including three players in the Invincible set.

Fans of the video game have long loved Jonathan Isaac and Mohamed Bamba — both made the Retro 2K set in the game and a 98-rated Isaac was part of the Fan Favorite set.

It is not that Orlando does not have players who can sell even on the current team. The team has popular players. At least when all the stats are juiced up.

The game is getting set to flip over with the new version of the game shipping out Sept. 10. In all likelihood, the Magic will be the worst team in the game. Without a clear star or a marquee player, the players on the team are not going to start off well at all.

Using last year’s evolution of the MyTeam mode — they released three sets of cards based on the current season — we will try to predict where Magic players will fall. Luckily some of the ratings for the team are confirmed. And that at least gives us a start.

We will go through the roster in order of the rotation we expect. This is how we would rate the players on the team. But as you will see, the game likely sees things differently.