The Orlando Magic are exciting right now merely for the fact that the team is a blank slate.
They have a bunch of young players who will be growing and learning together without the pressure of winning — this season, at least. They have a clear cap sheet and the ability to spend and use their cap space to build future assets and set themselves up for whenever they are trying to win.
The team is not capitulating this season, even if everyone seems to believe the Magic will be one of the worst teams in the league. The team still has goals to achieve.
The biggest one is to see growth from individual players and to see the team’s rebuild begin to take shape. They want to see the contours of the kind of team they will be as they begin the climb up the standings.
The key to the whole thing will be the players on their rookie contracts making the future. But the team also has two players just entering their rookie extensions who might as well still be rookies.
The team is relying on young veterans like Jonathan Isaac and Markelle Fultz coming back from injury to help provide a strong base.
The team will still need to see a lot from the five players still on their rookie contracts. But a lot of the Magic’s immediate future — both on the court and in their cap sheet — is tied to where Isaac and Fultz go next.
At the end of the day, the Magic’s needs are still the same. They need a star.
Players typically know who they are by the end of their rookie contracts. But for Orlando Magic players Jonathan Isaac and Markelle Fultz, their lack of playing time still leaves plenty unknown.
For now, the best thing Orlando can do is hope to see players reach their potential. Figuring that out is still an inexact science.
What we do have is we have player projections based on stats like win shares or WARP. For now, that at least gives us a window into who players might be.
With so many young players, it might be helpful to take a peek at what these projections say about these players and who they might become. Then the team can begin shaping its roster.
As former general manager Rob Hennigan once said, players are typically who they are by the time they reach the end of their rookie contracts. Even with how young players are entering the league, they are usually pretty set to who they are by the time they reach the fifth year.
Certainly, the expectations increase for those players after they get properly valued with a fresh contract. Rookies are just on dirt cheap deals so the potential always seems pretty limitless.
The Orlando Magic are in a strange position though. They have two players who are entering their rookie extensions without much history behind them.
Markelle Fultz missed his first two seasons as he dealt with thoracic outlet syndrome, played one solid season in 2020 and then suffered a torn ACL eight games into the 2021 season.
Jonathan Isaac missed the majority of his first season with a sprained ankle. He was a strong starter in the 2019 season. Then he had a Defensive Player of the Year-caliber season in 2020 before a knee injury knocked him out the last half of the season and then a torn ACL ended his season in the bubble.
Isaac missed the entire 2021 season recovering from that injury.
Those two players have roughly 2.5 years total of playing under their belt. So it is worth considering who Basketball-Reference and FiveThirtyEight say these players resemble.
Jonathan Isaac
Basketball-Reference: Nate Williams, Robert Covington, Tobias Harris
FiveThirtyEight: Kristaps Porzingis, Tyrus Thomas, Nerlens Noel
Jonathan Isaac is still one of the toughest players to grade in the league. And the numbers do not quite know what to do with him because he has played so little.
To the eye test, Isaac is one of the most versatile and devastating defenders in the league. He can be someone who defends all five positions and do it effectively. There are definitely all-defensive teams in his future.
If he can stay healthy.
Unfortunately, injuries have been the story of his career. Every advancement in his career has been slowed by a devastating injury. That breakout 2020 season just feels bitter with the double dose of devastating injuries that ended his season.
Magic fans are most excited to see Isaac return. He is still one of the few players who have star potential on the team.
Isaac’s numbers do not look fantastic. He averaged a career-best 11.9 points per game in the 2020 season. His defensive numbers were what really stood out — 1.6 steals per game and 2.3 blocks per game, flirting with leading the league in blocks as a perimeter player.
It is hard to say whether Isaac can continue to improve as a 3-point shooter. He jumped up to 34.0-percent from beyond the arc in 2020 on 2.8 attempts per game. A lot of his future depends on this improvement.
But nobody knows what Isaac will look like when he gets back from injury. That still remains the biggest question.
His player comparisons though track two types of players.
Swarm and Sting
Basketball-Reference’s use of win shares is a bit skewed because Isaac accumulated only 0.2 win shares in his truncated third season. But most of the players on his player similarity list are ace defenders.
Robert Covington feels like a good floor for Jonathan Isaac to achieve still. Nate Williams, who had the best player similarity score according to Basketball-Reference, was a great defender in the 1970s for the Kansas City-Omaha Kings.
Nobody doubts Isaac’s defensive bona fides. And he seems like his floor, when healthy, tracks other elite defensive players. That feels like what Isaac is at the very least.
FiveThirtyEight’s Player Similarity score has a lot of players who recovered from ACL injuries on their list. Both Kristaps Porzingis and Nerlens Noel bounced back from injuries.
Isaac certainly has the shot-blocking ability that Noel showed throughout college. And he is certainly considered a unicorn in the same way Porzingis was.
Porzingis was certainly a better and more polished offensive player when he entered the NBA. He was someone who could block shots, attack the basket and hit from the perimeter. That version of Porzingis — the one who averaged 22.7 points per game and shot a 48.9-percent effective field goal percentage in the 2018 season before a torn ACL ended his year early.
Porzingis has not quite been the same. Like Isaac, he is a bit skinny and lanky and that has made re-injury a major concern. Porzingis has still averaged 20.3 points per game and shot a 52.2-percent effective field goal percentage since returning from injury with the Dallas Mavericks.
Offensive recovery is certainly possible for Isaac.
Isaac still has to hope he can be what everyone thought Porzingis could be before his injury. But Porzingis has still struggled with recovering from his injury. And maybe that is a warning.
Markelle Fultz
Basketball-Reference: Shammond Williams, Spencer Dinwiddie, Steve Blake
FiveThirtyEight: Shaun Livingston, Dee Brown, Mo Williams
Markelle Fultz, too, is difficult to judge because he has played so little.
The bursts he has had with the Orlando Magic are still very promising. But there are still some clear weaknesses he has to sort through.
The shooting most of all, a remnant still of the thoracic outlet syndrome that limited his range of motion in his shoulder.
Nobody is quite certain when Fultz will return. We only know he is very excited to get back on the court:
Fultz still has a ton of promise. Even with just one full season under his belt, he established himself as the Magic’s best point guard option, able to attack the basket and finish with creativity. He even developed a solid mid-range jumper and pull-up jumper.
Fultz averaged 12.1 points per game on a 48.8-percent effective field goal percentage. He had 12.9 points per game in the eight games he played in 2021. Obviously, those numbers were depressed by his injury in the first half of that eighth game.
His shooting was starting to come back to earth after a hot start to the season. But Fultz still showed plenty of willingness to shoot. Something that was not a sure thing when he arrived in Orlando. The team just wanted to rebuild his confidence.
It certainly got there. And the Magic were impressed with what they saw in Fultz at the end.
But, like with Isaac, it was all put on hold for Fultz’s injury. And there is still no clear signal of what Fultz looks like on the other side.
The Sixer Sense
Basketball-Reference similarity scores look specifically at win shares. And it is still not clear what kind of player Fultz is.
Of note, the comparison senses a similarity with Spencer Dinwiddie, another player coming off a torn ACL. But Fultz is not really a similar player to Dinwiddie. Dinwiddie relies a lot more on his shooting than Fultz does.
The better comparisons come from FiveThrityEight’s use of WARP. The comparison to Shaun Livingston feels especially apt.
Livingston was a poor shooter throughout his career, but he carved a place in the NBA after suffering a devastating knee injury in 2007. After that point, Livingston averaged only 6.0 points per game and shot 14.9-percent from beyond the arc.
He made the biggest name for himself as a member of the Golden State Warriors’ title teams. With the Warriors, Livingston averaged 5.4 points per game on a 52.1-percent effective field goal percentage, taking virtually zero 3-pointers.
Fultz does not have Livingston’s size or length to be the defensive presence Livingston became. But their offensive games are very similar. Livingston became a proficient and selective jump shooter.
This is the exact model of offensive game Fultz should find as he recovers from his injury. If not becoming a bit more. Livingston’s initial injury was much more severe than the torn ACL Fultz suffered.
What might be clear from these player comparisons for now is the Magic are still seeking a clear star. And as both Jonathan Isaac and Markelle Fultz leave their rookie contracts, their ceilings are starting to shrink. That is the reality of players as they progress.
Isaac still has that star potential clearly.
But for both players, the question is more about how they reclaim their potential and the base they build in this recovery year as they get back from injury.
This is the first of a series of posts looking at various player comparisons for the Magic’s young players as they begin this rebuild and map out what kind of team they can be.