Orlando Magic Training Camp: 5 position battles to watch

The Orlando Magic welcomed a special guest to their pick-up runs this week.

On Wednesday, the team posted video of rapper J. Cole getting some run in with the Magic as the team prepares for training camp.

Cole will be playing the Amway Center on Saturday and was apparently invited to get some hoops in by fellow New Yorker Cole Anthony.

These pre-training camp pick-up games are more about building some chemistry and getting run in before the team starts getting organized more formally with a full practice next week. It is still the time for fun and games.

Quickly though, the team will have to get serious and get on the same page. The team looked a bit disorganized — and perhaps a bit tired having gone through what probably felt like a full training camp in the practices leading up to the Summer League games.

There is a lot to learn with a new coach stepping in. And a first-time coach at that.

How the team comes together and how coach Jamahl Mosley tries to build them up will be one of the big initial questions for the Magic. Especially considering the team starts off with such a difficult schedule.

The Magic themselves are still going through something of a transition. They are beginning what many believe will be an extended rebuild with an extremely young roster. It does not feel very much is settled with the roster and the direction the team will head.

On top of that, two key players in Jonathan Isaac and Markelle Fultz will be coming back from torn ACLs that cost them the majority of last season. It is not yet clear when they will return from those injuries or just how available they will be as they finish their recoveries and step back on the court.

There is a lot to sort on the roster. There are plenty of players who are more than capable of playing and not enough space for all of them to play. Training camp is going to help the coaching staff define roles more clearly.

The Magic’s depth chart is still pretty hard to define at this point. A rough sketch may look something like this:

It is hard to define a lot of these players within one position. One of the strengths of this roster is that it has a lot of positional versatility. A lot of players can play multiple positions. But there are also a lot of players who might demand playing time.

And one of the bigger questions remains how the Magic handle their veterans and how much of that time eats into the playing time for younger players.

As things stand when the team is fully health, the team has 12 players who should be competing for playing time. It would be hard to play all 12 meaningful minutes.

Jamahl Mosley will have some questions to answer pretty immediately and playing time decisions that will point the team in one direction or another. Training camp is going to be vital to sort through these decisions.

There will be plenty of position battles to sort out as the Magic begin to develop their rotation and their depth chart.

Orlando Magic Training Camp Battles

Forward Rotation

The Orlando Magic starting lineup is still a bit up in the air. It is not entirely clear or certain who will start when the team is fully healthy.

Jonathan Isaac is probably the only surefire starter if he is ready to go on opening night. Gary Harris is probably a fairly safe bet to start too just so the team has a veteran.

Otherwise, every potential starter has some question mark about them.

Jalen Suggs will start eventually if he is as good as everyone thinks he can be. But that does not necessarily mean he starts from opening night. Suggs is going to get his chance though and he will probably take one of the spots.

So too will Wendell Carter. At this point, he is the Magic’s most consistent option at center. Markelle Fultz is still recovering from injury. But he too could slot in as a starter alongside Suggs when all is said and done.

The biggest mystery is how the Magic will treat their small forward spot and their forward rotation overall. While the Magic have three potentially strong options at power forward in Jonathan Isaac, Chuma Okeke and Franz Wagner. They even have solid shooting guard options who can slide up in Gary Harris, Terrence Ross and perhaps even R.J. Hampton.

But there is no clear small forward option. Someone is going to be an unnatural fit perhaps — whether they be too small to handle the bigger 3s in the league or perhaps too immobile to hand the quicker forwards.

Orlando has to figure out its forward rotation. And the direction the team goes at that spot will get figured out in camp.

A lot of those answers might be determined by who the Magic decide to start at shooting guard. If they start Jalen Suggs at shooting guard alongside Cole Anthony or Markelle Fultz, that probably slides Gary Harris to small forward. But if they start Suggs alongside Harris in the backcourt, that opens up the option of starting Okeke or Wagner at small forward.

Isaac’s availability might also play a role in deciding where the starting lineup goes and what the forward rotation becomes. Okeke and Wagner can split power forward minutes in that case.

But this rotation is still a complete mystery and Jamahl Mosley is going to have to use training camp to map out how he wants to deploy these players or have some idea of who will rise to the top and who his best option at small forward is on a night-to-night basis. There needs to be some consistency with the lineups at that point.

Small forward is a real trouble spot for the Magic. And camp is going to sort out the rotation a ton.

Orlando Magic Training Camp Battles

Backup Center

The Orlando Magic’s biggest positional mystery is at backup center. There may not be a more high-stakes battle to occur in training camp either.

Mohamed Bamba just does not have a lot of runway here. He has to establish his spot quickly and start from a strong place so he can grow and earn his place in the league. Bamba is facing a contract year and this is really a last chance for him to make a mark with the Magic. Otherwise, he could get turned over to free agency without much fanfare.

Bamba still has a ton of potential and ability. After the trade deadline last year, his averages jumped to 11.1 points, 7.5 rebounds and 1.6 blocks per game. That is a product of playing a lot more and getting more consistent time on the floor.

There is still a ton of work for Bamba to do.

Nobody though needed a fresh start more than Bamba. He just became a victim of the Magic’s sudden improvement and his own injury issues. Bamba just has had several false starts and was never able to gain traction. With the team competing for a playoff spot, coach Steve Clifford did not have the time to develop him. If Bamba could not give him something to help the team win, he was going to look elsewhere.

This was all unfair to Bamba, of course. He had so many issues preventing him from improving in the offseason. and the season only buries players who get behind and cannot catch up. He needed the breath of fresh air to restart and the new roster and rebuilding posture gives that to him.

Still, time has run out. The Magic have to make a contract decision on him. And he has not produced enough to gain any assurances he will be part of this team’s future.

The Magic should pencil in Bamba as the backup center right now. That would seemingly be the right thing to do with such a young team and with the stakes Bamba has facing him this season.

But Orlando signed a capable player in Robin Lopez.

Lopez said he is going to be a good veteran leader and teacher for the Magic’s young bigs. But he also did not shy away from saying he expects to compete for playing time. And if the Magic are building a positive culture, the better player is always going to play — regardless of their status with the team.

The Magic are going to be making a pretty key decision about their rotation early in the season. Bamba and Lopez should not feel like they are facing off against each other, but they certainly are.

Orlando Magic Training Camp Battles

Jalen Suggs’ best position and pairing

One of the more exciting prospects about Jalen Suggs is that it is not really clear where he will fit in best at.

He could be a point guard, leading and managing a team as a threat to score and to kick out. His passing was among the most impressive parts of his run in Summer League and the team ran him essentially as the team’s point guard throughout Summer League.

That worked out really well for Suggs but had some mixed results for other players in the lineup — especially Cole Anthony who struggled a ton without the ball in his hands.

There is going to be a really interesting balance that occurs with the Magic this year. Their point guards all could easily double as shooting guards. Orlando is likely going to run lineups with multiple ball handlers.

In other words, Suggs is going to have run both point and off-guard throughout the season. There is simply no avoiding it. And he has the capability to do so — he played alongside senior Andrew Nembhardt at Gonzaga, and ultimately supplanted the grad transfer from Florida as the team’s starting point guard.

In all likelihood, Suggs is going to be a key part of the team’s future. So much of this season will be about experimenting and figuring out how to get the most out of Suggs. That includes moving him to different positions and figuring out which of the Magic’s guards pair best with him.

The Magic will probably use some of training camp to test Suggs out in different lineups, having him play alongisde different guards.

They could go with two-guard lineups with Suggs playing alongside Anthony. Or they could run Jalen Suggs at the point and play him next to Garry Harris or Terrence Ross. At some point, Suggs is likely to have time on the court with any number of different combinations.

So ultimately, then, the question is whether Suggs can play point guard or whether he is best suited as a shooting guard. The answer to that question is one that will inform how the Magic build and rebuild.

And it will probably set the table for how the Magic plan to use Jalen Suggs whenever Markelle Fultz is able to return to the floor.

Orlando Magic Training Camp Battles

Full Rotation

Former Orlando Magic coach Steve Clifford always made it clear whenever he was asked about some player who played well but was struggling to get consistent minutes (it was mostly Wesley Iwundu) was that he did not want to put a player in for so short a time that they cannot develop a rhythm.

Clifford was not someone who believed in throwing players in just to throw them in. He always said he wanted to keep a tight nine-man rotation, only expanding it to 10 last year because of concerns over the fatigue of the shortened season and the injuries the team suddenly faced.

Nobody knows what kind of rotation Jamahl Mosley wants to run or how expansive it will be. But the Magic have a bit of a roster crunch. It is one that everyone has seen coming for a while. Nobody had an answer for it then.

But some answers have to come. And that is what training camp is going to be for.

The Magic can probably claim they have 12 and maybe 13 players who should at least be on the periphery of a NBA rotation. Two are going to be limited in training camp in Jonathan Isaac and Markelle Fultz. So perhaps this issue will be delayed temporarily.

Orlando is not going to be able to play all those players when they are healthy. Someone is sitting out.

It is safe to assume that one of Robin Lopez or Mohamed Bamba (whoever loses the battle discussed above) is going to be out of the rotation for most of the year. Michael Carter-Williams may also struggle to stay in the rotation.

But that still gets you to 10 or 11 players. That is still a really stretched rotation. And someone might have to sit out more often than not until injuries begin to set in. It could well be one of the younger players.

The Magic could end up sitting one of R.J. Hampton or Franz Wagner getting fewer minutes than anyone expects. That is probably not completely fair. They both should get playing time. The Magic should be invested in their growth.

But Orlando also needs to play its veterans. Terrence Ross and Gary Harris should be regulars in the rotation at least to start the season.

This makes for a difficult balance for Mosley to figure out in his first year as a coach.

Orlando Magic Training Camp Battles

The final two-way

It is probably of less consequence who gets this deal. But it is the last bit of roster maneuvering the Orlando Magic have left to handle in training camp with a full camp roster of 20 players. Inevitably, the Magic may make some late cuts so they can sneak some extra money to other players they plan to fill the Lakeland Magic’s roster with.

But, hey, Lakeland has a title to defend.

For now, Ignas Brazdeikis holds one of the two-way contracts on the Magic’s roster. The team has not specifically announced that anyone else has received a two-way deal.

So any of the Magic’s camp invitees — Jeff Dowtin, Hassani Gravett, Admiral Schofield and Jon Teske — are fighting for that little extra and the chance to be near the main roster. They will all likely be headed to Lakeland for the majority of the season regardless.

As always, though, the question is: How do the Magic actually want to use their two-way contract? What kind of player is this contract for?

There have certainly been some questions about how the Magic have used the Lakeland Magic.

The most effective use of it since the team arrived in Central Florida was as a place for rehab for main roster players. Jonathan Isaac played a few games there in his rookie year while coming back from an ankle injury. Other players got some extended reps there too — such as Wesley Iwundu or Khem Birch.

What it has not been to this point is a way to graduate players through their system. It is not a true minor league in that sense. So it is hard to say who the Magic might pick from their training camp invites to take the two-way contract.

Are the Magic going to use it to supplement some need on their roster? In that case, recent signee Admiral Schofield is probably the best bet to get it.

Are they going to use it on whoever performs best in training camp practices and preseason games?

There are not clear answers on any front. But the Magic will make that decision one way or another.