Three weeks ago, the Orlando Magic were still learning what they were going to be about. As they gathered for media day, they had some interaction with their new coach in workouts and the mini-camp, but nothing replaces practice.
After a round of training camp and four preseason games, the Magic have carved out some form of identity. They — and we — have a clearer picture of who the Magic are trying to be and what their goals and style will be.
Everyone has a better idea of who the Magic are and what their strengths and weaknesses might be. Even with several players still waiting to return from injury. The Magic will have to spend some time during the course of their season integrating those players into this style they are cultivating.
The Orlando Magic’s preseason gave us some clues of who this team will be this season. There was plenty of takeaways from the preseason run.
Expectations are admittedly low for the Magic around the league. What Orlando is looking to accomplish this year is more focused on player development for sure. There will be a lot of long days ahead and the team is going to have to find victories in little areas as they continue to grow.
The preseason was really just a taste of who this Magic team is. And a lot of it is still under construction. There is still a lot of growing to come from young players and the group will still develop.
But come Wednesday in San Antonio, the games will count. And while the team will not be fully judged by their record this season, how they perform in games will still matter in the long run. Winning still has to mean something.
And, after all, at 0-0, anything is still possible.
The Magic’s preseason games were really a snippet of the team’s potential and the way they will play when the season begins. Still, those early games are a clue to what the Magic will see.
Now that the next time we see the Magic play will be for keeps, there is a lot we have learned. Here are five things we learned from these four preseason outings.
Orlando Magic: 5 takeaways from the preseason
Defensive pressure and identity
When the Orlando Magic hired Jamahl Mosley, everyone suspected he would put an emphasis on the defensive end. That is where he made his mark for the Dallas Mavericks. And while there were some fair questions about how that team fared, people generally believed they got the most from their talent.
There were some eyes rolled at the Magic adding another defensive-minded coach. This franchise is hungry for some scorers.
Then again, the Magic’s roster is built for defense. And many of the key players the team is starting to build around have made their name defensively. It is still a really good place to start for the franchise and for the team.
Perhaps the issue was the Magic’s best defensive teams came from the Stan Van Gundy tree. Both Stan Van Gundy and Steve Clifford preached a more conservative defensive strategy. They were more focused on keeping their man in front of them and avoiding chasing steals or getting out of position.
That is not the Mosley defensive scheme. This is a much different kind of defense. One that he seems to hope will permeate throughout the entire roster.
The Magic were much more physical and into their man defensively, pressuring ball handlers and trying to shoot into gaps for steals. They double and dig hard on the post. Orlando is looking to play an aggressive and energetic style of defense to spark fast breaks and create a different vibe and energy on that end.
This is not the typical strong defense. Orlando wants to use its length and rim protection to pressure and harass opponents.
The results were pretty good.
The Magic posted a 102.5 defensive rating during their four preseason games (that is currently 13th in the league). Offenses struggle in the preseason a lot, so expect that number to rise when the games start to count. But considering the Magic were at 113.9 last season — and 108.3 last preseason — that is quite a solid-looking improvement.
There will still be a lot to work on and improve. The team’s rebounding was very concerning — a 69.1 defensive rebound rate in the preseason is an atrociously bad number — and that led to open threes. The Magic are going to make mistakes within their defensive scheme.
Everyone seems to fit in though and the bones of a good defense are there.
Rookies Jalen Suggs and Franz Wagner were impressive as defenders. Wendell Carter and Mohamed Bamba were both wreckers in the paint as shot blockers and rim protectors.
And this is all also happening without Jonathan Isaac.
The Magic’s defense is energetic and different. They have clearly tried to work to make this their backbone as a way to create an attitude and a swagger on the court. And the team’s success will be built on its defense.
Unlike previous years, this seems like a promising prospect and not just a table to stand on.
Orlando Magic: 5 takeaways from the preseason
Mohamed Bamba unleashed
The Orlando Magic took Mohamed Bamba with the sixth pick in the 2018 Draft.
The team was in a very different place then. The new front office was still settling in and starting to make its imprint on the team. The growing obsession with length made the 7-foot center an easy pick for the team, especially considering center Nikola Vucevic was set for free agency. Nobody was sure if the Magic were going to re-sign him.
The raw Bamba seemed set to understudy for a year and then usher in a new link in the chain of Magic starting centers.
But that did not quite happen. Things changed fairly quickly for Bamba and the Magic.
Vucevic became an All-Star, the team made an improbable 22-9 run to make the playoffs for the first time in seven seasons and Bamba went out just as the team picked up speed with a fracture in his leg. Bamba was a rookie struggling through the league and the Magic ran low on patience to watch him grow.
He struggled then to return from that injury. Just as he seemed to be gaining confidence and getting comfortable, the season stopped because of the COVID-19 pandemic. Then Bamba got COVID and become a long hauler (maybe not clinically) and struggled to rebuild his conditioning to contribute.
Three years into his career, Bamba was still all potential and little proven on the court. And the Magic were sort of running out of time. Clearing the decks and going with a rebuild — in addition to hiring a new coach — gave Bamba a restart.
So too did getting a healthy summer to improve and work on his skills. And the results have been extremely promising for the young center. Bamba has quickly become a really intriguing player.
In the preseason, Bamba averaged 11.5 points per game, 7.0 rebounds per game and 3.8 blocks per game. He shot 54.5-percent from the floor and 41.7-percent from three (a 62.1-percent effective field goal percentage). And he did this all in 20.7 minutes per game and while playing significant minutes alongside Wendell Carter.
Bamba has always put up good numbers when he has gotten the time to play on the court. That has never really been a question about him.
But Bamba was also making plays like this one:
No one has benefited more from the coaching change and this new attitude defensively than Bamba. He is playing a whole lot freer and aggressively. His confidence is through the roof.
Bamba’s play does not seem like the typical heavy-minute stat stuffing. It feels like this is something that is a bit more permanent from him and something he can build on.
Mohamed Bamba’s strong play, alongside a really excellent preseason from Wendell Carter (a team-high 12.5 points per game and 8.8 rebounds per game with a 71.4-percent effective field goal percentage that included an expansion of his outside shooting), has pushed the Magic to experiment with playing the two together.
That may have happened anyway. But Bamba’s really strong play has forced the Magic to make some difficult choices to squeeze Bamba more in the rotation. He earned that and finally looks like the player the team drafted.
Orlando Magic: 5 takeaways from the preseason
Rookies need time
There is understandably a lot of excitement for the Orlando Magic’s future. It still feels like the fan base is buzzing about the selection of Jalen Suggs. It is probably not completely hyperbole to say Jalen Suggs is the best guard prospect the Magic have picked since Anfernee Hardaway in 1993.
With such a young roster and the start of the rebuild, fans are understandably eager to see what their rookies will do. And will undoubtedly nitpick them, especially early on, and think about the players they had wanted in the Draft as they watch them play on other teams.
Those are the kind of expectations put on these young players. Jalen Suggs and Franz Wagner will get plenty of opportunity to play for a team like the Magic that is rebuilding and focused on player development. But it does not mean they are going to hit the ground running.
And the preseason showed that both rookies are still going to need some time adjusting to the league. That is expected. But it will require unusual patience from fans to let these young players grow.
Both Suggs and Wagner had solid moments during the preseason. But there were still a lot of holes as they got used to the NBA game. The world still needs to slow down for them.
Suggs averaged just 5.0 points per game and 3.0 assists per game in three preseason games. He shot only 27.3-percent from the floor and 20.0-percent from deep (a 31.8-percent effective field goal percentage).
Suggs still showed plenty to get excited about. His passing remains a really intriguing aspect of his game and he took to the team’s defensive mentality head first. His play where he dove on the floor twice against the San Antonio Spurs to feed a pass to Gary Harris for a layin. That was not his first bell play during the preseason.
No one will question his work ethic. He just has to learn how to pick his spots and where his shots and opportunities are going to come from.
Wagner too showed plenty of potential as a defender. But his numbers did not look so flattering.
Wagner finished the preseason averaging 4.5 points per game and 1.5 rebounds per game, shooting a 34.8-percent effective field goal percentage. He looked most uncomfortable as the Magic worked on other things offensively and moved him around. His role in the preseason was not really defined.
Still, Wagner looked better as the preseason went on. Comfort was coming very slowly and he started to find his way especially in the win over the Boston Celtics.
It is still clear to see his potential as a defender where he was really good at closing down passing lanes and shooting into the gap for steals. He will continue to get better as he gets experience.
But it was pretty clear that these rookie players were not quite ready to take over the league or take it by storm in this early part of the year.
Orlando Magic: 5 takeaways from the preseason
Pace, Space and the Three
A lot of the attention in the Orlando Magic’s preseason was spent on the team’s defense. This is going to be the backbone for the team and where everything will sprout from. Orlando will go only as far as their defense and defensive energy will take them.
But this is still a very offensive league. Teams will be better offensively once the preseason experimenting and rotations are done. At the end of the day, you have to score. Defense is not enough.
The Magic’s offensive philosophy is still evolving. But it is a much more modern and high-speed offense.
Jamahl Mosley wants his team to pick up the pace and turn their defense into offense. The best offense still comes before the defense gets set.
That is also why he has emphasized what he has called “21-offense,” which means getting into the team’s set and crossing half-court with 21 seconds left on the shot clock.
That is the speed at which Mosley wants everything run. That is a different mindset for sure.
The results in the preseason were decidedly mixed. The team at times seemed to get it and find their groove, spacing the floor and hitting 3-pointers. At other times, the team seemed stuck and unsure what to do when their set broke down.
These are all things Mosley wants his team to experience and figure out. And he seems to be empowering his players to make those decisions on their own and trusting them to make reads and feel the game.
The offense is going to be a work in progress for the team. That is where the team has a dearth of talent at the moment.
Surprisingly, the Magic are last in pace in the NBA preseason averaging 98.6 possessions per 48 minutes.
It should be noted though that most of the players on the floor when the Magic played at their slowest pace were G-League or camp invite players. Among the starters and rotation players, the Magic’s pace ranged from 96.9 possessions per 48 minutes (Wendell Carter) to 104.0 (R.J. Hampton) with a median pace of 100.3 possessions per 48 minutes among the eight projected rotation players.
This is all to say, the Magic could probably look to get more possessions when the season begins. They are looking at a different definition of pace.
Still, that is not encouraging. It suggests the team is not getting out in transition or scoring quickly. They are still working the shot clock down to try to get a good shot — or not getting one at all.
It is not all bad though. Orlando was surprisingly a solid 3-point shooting team. The Magic made 36.6-percent of their 3-pointers (putting them in the top-10 for the preseason) while still shooting a little more than 33 attempts per game.
That jump in efficiency is at least promising for a team not known for its shooting. And it figures to be a key part of the team.
Mosley said the team is still installing offense. So the team will be growing within the offense as the season progresses. There are still finer points to get down.
Orlando Magic: 5 takeaways from the preseason
Experimenting continues
The Orlando Magic have a lot of young players who are still figuring out their place in the league. The team has long extolled its versatility and its ability to mix and match lineups as needed, professing that a lot of players were truly positionless.
Under Steve Clifford, though, the Magic largely held to a tight structure.
Steve Clifford said it pretty clearly himself that he was hesitant to play Khem Birch and Nikola Vucevic together (only doing so because of his affinity for Birch and injuries at power forward to the roster). He said he wanted to keep Chuma Okeke at the 4 for most of his rookie year to try to simplify his role.
That inevitably had effects throughout the roster. The team ended up playing a lot of Dwayne Bacon and the Magic looked pretty vanilla just so they could keep a traditiona lineup.
There is something to that structure. The team needed it and that stability and expectation helped the Magic make the playoffs.
But that is not this team. That is really not this NBA.
Frustratingly, the Magic never tried lineups with Jonathan Isaac and Aaron Gordon playing the 4 and 5. The team never went super small. It was never a full embrace of the team’s versatility.
There is no guarantee that Jamahl Mosley will go that route. But he is willing to try things that seemed pretty difficult to imagine the previous coaching staff trying and is trying to modernize the team and its lineup and rotation decisions.
Playing Mohamed Bamba alongside Wendell Carter might have gotten some eye rolls and skepticism under a Steve Clifford regime — indeed fans hated the Nikola Vucevic/Khem Brich pairing with a passion. But that group actually worked well together. They defended well and they both showed an ability to spread the floor.
That is really a credit to the improvement that both Carter and Bamba put in this offseason. They both got dramatically better in the preseason and that has created more flexibility with the lineups the Magic want to play.
It is always a challenge to play your five best players. That is the heart of the positionless modern NBA. But the Magic seemingly have a lot of options to sort through.
The one lineup we did not see much in the preseason was a three-guard lineup with Jalen Suggs, Cole Anthony and R.J. Hampton. That might be one the team is avoiding until Markelle Fultz is back so the team can have some depth after playing those three guys together — the Magic’s two-center lineup works because Robin Lopez is on the roster.
Mosley is going to settle on a consistent rotation. The team is not going to be constantly changing and shifting things. There is merit in consistency.
But it is also clear Mosley is not going to b stuck to convention. He is going to try different things — look at his aggressive 2-3 zone against the Boston Celtics on Wednesday.
This is indeed a different kind of mindset for the team. But everyone is going to have to wait to see how this firmly and finally shakes out when the regular season begins.