Orlando Magic players giving better injury updates than the team

The number one question Orlando Magic fans ask is about the injured players.

President of basketball operations Jeff Weltman spelled it out during media day as clear as anything else. Part of the team’s goal is to continue developing their young group of players — they have certainly done that with the fits and starts that come with young players.

The other goal was to reintegrate injured players into the fold. There was no hiding how important Jonathan Isaac and Markelle Fultz are to the team’s future. They are the long-term contracts remaining on the roster and the foundations for the team.

Orlando was going to be patient to get them back on the roster and healthy. But their returns are a big part of the season.

Everyone is just wondering when that is going to be. Everything centers around that question.

The Orlando Magic remain quiet about the long-term recoveries of two key players. That silence has frustrated a fan base trying to piece together this team’s future.

And it remains a question the Magic are not going to answer. They continue to deflect any questions about a return and management will not put a firm timetable on when they will be back on the court.

Everything is just a guess on fans’ parts.

Whenever Jamahl Mosley is asked about their progression — like during the team’s recent homestand — he will merely say they are progressing through their rehab. Otherwise, the team has remained silent.

The only updates anybody has gotten have come from stray comments from teammates. And two trickled out in the last week.

The Orlando Magic Pod Squad asked Wendell Carter how both Jonathan Isaac and Markelle Fultz are looking in practice during an episode recorded last week:

"“Markelle has been in a couple of the practices with us, kind of just running through plays and doing some defensive things with us,” Carter said during the episode. “He looks good. That’s someone when I got traded to Orlando, I was looking forward to playing with just from what I have heard about him and when he was playing what I saw from how he played. That was one guy I wanted to play with at some point.“JI is also doing a fantastic job. He’s always in early in the morning before we even get there. Before our practices, he is already on the table getting treatment on his knee, lifting and doing all that stuff. He looks good.“I feel like when those two get back and they get into game shape, that’s not going to happen overnight, once we get everybody back like E’Twaun and MCW it will definitely shake some things up for sure.”"

Fultz has been more public with some of his recovery.

He was caught on the court during training camp and filmed at least going through a shooting and driving routine with some padded contact. That was more than a month ago now, it is not clear how much further along.

Fultz told Luke Hetrick of Spectrum Sports 360 he expected to be cleared for contact sometime in November. That would likely give him some ramp-up time to get back on the floor. It is still pretty safe to say Fultz will not be back until Christmas.

Fultz tore his ACL in January 2021. So it has not even been a year since his surgery. Even on the Magic’s conservative recovery scales, Fultz is probably still on course.

Isaac is a much different story. While he has been observed on the court, he has not been seen doing tons of drills. And the questions about Isaac and his recovery have only increased.

Isaac had his surgery to repair a torn ACL and meniscus in August 2020. It has now been well longer than a year since Isaac’s surgery. It does not seem like he is any closer to returning.

Everything feels like speculation on his return. But Michael Carter-Williams, himself recovering from offseason surgery with no firm timetable for his return, added some fuel to the fire on the Players Only NFT Discord when he left this comment:

That at least puts a date to things. It feels like Fultz and Isaac will return around the same time toward the end of December or early January. But who knows if it will come sooner.

That is just pure guessing at this point without any idea where either player is in their recovery or what they are doing. Isaac at one point before the season said he was finishing around the basket and doing shooting work. That is all anyone knows from him.

The Magic are fine holding a policy not to put timetables on player recoveries. It is their philosophy to avoid putting pressure on players to return by a certain point. That is certainly acceptable and reasonable.

But especially considering how important both Fultz and Isaac are to the team’s long-term future and how vital their returns eventually will be to the success of this season, it has been frustrating to operate without much information.

Even an update similar to the one the Golden State Warriors gave on Klay Thompson or even the updates the New Orleans Pelicans gave on Zion Williamson would go a long way to satisfying fans eager for information and restore confidence in the direction this team is going.

As bad as the news might be, even an admission of a setback (if there was one) would go a long way to building that trust for the fans and relieving the pressure of people asking when these players might return.

When there is an information vacuum, it is easy for bad information to fill the gaps. Fans will certainly go grasping for whatever information they can. And the lack of information has only added to the frustration as fans wonder what is really going on.

And the losses — especially frustrating ones like the two over the weekend — only add to some of the urgency and desire to know when these players will return.

There is a lot of frustration waiting for these players to make some significant progress. Or at least to acknowledge the progress they have made.

It all might be moot. The squabbles and frustration of how long it took or when these players come back will not matter once they are back on the floor. And that will almost assuredly happen.

Then again, having to qualify that as “almost assuredly” is not exactly the most confident thing to say. But that is all anyone has to hang onto for now.