It is August and optimism about the Orlando Magic and their future is easy to find at this point.
That is a good thing. Everyone should believe how good this team can be.
If there is something that can give everyone optimism it is that the pathway to make the Play-In Tournament is not an overly difficult one. Climbing from the bottom of the conference to the middle of the pack just takes the right spark.
Staying there is another story entirely.
The Eastern Conference is more competitive than ever as the Orlando Magic look for their place ahead of the 2023 season.
Adding to the intrigue is teams are just better and smarter about rebuilding. There are few teams in the Eastern Conference that are just out and out bad. There are reasons for all 15 teams in the Eastern Conference to believe they are capable of making the play-in tournament at least. That is if everything breaks right.
And for the teams that this dream is a bit far-fetched, they are at least teams that should be looking ahead to their future. Not a team that is muddling at the bottom or sinking (there might be one team there that is asking real questions about its future and its overall direction).
The Eastern Conference is as competitive as it has been in recent history. This is not the days of the early 2010s when LeBron James ran roughshod over the conference for the decade with naysayers claiming the East just parted like the Red Sea for him.
That is not the case. The competition is fierce and rising in the standings is not going to be easy. It will not be a one-year ticket either (probably).
The Eastern Conference is tougher. And while everyone should have outsized beliefs in what they could accomplish this season, some team is going to disappoint just as much as some team is going to surprise. Someone is going to settle into the bottom of the standings.
The Orlando Magic are a team that is in the middle of all of these interplays.
Nobody will consider the Magic a title contender — even the most optimistic (or reasonably optimistic) fans — but there are certainly enough people who think this team has postseason potential. That may be a dream, but it is one the team should realistically aspire to.
The reality is the Magic are likely going to sink near the bottom of the Eastern Conference standings. That is what everyone expects from them. And that might be the realistic situation for the Magic.
Still, Orlando is optimistic about what it can accomplish in 2023 and what the team can learn. There is a path for the team to climb the Eastern Conference standings — even with the difficult start for the Magic to the season — but the Magic are still near the bottom of the Eastern Conference ecosystem.
With the offseason mostly done and thoughts turning to the 2023 season. It is good to look at how the Magic fit into the Eastern Conference at this moment.
Preseason Eastern Conference Power Rankings
Title Contenders
It is hard to start anywhere but with the defending conference champions.
Despite some obvious flaws that popped up during the course of their playoff run and certainly in the NBA Finals, they still did the job. The Boston Celtics beat the defending champion, Milwaukee Bucks, in the conference semifinals and outlasted the tough Miami Heat, in a bit of revenge for their 2020 Eastern Conference Finals loss.
The Celtics have their stars in place with Jayson Tatum and Jaylen Brown. They have a clear defensive identity with their ability to switch 1 through 5 even while pairing their two big men in Al Horford and Robert Williams. They are defensive terrors with their length, versatility and smarts (including Marcus Smart).
Boston did not rest on its laurels this offseason either.
The team went out to solve some of its offensive shortcomings, grabbing Malcolm Brogdon from the Indiana Pacers and Danilo Gallinari from the Atlanta Hawks. Both should give the Celtics some needed shooting and the ability to play small.
Boston did not sacrifice much defense and returns all of their rotation players. There is no reason to think the Celtics cannot make another deep playoff run.
The Milwaukee Bucks were probably stewing all offseason thinking of what could have been.
If Khris Middleton does not get injured in their first-round series with the Chicago Bulls, the outcome of the NBA in 2022 might have been very different. Even without Middleton, the Milwaukee Bucks took the Boston Celtics to seven games and had a chance to close out the series at home in Game 6. Milwaukee ran out of steam and Boston was finally able to bottle up Giannis Antetokounmpo.
The Bucks did not get the chance to defend their title. Doubt their ability to bounce back at your own risk.
Milwaukee has perhaps the best player in the league still in Antetokounmpo. And the team certainly has the continuity factor playing in its favor. That is more than enough to get the team into title contention yet again.
The Bucks return virtually every player from their roster last year — notably re-signing Bobby Portis. But they lost some key role players in the process. The team added Joe Ingles, who should be a great cultural fit. But he will be out until at least the winter or spring recovering from a torn ACL.
The Bucks should still be considered a top contender. But the team may not be one of the top seeds as they pace themselves again through the season.
Preseason Eastern Conference Power Rankings
More Title Contenders
It is impossible to ignore the star power in the league. And that is what is going to keep the Philadelphia 76ers in title contention. And with a full season with both stars in the fold to build around, Philadelphia knows it has to be now or never for the group.
The Sixers’ experiment pairing James Harden and Joel Embiid had some solid results even if they came late in the season and with Harden still getting himself back into elite playing shape after his time in Brooklyn.
Philadelphia knows its window is open right now. And the Sixers need to strike. But they have to find a balance too. Embiid is an MVP candidate right now and this team should be accomplishing more.
The 76ers will have to do better figuring out how all their pieces fit together with the solid scoring they usually get from Tobias Harris and the upstart point guard play they get from Tyrese Maxey fitting in with James Harden’s heavy iso ball.
Adding De’Anthony Melton and P.J. Tucker will help with the team’s shooting problems. But Philadelphia probably needs some more effective role players to get into the title picture beyond their stars.
The Miami Heat are feeling a lot of disrespect this offseason. And this ranking is not going to help matters.
The Heat were an Eastern Conference finalist that came a Jimmy Butler 3-pointer away from their second finals in three seasons. They were the top seed in the Eastern Conference last year.
Yet, nobody is talking about them as a potential title contender this season. They seem to be an afterthought throughout the Eastern Conference.
Some of that is they have not done a ton of heavy lifting this offseason — acquiring Donovan Mitchell or Kevin Durant might change that. They lost a key defender in P.J. Tucker this season. And Jimmy Butler and Kyle Lowry showed some of their age last year.
The Heat culture is a real thing. And Miami should be good enough to compete at a high level just based on that. The Heat pick their players carefully and everyone seems to fit in to their roles perfectly. They have great role players who step up at the right moments.
But everything still centers around Butler and his stardom — he just knows how to step up his play in the biggest moments. And the team needs Bam Adebayo to be a much bigger player to take those important next steps.
Preseason Eastern Conference Power Rankings
Vying for their Spot
There are four clear title contenders in the Eastern Conference. The teams on the outside of that top four are still very good, but likely are not ready for real contention. Whether those teams are thrilled to be in this position is another matter.
We will give the Atlanta Hawks the nod for being fifth just outside those top contenders because they have the most reason for optimism that they are on the rise.
Atlanta took its struggles following their Eastern Conference Finals run in 2021 and made some real and major moves to improve. The Hawks get the award for most substantial offseason move in the conference.
After watching some of their veterans begin to age out and watching defenses — the Miami Heat in the playoffs especially — just wear down Trae Young with his high usage rate, the Atlanta Hawks got him a starring secondary ball handler to relieve the pressure on Young.
Dejounte Murray was an All-Star last year for a middling San Antonio Spurs team. He is a great playmaker and scorer. He should be able to help Young work more off the ball. They still have a great pick and roll center in Clint Capela who should give the Hawks plenty of space to attack.
Success for Atlanta will come down to the development for young players like Kevin Huerter and De’Andre Hunter. And John Collins’ health will be key to giving Atlanta some more versatility.
This is a solid team that is due to bounce back and be a real player in the East again this year.
What to make of the Brooklyn Nets right now?
This is team turmoil in the NBA with frustrations over Kyrie Irving’s unwillingness to get vaccinated while Irving acted like a martyr derailing the team’s 2022 season. The frustration bubbled over that it cost the team James Harden. And now Kevin Durant has requested a trade and even reportedly asked for Steve Nash’s dismissal.
The whole future for the Nets is in flux.
It is unclear what the Nets will do. And what to expect from Brooklyn this season.
The Nets are in a holding pattern and their supporting cast and team are still wholly reliant on their star players playing and buying in. It is going to be a zoo for Brooklyn for a while.
Still, there is no denying the talent. Durant is one of the five best players in the league. Orlando Magic fans do not need to be told what Irving can do when he is on a roll. And Ben Simmons is still a really good player despite his playoff shortcomings.
The Nets can still contend if they come together. But that feels like a long shot.
The Toronto Raptors are the team that will not die. Ever.
Like the Miami Heat, they have a culture that just works. Everyone understands their role and everyone plays it extremely well. It is hard to find fault in the Raptors.
Pascal Siakam is just a solid player who put up some quietly solid numbers throughout last season as the Raptors rallied to make the 5-seed last year and avoid the Play-In Tournament.
With Fred VanVleet, the Raptors have another great scorer. And Toronto should feel like there are endless possibilities with Rookie of the Year Scottie Barnes.
There is something to work with here for the Raptors. And Toronto is the kind of team that can make the mix work.
Still, there is not the upper-end talent to compete for a title. Not yet at least. Barnes could certainly change things. But Toronto is a solid team that will be in playoff contention and likely surprise everyone with where they ultimately finish.
Preseason Eastern Conference Power Rankings
Young and On the Rise
The Orlando Magic should have one kind of goal this year. It would be to be considered in the class of the teams in this tier of the Eastern Conference.
They want to be a young team on the rise. Maybe not quite a contender yet, but a team that is clearly on the rise thanks to internal development and the chance to add things in free agency or trades.
The Orlando Magic want to be this year’s Cleveland Cavaliers. They want to be the team where all those young players suddenly coalesce into a playoff appearance complete with a budding young All-Star and a rookie on the rise.
The Cavaliers, to their credit, did not overreact to their playoff appearance. They may be expecting the come-to-earth moment this season as they deal with expectations. They stayed patient to foster their team.
The biggest question hanging over them now is whether they can bring back Collin Sexton — it is increasingly looking like he might come back for the qualifying offer and a chance to prove himself for free agency next summer.
The Cavaliers have a dynamic guard and center duo in Darius Garland and Evan Mobley. And that is the start for everything. Like Orlando, Cleveland will spend this season seeing how far that group can take them and learning what they need to surround their young players with.
If there is a team that could be poised to make a big leap this season and finally break through to the next tier, it is the Charlotte Hornets. And it is not just because they are a dark horse to land Donovan Mitchell if the Utah Jazz ever trade him.
LaMelo Ball’s arrival has pushed the Hornets into the Play-In Tournament the last two seasons. This team has been knocking on the door. And the trio with him, Terry Rozier and Gordon Hayward have helped produce one of the best offenses in the league.
The missing ingredient has always been the team’s defense. It just was never consistent enough.
Enter Steve Clifford.
As Orlando Magic fans well know (and Charlotte Hornets fans know too), Clifford is a master at teaching and preaching defensive discipline. All of his teams have found success as a top defensive team. And he is a master at building foundations for teams to make that breakthrough into the postseason.
What Clifford has never had is a strong offensive outfit — even when he muscled Kemba Walker and All Jefferson into the postseason and even with an All-Star year from Nicolas Batum adding to that.
This very well may be the most offensively talented team Clifford has coached. And if that adds well to Clifford’s defensive acumen, this could be a team that surprised.
There are things working against the Hornets. Miles Bridges was a big part of their surge the last two years. He remains unsigned and his status uncertain after he was arrested and charged with assaulting and battering his girlfriend. It is a serious situation that should not be reduced to basketball alone.
But the Hornets are down that big piece on the court. That may be one of the biggest things holding them back from being a clear-cut team on the rise.
Preseason Eastern Conference Power Rankings
The Chicago Bulls are not likely to finish as the 10-seed. Some team above them on this list will not meet their expectations and a team like the Chicago Bulls will be able to keep their spot.
The Bulls should be in the playoffs and they have the talent to make the postseason at a minimum. Nothing else should do.
But there is a general lack of excitement for what the Bulls did this offseason. They brought back Zach LaVine which was the big goal for the offseason. So it was mission accomplished for Chicago.
And the Bulls were in a good spot in the standings before Alex Caruso’s injury and Lonzo Ball’s injury derailed their season and had them falling to sixth.
Caruso eventually came back and gave the Bulls that defensive guard presence they needed. It is not clear if Ball will be 100 percent for training camp. That is a massive loss.
The Bulls are a top-heavy roster with Zach LaVine (who played the back half of the season with an injury) and DeMar DeRozan carrying a lot of the offensive load. Nikola Vucevic had an up-and-down season and seemed like the odd man out all of a sudden.
Goran Dragic was a quietly solid free agent acquisition. But if the Bulls deal with injuries then they could see a similar fall.
Remember, Orlando has Chicago’s pick in the 2023 Draft. And the Bulls, despite plenty of talent and a pretty sure spot in the postseason, could easily fall off.
But Chicago should be spending this season figuring out what its ceiling is and being aggressive to take advantage of what is left of some of the team’s aging veterans. Otherwise, this just feel slike a talented group that tops off at a first-round exit.
The Washington Wizards are a team that is extremely tough to figure out.
Bradley Beal is an All-NBA talent who has ended up carrying an unhealthy load. He seems like the next big player to ask for a trade and the Wizards are the next team that just decides to hit reset.
Yet, Washington has pushed its chips in repeatedly. The team grabbed Kristaps Porzingis at the trade deadline last year to give Bradley Beal a running partner. The Wizards were 7-10 in games Porzingis played. But he was clearly working his way back to game shape. And Beal was out of the lineup once Porzingis arrived.
Washington has not really seen Porzingis and Beal together. It at least promises to be an interesting combination if both players can stay healthy.
Adding guards Monte Morris and Will Barton in a trade with the Denver Nuggets were good additions. Washington got more spacing. The Wizards have some interesting players they could make work and they should believe they are a playoff team.
They just have to be healthy, which is the big question for this group.
So. . . what are the New York Knicks?
They are probably the one team in the Eastern Conference that is more confusing to figure out than any other.
They threw the bag at Jalen Brunson this offseason. And while Brunson had an incredible postseason and is a good scorer. It still seemed like a steep price for him. He is probably still a bit of a limiting player to build around.
Sure, Julius Randle was a big part of the Knicks’ surprising run to the 4-seed in the 2020 season. But he came crashing back to Earth last year even with some pockets of his All-Star level of play.
RJ Barrett is the brightest spot on the team. He finally seemed to peak through and play the star level that many believed he could reach. But even he seems to have some limitations at this point in his career.
New York should still view itself as a playoff team. But this is probably not a team getting out of the first round. And the Knicks should be too good to tank — not that this is something the franchise wants the team to do.
Tom Thibodeau will have this team playing defense at a high level regardless. And this team could easily put things together — we did not even mention Evan Fournier, Obi Toppin or Immanuel Quickley as solid rotation players due for better seasons. But, yeah, this is a bloated middle and the Knicks could be sinking again.
Preseason Eastern Conference Power Rankings
The Bottom with Hope
Usually, the bottom three teams in the conference are thinking about ping pong balls. Usually, they are doing it even before the season starts. And in the back of their mind, they may already be pondering the 2023 NBA Draft as part of their plans.
Yet, the teams at the bottom of the Eastern Conference seem to have direction. And all three of these teams we have left to discuss can all believe they are capable of making the playoffs even if they ultimately understand they are likely to settle at the bottom of the standings.
The Pacers seem like the likeliest candidate to sink to the bottom. Indiana seemed like the team finally submitted to a rebuild.
But this is still a Rick Carlisle-coached team. The Pacers should still defend well and be competitive. Organizationally, Indiana does not believe in tanking and they have personnel and staff that are not going to let this team slip to that reality without a fight.
They have some solid young veterans in Tyrese Haliburton and Buddy Hield and Myles Turner. All three can catch fire and carry the team to a better record than anyone expects.
Newcomer Bennedict Mathurin was a fantastic pick-up in the draft to add another scorer.
What Indiana lacks right now is depth. If anyone gets hurt, the whole thing might topple. And the Pacers might well decide to further dive into a rebuild with other trades down the line.
But the Pacers have a good place to start. And that franchise is rarely down for long. If this is a down year for them, it is not likely to last long.
An Orlando Magic blog is putting its team in the penultimate spot in a conference power rankings. Before the homers come with their pitch forks, let’s be clear that I am still really optimistic about this team. I think the Magic could easily outperform their expectations and make a playoff push if everything comes together.
I could easily see the Magic falling just short of the Play-In Tournament and finishing ahead of teams like the New York Knicks or Washington Wizards. I could easily see this team finishing alongside teams like the Cleveland Cavaliers and Charlotte Hornets. As I mentioned, the Magic’s pie-in-the-sky goal is to reach the level those two teams hit last year.
It should be clear from reading how quickly things can tip one way or the other that the difference between a disappointing 25-win season and a surprising 40-win season is not very much. It is a little kick of confidence, a hot streak at the right time or one player taking an unexpected step forward. Just as a bad injury or a player regression can send a team tumbling down the standings.
We do not know what the season will hold or which teams will rise or fall.
It feels like the Magic will be a team on the rise. They should improve from their 22-win season last year.
But the reason Orlando is sitting at the bottom of these power rankings is twofold.
First, the Magic are still an incredibly young team. There is a lack of certainty of what they can do.
That does not damper the optimism that comes from the growth of young players like Franz Wagner or Paolo Banchero. But nobody knows what anyone will get from these players.
The uncertainty of youth is why nobody is willing to bet on this team making that leap, even if they acknowledge it could. If Banchero arrives and is a superstar from day one, that changes everything. But nobody can say for sure he will be that kind of immediate impact rookie.
Second, the rest of the Eastern Conference just seems to be a lot smarter. There are few teams seemingly on the decline — the New York Knicks especially stick out like a sore thumb, but the Chicago Bulls are in a weird spot too.
Overall the competition in the Eastern Conference is just a whole lot better. And that is going to make it tougher to climb the ladder.
But the difference between teams in the middle of the conference is not going to be great. And it will not be difficult for the teams at the bottom like the Magic to climb up that rung.
Someone has to be last. That is kind of the lesson of this bottom rung of the Eastern Conference. Everyone has a reason to be optimistic and excited about their future and barring a complete collapse or development regression, these teams are not going to be too upset with how things shake out.
The Detroit Pistons are not going to be a bad team. They have a lot of reasons to be excited — most of it centering around Cade Cunningham but a special shout out to Saddiq Bey. There is something to build in Detroit.
But the Pistons are even younger than the Magic somehow. At least all their key players are.
Detroit has a great collection of prospects — the Jaden Ivey and Jalen Duren picks were great additions from this year’s Draft. Signing Nerlens Noel was a good veteran addition to shore up the defense (although it clutters the center position with Isaiah Jackson there in addition to Jalen Duren).
The Pistons have the making of something.
But, honestly, the Detroit Pistons seem like a bigger mish-mash of players and talent than the Orlando Magic are. The Pistons have Cunningham which is a great start, but there is not a lot of depth or veteran leadership. It is just a lot of young players that are still going to seek direction.
The Pistons got the No. 1 pick a year before the Magic, but it still seems like they are trying to figure out which direction they are trying to go.
Orlando is too, but Orlando seems to have more pieces solidly in place. It would not surprise me if the Magic are in the playoffs ahead of the Pistons. Not that the Pistons cannot make up that ground quickly.
But it should show how exciting it is for the league that the “worst” two teams in the Eastern Conference have a lot to be excited about in the short- and long-term.