2023 Orlando Magic Player Outlook: Jeff Weltman is making final evaluations

Orlando Magic president of basketball operations Jeff Weltman is well known by now for his patience and his ability to work quietly and efficiently.

He arrived in Orlando five years ago and kept things mostly the same, including the coach. After a failed season there, he changed coaches but left the roster largely untouched.

A stroke of genius pushed a veteran team into the back end of the playoffs and raised some hopes for a turn toward contention with a team from the middle.

With the team stalling in 2020 to a second straight back-end playoff spot and then bottoming out in 2021, he made his big move to restart the franchise. All the old stalwarts from the previous seven years were shuffled out and the team started fresh.

There has always been some frustration with the speed Weltman went and how he waited and watched his team grow and develop.

Weltman has done well to bide his time and avoid the common mistakes rebuilding or middling teams get into. He preserved his assets and draft capital and stocked his roster with team-friendly contracts. When the Magic are ready to strike, they seem positioned to do so.

The question is when? When is that time for Weltman?

The Orlando Magic have continued to build with patience. With the first pick in town and a young roster growing, the time for patience is ending. This is a season for evaluation for Jeff Weltman and then an offseason for action and improvement.

This is perhaps the essential question Weltman is having to answer.

The Magic fan base is excited about the young group it is building — and even through a frustrating 1-7 start, there is a lot for fans to be excited about beyond this season. But that patience and trading on vibes will only last so long.

If the Magic have a goal or something they need to examine as they move through the 2023 season into their future, it is beginning to move from the asset accumulation/development stage and into the team-building phase to round out their roster and get ready for real competition.

Weltman has proven good in his five years of managing his assets — despite what one bad Internet poll might suggest, the Magic have done well to manage their contracts even if there are still questions about injuries and talent acquisition and development. Everything is open to them from free agency to trades to the draft. The Magic can pick their path to add players and shape their roster.

Now comes the far harder part: Establishing a true culture that is built toward winning and building and shifting the roster to help the team win.

If there is a goal for Weltman this offseason it is to identify not only the stars the team will build itself around and the identity it wants to build but the players who fit that vision and what skills the team needs to add.

Early in the season, it already looks like he has hit a home run in drafting Paolo Banchero. Franz Wagner has looked much improved. Injuries have provided an incomplete picture through eight games, but the team’s length has slowly been unleashed and has shown promise.

The Magic should not expect a complete picture. But this season should paint a picture of what should come next. Orlando should be able to know where it should go next.

Barring the team suddenly becoming instant title contenders — it is not looking that way with this 1-7 start and 0-6 in clutch situations to start the year — change is going to become necessary.

What Weltman needs to evaluate and learn is what changes and which players the team needs to acquire moving forward. This is a final year of evaluation before the team begins thinking more clearly about how to step forward and really compete for a Play-In or Playoff spot.

This season, the Magic will be at a point where it has to make things happen.

Weltman was content to let the team figure itself out this year. This will be another year of observation and development. All the while, the team remains poised to make a big move when it feels the opportunity arises.

Weltman took the massive cap room he had in a bad free agent offseason and preserved it for another year, building an environment for young players to get their opportunities even if they were too young to take significant steps toward the postseason.

That has been a decision that merited some criticism but still serves the purposes for this season of growth. But it is not something the team can repeat.

The lack of veteran leadership (noting of course Gary Harris has been out the whole season so far) has been something hurting the team as they try to finish games.

So has been the lack of skilled shooters. It is easy to see the Orlando Magic continuing to have faith in their own three-point development but also to be hunting for the same kind of opportunity the Detroit Pistons used to grab a veteran shooter like Bojan Bogdanovic.

It is too hard to predict what the future will hold. And more problems will surely arise and become apparent as the team develops this year — creating a running checklist for the team to resolve in the future.

If they develop on the court the way the team hopes, the Magic will show signs of what they can become and the holes the team needs to fill and develop will become clearer ahead of the team’s offseason.

It is then impossible to evaluate Weltman for this season until we see what he can do next. His hardest work has been done already — he has entrusted Jamahl Mosley to develop and grow this young team as its coach, he selected Paolo Banchero with the top overall pick and he has assembled a forward-looking lineup fo skilled bigs to build around.

Of course, already it is clear how young this roster is and how much more seasoning it is. It is also clear its lack of shooting and consistent offensive push or depth will be its undoing, at least until its young players mature.

The question then is what Weltman will do next. And this season is a setup for that.

Weltman’s time for evaluation is coming to a close. And soon the Magic will have to be aggressive to make moves to make its roster better. There will be no more sitting and waiting for things to develop anymore.