Entering the season, the Orlando Magic had hope.
The top overall pick in the draft will do that to you. But expectations were low. The team has just won 22 games and while there was still a lot of young talent, nobody knew how it would come together.
All anybody wanted to see from this young team was the direction the Magic were planning to go. A clear vision for the future.
After a 5-20 start, it was not clear what this future would be. It was not clear if Orlando had a set future.
After a 29-28 finish and a 34-48 season, a 12-win improvement from last year, the Magic seem to have clarity of purpose. They were not eliminated from the postseason until the final week of the season and talks of making the playoffs and postseason do not seem unrealistic. They were not unrealistic even within the course of this season.
The Orlando Magic turned in a successful season that pointed toward the team’s future and potential. Now comes the hard part: building on it and turning this team into a playoff team.
The Magic’s season was a huge success. It is one that has left the team eager for its future.
The Magic have an exciting offseason ahead to retool and add talent to a young roster blossoming into serious playoff contention for the foreseeable future. The team can go in several directions based on the amount of draft capital, cap space and young prospects with significant market value.
Nothing is guaranteed though. And as good as this season was, it still left the Magic short of the postseason.
So what happens next? Where do the Magic go? And what does Orlando have to do to get to that all-important next level?
Orlando has several questions to answer this summer to determine what the roster will look like heading into next season. The Magic are already putting in the hours and the work to figure out how to make their team better and make the postseason.
As the offseason begins, the Magic are putting behind their successful season and gearing up for a bright future. But one they have to make.
5 questions for the Orlando Magic’s offseason
1. What is Orlando’s biggest need for their roster?
The Orlando Magic have a pivotal offseason to further cement themselves as future contenders with the clear intention of making the playoffs next year.
The team should have its entire core returning, plenty of cap space to add to that group and potentially two lottery selections in the NBA Draft. There are going to be plenty of avenues to add to this team.
The biggest area Orlando can look to improve this offseason is long-distance shooting.
Internal development will help the Magic shoot the ball better, and this young team will continue to emphasize shot improvement through the summer. From the 2022 season to this season, the top six returning players in minutes all improved their three-point percentage.
That is a great statistic to show that the roster is growing together and cohesive confidence is building.
This is also a testament to what Paolo Banchero has done as a rookie providing more open looks for his teammates and the defensive tendencies opposing teams apply to force Banchero to pass the ball. Banchero’s growth as a shot maker and distributor will be well anticipated.
The Magic were 24th in the NBA in three-point percentage standing well below the league average of 36.1 percent. On top of this, the team takes the fourth-fewest amount of threes per game. Orlando does not take threes, and when they do, they are not capitalizing.
As the game continues to modernize toward the three-pointer, the team needs to continue to add shooting internally but also on the market and draft this offseason. The three-pointer is an offensive creator as it opens the middle of the paint for drives from Markelle Fultz, Cole Anthony and Jalen Suggs.
Orlando needs a player who can create some gravity, sucking the defense in to open shooters on the perimeter or keeping help defenders glued to their man from deep to open driving lanes to the basket.
If the top six Magic players improve their three-point shooting next season, it will drastically improve a stagnant offense. Orlando’s offensive rating ranked 26th based largely on the team’s lack of shooting.
We will see what Orlando does this summer, but shooting is the priority need for this roster looking to create serious noise next season.
5 questions for the Orlando Magic’s offseason
2. Is Gary Harris’ starting job in jeopardy?
Gary Harris had his best three-point shooting season in his nine-year career, shooting a blistering 43.1 percent from three this year. He helped space the floor for the starting unit and averaged the most threes attempted per game for the Magic.
But heading into his 10th NBA season, is he the frontrunner to start at shooting guard next year?
If president of basketball operations Jeff Weltman and general manager John Hammond want to give one of their younger players the starting job to take a leap, then he can be replaced. And most pundits would say the Magic need to upgrade at shooting guard with a player who can get himself more involved and shoot a bit more — Harris averaged only 6.4 field goal attempts per game, the lowest since his rookie year, although he took 4.5 3-pointers per game.
The Magic need some volume and a bit more from that shooting guard spot. Thus it seems to be the one starting spot that is up in the air this offseason.
Cole Anthony and Jalen Suggs are first-round selections who fit the age of the young starting unit and had great finishes to the season.
Anthony started to truly blossom as a sixth man, averaging 15 points per game while shooting 41.8 percent from three after the All-Star break. That is the highest percentage on the team during that span.
He also saw an increase in his assists and rebounds per game in relation to the rest of the year while playing similar minutes. Could Anthony replace Harris as a fourth offensive option who can create for himself and others while being an excellent catch and shooter? It is definitely possible.
Suggs also saw the game slow down for him in the second half of the season. Injuries have derailed Suggs’s ability to find a shooting rhythm, but he played 19 of the total 23 games to finish the season.
Earlier in the year, Suggs would hesitate when he had open shots and instead take one or two dribbles for mid-range jump shots. In March, he began to take three-point looks with confidence, and he was knocking them down to finish the season.
He finished averaging 36 percent from three while taking 3.9 per game and had several stand-out performances. Not only was Suggs’ shot falling, but he was noticeably more comfortable and patient while on the floor.
Suggs did an excellent job creating space on fast breaks to finish at the rim. He commands the ball on the break and pushes the pace which creates opportunities for himself and teammates. Suggs also used his dual-athlete skills as a former quarterback and found his teammates in the open floor for passes and lobs for layups and dunks.
Suggs has only played a total of 101 games so far in the NBA. Technically he has only played enough games for a full rookie season and 23 percent of a sophomore season.
His career has been a roller coaster of ups and downs based on injuries that have hurt his growth. As a former 5th overall selection, Suggs might impress in training camp to force coach Jamahl Mosley’s hand to start him.
He has found his niche as an elite perimeter defender in his sophomore season, and if the organization feels he can take a large offensive step in his third year, then he could very well be the starting shooting guard next season.
5 questions for the Orlando Magic’s offseason
3. Will the Magic use both of their first-round picks?
The Orlando Magic are likely to have two lottery selections in the 2023 NBA Draft thanks to the Nikola Vucevic trade with the Chicago Bulls two years ago. If the Chicago Bulls are unable to climb into the top four in the Lottery, the Orlando Magic will get the pick to complete the trade.
The team now can reap the rewards of a stellar trade made by the front office, but does the team have enough space on the roster for two incoming lottery picks?
The Magic have the sixth-best odds to win the Lottery and a nine percent chance to win the Lottery. The Bulls sit at 11th-best with a 1.8 percent chance to win the Lottery. Orlando will be looking to capitalize on these valuable assets.
But the roster is full of young talent and it feels like a large portion of the roster has established roles. It is hard to see the team adding more rookies to the mix with the ambitions the team has for next season.
Orlando has nine players who are younger than 25 years old and were former first-round picks, while Caleb Houstan was the 32nd pick last season. The roster is full of players who were highly touted coming into the league. They are all looking to make their mark on the team and the Magic usually want them to have that opportunity to do so.
Fortunately, the team will have options in the upcoming draft. They can look to draft developmental talent who will not be able to play immediately, or they can look to draft players who the team envisions as upgrades at their positions.
The team will have the decision to determine whether to decrease minutes for current players or look to bring in prospects who need more polish to their game before seeing the NBA court consistently.
The recent budding relationships with NBA teams and their G-League affiliates make this decision easier. Teams can have their young stars play in the minor league to become comfortable with the relative speed of the NBA before earning significant minutes under the big lights.
Not only does the current roster already have talent, but free agency is also coming. If the front office wants to bring in some veteran talent to offset the youthful roster then that continues to shrink available minutes for incoming rookies.
The question is all predicated on how the lottery shakes out. If the team stays right around their projected selections, they could use both picks to trade up if they love a prospect higher up on the draft board.
If they strike lottery luck and move up in the draft, the team could stand pat. There are a lot of avenues the team can explore on draft night, but again, this is all predicated on the lottery.
5 questions for the Orlando Magic’s offseason
4. Which players are on the bubble to make the team?
Orlando has several players on the roster who have had up-and-down seasons with inconsistent playing time. This is largely due to injuries but also a young team experimenting. There just is not time for everyone. R.J. Hampton was already a casualty of this roster squeeze. The Magic simply cannot play everyone.
The Magic have at least three incoming players if they keep their draft selections and have the fourth-most cap space in the NBA with potentially $37 million to spend this summer (more realistically, it will be in the $23-25 million range for free agency).
Chuma Okeke has seen his role diminish from a primary scorer to an out-of-rotation player throughout his Magic tenure. There was excitement surrounding what Okeke could turn into after an impressive rookie season, but other players have outperformed him in the last two seasons.
He has dealt with a slue of injuries, but the former 16th overall selection has yet to carve out a role while incoming players such as Bol Bol, Moe Wagner and Caleb Houstan have earned rotation minutes.
Hopefully, Okeke can turn his career around, but it will be difficult to crack the depth chart moving forward with Orlando. The Magic might prefer to use his roster spot for new talent with a different skill set.
Bol Bol set the NBA on fire at the start of this season averaging a career-high and taking advantage of his opportunity on an injury-plagued roster. His skill set of ball handling, outside shooting, finishing and passing at his size was an exciting development for the young player.
He was finally starting to see significant minutes and the once top-5 projected NBA prospect was showing what he can become. But his defense was impossible to ignore and once his shots started not falling, and his minutes significantly decreased.
If the front office wants to capitalize on Bol’s value as a tradeable asset, this would be the offseason to do so. Young teams could take a flier on his to see if his midseason regression was a result of his first full NBA season. Orlando has depth at the forward position so this could be a deal to prevent a logjam.
Goga Bitadze was impressive in his 17 games in pinstripes playing as the backup center. He did a great job defending the paint and playing through others on offense, but his finishing and jump shot still need work.
Bitadze is a former first-round pick. But clearly, the big man lacked market value as the Indiana Pacers had to waive him for a cost-cutting trade.
If the Magic feel that they have seen enough through those 17 games to determine they can upgrade the position, then they can look elsewhere as his contract is fully non-guaranteed.
Kevon Harris had an excellent season with the Magic. In his first full NBA season, he played in 34 games and hustled every second. He is 6’6 and strong so he can defend using his size and is a great rebounder as well.
Harris was always exuding energy when in the game and shot 37.2 percent from behind the arc. Out of the Magic players who played at least 34 games, he was second on the team in three-point percentage behind Gary Harris.
Harris is a true professional and never knew when he would be playing on any given night, but he gives his all. He is already 25 years old so the Magic might look to move on from him to find a younger player for their two-way roster spot. Harris though is on the second year of a two-way contract so his role will remain limited if he stays with the team.
5 questions for the Orlando Magic’s offseason
5. Which positions can be upgraded to bolster the roster?
The Orlando Magic have most of their positions solidified for next season. The team can upgrade four positions and provide depth throughout for a long season ahead where the expectation is to compete at a high level with the NBA’s best.
Four starters — Markelle Fultz, Franz Wagner, Paolo Banchero and Wendell Carter — are nearly guaranteed to keep their spot for next season. That leaves only that second guard spot open to debate.
Gary Harris was excellent this season. And he has a young guard in Jalen Suggs nipping at his heels for more minutes. But if the team wants one spot to improve, Harris can be pushed to a bench role. This is the clearest area for an upgrade for the Magic. It is ripe for an addition.
Harris is still vital for this team that is lacking shooting, but starting shooting guard can be a spot that is upgraded through free agency if the front office wants to address the team’s biggest need.
Orlando has other depth issues at the wing to solve too.
At the end of the season, rookie Caleb Houstan took on the role of the backup small forward and played well. He plays within himself by reducing turnovers, cutting without the basketball; and shooting in rhythm.
He contributes while on the floor, but he averaged 3.8 points per game in 15.9 minutes per game.
Orlando needs more offensive threats and has several top-10 prospects coming into the draft who are wing scorers. Houstan will stay with the team and have opportunities to find himself back in the rotation, but backup small forward seems like a position the team can look to upgrade via free agency or the draft.
The same could be said for the backup power forward spot. Especially if Jonathan Isaac remains an unreliable option.
Moe Wagner and Bol Bol split time at this position, and while both had their moments, the position can be upgraded. Wagner will likely be retained based on his energy and relationship with his star younger brother, but his minutes could be reallocated.
Wagner shot 31.3 percent from three this year which is well below the league average. The roster has limited shooters in Markelle Fultz, Jalen Suggs and Paolo Banchero, so surrounding them with floor spacers to give them the ability to create should be important.
Wagner can come into training camp next season to compete at the position if he re-signs and Isaac should be returning from a left-torn adductor muscle. Isaac will look to cement himself in the bench unit.
If the team wants to bolster the position, they can look to add a new player to split time with Isaac who is a better offensive player than Moe Wagner.
That is not the only frontcourt issue.
The Magic moved on from former sixth overall selection Mo Bamba as he failed to take the next step to stardom that was expected when he came into the NBA. The position has been temporarily filled by Goga Bitadze, but he should not be the answer for the backup behind Wendell Carter.
Orlando should look to add depth at the position with shot blockers who can also stretch the floor. Bitadze shot 16.7 percent from three in his Magic tenure and averaged less than a block per game. He was impressive for a late-season addition. But for a team looking to compete for a top-8 seed next year, he should not be the answer.
The Magic have quite the to-do list before October, but the team has options to put together a sustainable and exhilarating team for years to come.