The Orlando Magic are a rebuilding team.
There may be changes to the team’s goals as they step up, but they are still a rebuilding team. Orlando is trying to see their young players grow and develop. At the end of the day, that is still the end goal for the team.
Paolo Banchero laid the gauntlet down after he accepted the Rookie of the Year Award, expressly saying he and his teammates believe they should make the playoffs next year. That might have been their ambition from watching the first games of the postseason at the time.
Then again, the Magic were the last team eliminated from the postseason in the Eastern Conference’s regular season. And, if not for a 5-20 start to the season, this young Orlando team was about .500. That was a significant step for the team.
Those in charge of the Magic — coach Jamahl Mosley and president of basketball operations Jeff Weltman — have remained vague on their team’s goals. The mission like it was last summer is to “level up” once again.
There seems to be only one way to go but nobody with any official title is saying the “p” word out loud.
The Orlando Magic organizationally are not putting a clear-cut goal for this team. As new general manager Anthony Parker made the rounds, there is a clear mission statement once again for the young team as they aim to improve.
The message from the front office continues to be that the team needs to play better. This was a message Weltman gave to his team at the end of the season when he addressed the media at exit interviews.
He said the team saw itself take steps toward winning but now the goal is for the team to keep getting better. The Magic want to see if their 29-28 finish to the season can be something they stretch and expand upon into next season.
That is likely what they had in mind when they had a fairly quiet summer. They wanted to give the team a chance to continue its internal development and improvement.
Even though there was some shuffling in the front office, with John Hammond moving to an advisory role and Anthony Parker getting promoted to the role of general manager, the vision seems to be the same.
The mission seems to be the same. The goal this year is simply to get better and allow the young players to get better.
"“I think one of the things Jeff has always done is doing this the right way,” Parker said on In The Zone on 96.9 The Game. “He always says we are not going to skip steps and we are going to grow our guys the right way.“Right now the most important thing that we have to do is evaluate our own roster and see what we have. We have so many young guys who are continuing to take steps in their progress and we don’t really know who we are as a team just yet in terms of how good these guys are going to be. I think Jeff made the right call in terms of continuing to play better basketball.”"
It was not a busy summer in terms of new player acquisitions. It was a summer to try to confirm what the team accomplished through the final three-quarters of last season.
The Magic made two more young player additions by drafting Anthony Black and Jett Howard. Both looked solid in their Summer League debuts. But there will be a learning curve and a deep roster for them to compete with when they arrive for training camp.
They retained Goga Bitadze and Moe Wagner in free agency, also guaranteeing the final year of contracts for Jonathan Isaac and Markelle Fultz. The roster will look really familiar.
The only new veteran addition was the signing of forward Joe Ingles, a veteran sharpshooter who figures to give the team the much-needed spacing it has been looking for.
The Magic’s offseason very much was betting on internal growth and seeing if how the team finished the year was something they could stretch over a full 82-game season.
"“We know that not only every game has a life of its own, but every season has a life of its own,” Parker said on The Mark Moses Show as he continued his press junket. “We know that whatever happened in the past is in the past and we’ve got to earn it every time. You are not guaranteed anything based on past success.“But we believe when we got healthy last year we played .500 basketball. We showed signs of becoming a better team even though we are young. We want to continue to build on that. I think that’s what we want to see this season.”"
The goals seem pretty simple and, per usual for league executives, vague.
The rallying cry to “level up” that started with Jamahl Mosley at the end of the 2022 season and set the standard for a successful 2023 season seems to have carried over.
Everyone sees the potential to do a whole lot more in the near future though. Another season of improvement gives the Magic the chance to use the flexibility they have to do just about everything.
Orlando’s rebuild will continue to be successful assuming the players on the roster continue to improve and get better. That is what the team seems to be betting its immediate future on.
"“It’s an exciting time to be an Orlando Magic fan with Paolo [Banchero] and Franz [Wagner] and a lot of our young players,” Parker told The Mark Moses Show. “As great of a year as Paolo had in year one, he is working like he didn’t have that success. We’re excited to see his improvement from year one. He knows what we’re trying to do.“And coach Mosley and his staff have done a great job of getting all of our players to understand this is a process, that we’re going to level up, that we’re going to continue to play better basketball. Paolo and the rest of the guys understand that. So we’re excited to see what happens this coming season.”"
Everyone is excited to see what happens with this Magic team too. Even if it was a fairly quiet offseason for them.
The goal is to get better. And if the team does that, they will “level up” and into the postseason.