The best news before training camp: Orlando Magic are completely healthy

The Orlando Magic are a team that people around the league are kind of quietly talking about.

Nobody is ready to pull the trigger on calling them the next it team. Certainly, few are willing to pull the trigger on saying the Magic will be the surprise team in the Eastern Conference. They have them in the running and the conversation, but it sure feels like everyone thinks they are a year away from that big breakthrough.

Take the conversation on Sports Illustrated’s The Crossover podcast from earlier this week where Chris Mannix suggested the Magic could be a team that surprises the league the way that the Sacramento Kings did last year.

Of course, the one warning on all of that was the dreaded phrase, “If they are healthy.”

That was the warning put on everything. We spent an entire offseason coutning stats from Dec. 7 to the end of the season, cutting out the first 25 games when the Magic were without Markelle Fultz and Cole Anthony for the majority of that time (they both retruned from their various injuries after 20 games).

Orlando has a ton of talent that is still trying to come together. The team just needs to be healthy.

The Orlando Magic prepare to start training camp with the best news possible. The team is fully healthy as they start their journey in the 2024 season.

So take this as the best news anyone could hear a few days before training camp:

Everyone on the Orlando Magic is healthy entering training camp, as coach Jamahl Mosley told Dan Savage of OrlandoMagic.com. This may require all kinds of knockings on wood to get to Tuesday and the start of training camp and beyond Tuesday to the start of the regular season on Oct. 25 against the Houston Rockets.

Still, this is the most welcome news for a franchise that has dealt with tons of injuries the last three seasons. And could help the Magic get a leg up on the gains the team expects to make this season.

"“Since I’ve been here, we haven’t had [health to start the season],” Mosley said. “It’s a beautiful thing to be able to walk out on the floor and say everyone is going to be a full participant in our training camp. Obviously, there’s nicks and bruises – nobody goes through a season without bumps and bruises. When you get to the postseason, everybody has something going on. But I think right now, it’s such a wonderful thing to be able to go into camp knowing that we have everyone competing at every spot healthy.”"

There is obviously a long season ahead. And the Magic will deal with their share of adversity. It is still incredibly rare for a team to get through a season with several players playing 80-plus games.

But to get the baseline and start training camp with everyone available will go a long way to building the bonds and the consistency needed to succeed this year.

The team will not be playing catch up with any players or players will not be trying to learn by watching rather than doing in camp. It will give the Magic the strongest possible base entering the season. It will allow the team to have the competition internally that got decided by default or figured out mid-season.

It will give Mosley the chance to mix and match and experiment with lineups before the season starts. He will have a better idea of which groups work and what his rotation should be entering the season.

That is simply something the Magic have not had.

Last year, the Orlando Magic had the second-most games lost due to injury with 255, according to Man Games Lost, trailing only the Miami Heat. In 2022, the Orlando Magic lost the most games to injury with 449, 48 more than the second-place Indiana Pacers.

Mosley has rarely had a fully healthy roster. And he certainly has not had it as he prepared his team for training camp. That will be a big boost.

Because once the Magic did get some semblance of health last year, Orlando was pretty good.

After getting Markelle Fultz and Cole Anthony back on Dec. 7 until the Magic were eliminated from postseason contention, the Magic went 29-25 with a +0.5 net rating that included the seventh-best defensive rating in the league at 112.9 points allowed per 100 possessions. After Wendell Carter returned to the lineup on Dec. 23, the Magic went 22-24 with a -0.5 net rating.

And of course, in the time Jonathan Isaac was part of the lineup from Jan. 23 to Feb. 23, the Magic went 8-6 with a +1.3 net rating with a 110.3 points allowed per 100 possessions.

That is a small sample size. But it represented the healthiest the Magic were all season. Imagine if Isaac and everyone else had a full training camp to get down the basics of the offense and defense.

That is the part that is missing for Orlando.

Of course, it is easy to carve up a season into any bit you want. The task ahead of the Magic is to play for a full 82-game season. That is the work the Magic are trying to put in and trying to build. And that will take weathering whatever injury storms might come.

There are a lot of players — from Jonathan Isaac to Wendell Carter to Markelle Fultz — who have to prove they can make it through an entire season and prove they can help their team win during the entirety of the season.

But the team is going to start on the right foot. The team is going to have everyone available to open training camp. That is all anyone can ask for to get things going and start the competition and building it will take to get this team to the postseason.