The big day has arrived.
All the questions and anticipation for the upcoming season are finally getting put to the court. The Orlando Magic will be working and preparing to show their fans and the world what this team is about and what this team is capable of.
The expectations for this team are pretty palpable. A lot of Magic fans believe this team has the beginnings of something that could end up with the team in title contention in the very near future.
That is still several steps away. This season is about the young roster continuing to get better and learning how to win day in and day out.
The Magic are not competing for championships this year. This year is about making the postseason and giving the team a chance to grow and learn. It is about figuring out what the team needs in the long run.
The first step of that is training camp.
Training camp is the first big step for the Orlando Magic in this much-anticipated season. But the next week and preseason will go a long way to answering some key immediate questions.
As coach Jamahl Mosley told Dan Savage of OrlandoMagic.com, the Magic are expected to be fully healthy when training camp begins Tuesday. They will also bring back virtually every player from last year, losing only back-end rotation players in Bol Bol, Admiral Schofield (moved to a two-way contract so still with the team) and Michael Carter-Williams.
That is not a guarantee that everything will just roll back into what was successful last year. Orlando still has to rebuild roles and find out which combinations and players work best together. But it does give the team a solid baseline to grow.
The Magic were essentially a .500 team after Dec. 7 last year. That means the team has some things that work and plenty of areas it can still improve.
Training camp and the preseason will be a good time for this team to experiment some with the team’s lineups and find the right rotation and playing groups that will ultimately help Orlando accomplish its goals at the end of the season.
The place to start then is the immediate questions the team faces entering training camp. There are still plenty of things to sort out. And finalizing some things heading into the start of the regular season will be key for this team to get off to the good start it needs.