The Orlando Magic’s preseason is over.
That is something that will bring some relief. Even the players were getting antsy for the start of the regular season and the culmination of all of their work through training camp and from the end of last season.
Now the regular season is on the horizon. The Magic will find out just how good they can be as this journey gets set to begin.
The team touted its continuity throughout training camp. But there is a lot that has changed about this team.
The Orlando Magic completed a successful preseason. So what can we make of what we saw in the team’s four warmup games? What feels real and what should we worry about?
The Magic tested out a new starting lineup with Jalen Suggs stepping in as the shooting guard. There is a bit of a new offensive philosophy with the team putting an emphasis on ball movement and passing to much success. And the team continues to test out its versatile defensive unit.
Orlando seems confident and eager to get this thing started and apply what they have learned and grown to the regular season.
What can we make of the preseason then? How do we quantify what we saw? Can we even do that?
The preseason is merely a hint of what we will see when the regular season begins. Markelle Fultz admitted Saturday he was pulling back on his aggression to make sure he got through the games healthy. He certainly tested some things out but the preseason was not the regular season.
Still, the team did accomplish some things. They showed some things that are promising. Just as there are some things that are probably going to fade away.
Everything in the preseason has to be taken with some grains of salt. But they are the only data we have heading into the regular season.
So, again, what did we learn about this team? And where does this team still have some concerns?
For whatever we can learn from preseason numbers, these are the numbers to get excited about and the numbers to be a bit worried about.