Who is Anthony Black?
Even after two seasons in the NBA, this has proven to be a difficult question to answer.
The No. 6 overall pick of the 2023 Draft has shown plenty of flashes of the kind of player he can be. He is already an excellent defender, especially for a player of his age. That fits right in with the Orlando Magic.
But his offense can be wildly inconsistent.
Some nights, he is a confident attacker and driver and hits his threes. On other nights, he stands in the corner and is not super involved. He is tentative and hesitant.
Black is a potentially season-changing player. His defense is legitimately strong for a young player. He has a place in the NBA. But the Magic are betting big that he is about to find some consistency.
That could be the difference for the Magic climbing into title contention.
Black finding his place is one of the central stories for this upcoming season. And it is a critical season for him to do so as he becomes extension-eligible next summer.
With his rookie contract running out, Black needs to define what kind of guard he is.
And, at this point, nobody has a firm grasp of it.
"Is Anthony Black an on-ball guard or an off-ball guard," Sam Vecenie asked on a recent episode of the Game Theory Podcast. "That's my big question right now. Is he a tweener right now? I mean tweener negatively not positively. There is a difference between being versatile and a tweener. I haven't really loved the on-ball stuff yet."
The Magic are set up to lean into this "tweener" aspect of Black. They signed Tyus Jones to run point guard off the bench alongside Anthony Black. He may not be the lead guard. But that creates a host of other problems.
Black on the ball
Anthony Black was drafted to be a point guard. The appeal of taking him sixth in the Draft was that his size would give him an advantage not only on defense, where he showed plenty of aptitude, but also on offense.
The joke is often the Orlando Magic draft players for their size. But they saw the potential of having another jumbo-sized ball-handler to add to their group that featured a 6-foot-5 Jalen Suggs and 6-foot-10 Paolo Banchero and Franz Wagner.
Black has not quite worked out that way.
According to Basketball-Reference, he played only 60 percent of his minutes at point guard last season (and 68 percent his rookie year). That is fine, he was playing a lot of minutes with Cole Anthony. But it was not as much as you might think -- only 395 of his 1887 minutes (20.9 percent) last season.
Even accounting for that, Black still played like a point guard. He was fourth on the team in touches per game with 49.4, trailing only Banchero, Wagner and Suggs. Black was playing like a lead guard, even if he was not attacking like one.
To that point, then, drives are typically the dominion of the stars and the point guards. Black was fourth on the team with 7.3 drives per game, trailing the big three and Anthony in that category.
He scored 3.8 points per game off drives (fourth on the team) and shot just 42.7 percent on those plays, according to data from Second Spectrum. That is hardly impressive.
Additionally, the team ran 3.8 pick and roll possessions with Black as the ball-handler, according to NBA.com's tracking stats. The Magic scored only 0.68 points per possession.
It is one of the areas that Black is so inconsistent.
He is not a super-effective driver or passer when he is on the ball. But because Black is still a wildly inconsistent three-point shooter -- 31.8 percent last year and 33.3 percent on 1.8 attempts per game on catch-and-shoot threes. It is hard to find a place for him off the ball.
The Magic are still hunting for the best way to use him and help him grow.
Black needs to find consistency
This season, Anthony Black is hunting for some consistency. Because there is something to work with there.
It is not just that he is an excellent defender. He can work in faster-paced offenses and is extremely effective in transition -- he scored 1.12 points per possession on 1.2 transition possessions per game, according to NBA.com's tracking stats.
When Black is on, it is truly transformational for the team too.
There is a strong correlation between Black's performance and wins too.
Last year, Black averaged 10.7 points and 3.3 assists per game while shooting 40.8 percent from three in 39 wins. He averaged 8.1 points and 2.9 assists per game while shooting 21.7 percent from three in 39 losses.
Black's shooting is quite literally a swing statistic for the Magic. Orlando was 18-5 in games where Black shot 50 percent from three.
This season, the Magic are trying to insulate Black a bit. They have another lead guard in the lineup and an excellent passer to handle some of the half-court decision-making and plays that Black has struggled to make early in his career.
But a lot is still riding on Black. The Magic want to see him blossom in his third year.
That is important for figuring out his future with the team, too. His contract extension is looming this summer. It is hard to get a sense of what his extension might be or what the Magic would pay him.
They need more data.
This is a season to get that data and get a better picture of what Black is and how he fits into a team that is trying to contend.
This is the season to figure out who Black is and can be.