The articles talking about the Eastern Conference list a long group of teams that can contend for the title.
The New York Knicks are the defending champions. The Philadelphia 76ers added Jaylen Brown. The Cleveland Cavaliers will get a full year of James Harden (once he actually signs his new contract). The Boston Celtics have Jayson Tatum back for a full season. The Toronto Raptors added Kawhi Leonard. The Miami Heat finally got their star in Giannis Antetokounmpo.
The Detroit Pistons still won 60 games last year (with Jalen Duren's free agency still pending).
Even among just last year's Playoff teams, there are plenty of stories that have grabbed headlines and attention. The Orlando Magic have been pushed down the pile.
A summer after Orlando's own headline-grabbing move vaulted them into the Eastern Conference conversations, the team is an afterthought. They earned some of it with an uneven 45-win season that ended with them in the 8-seed.
Not even a better-than-expected playoff series has recovered their reputation. That is what losing a 3-1 series lead, including an embarrassing closeout Game 6 loss at home, will do.
Instead, the Magic are facing loads of questions. Almost all of them center on their star player, Paolo Banchero. Every question about a team centers on the star player at the end of the day.
The Magic are anonymous right now. Banchero wants to make sure the team is not forgotten.
"The East is wide open in my opinion — a lot of guys feel that, that's why a lot of free agents are coming," Banchero told Kelly Iko of Yahoo! Sports in Las Vegas this weekend. "But I'm excited and the team's excited. Like I said earlier, last year wasn't what we wanted. It didn't go how we wanted. But a lot of people are going to forget about us and count us out, so it's on us to go and show that we're an elite team in this league. We got a chance to win the East."
Banchero understands that for the Magic to take a leap that he needs to take a leap. He said he was not satisfied with his own season, even if he started to make strides and find himself later in the season. Banchero has his own individual goals.
But he ultimately knows that if the Magic are going to make waves, it starts with him. Orlando needs its star to deliver in a major way.
A new year for Paolo
Paolo Banchero, by his own admission, did not have the season he wanted.
There were a lot of really good things that he did -- averaging 22.2 points, a career-high 8.4 rebounds and 5.2 assists per game. He had a career-best field goal percentage and true shooting percentage. He took fewer of the mid-range jumpers his critics hate most.
Banchero's raw counting numbers were essentially the same as his All-Star 2024 season.
But Banchero is judged most on his ability to lead his team to wins. The team failing to meet its expectations, even with Franz Wagner out for large swaths of the season, became an indictment of him. Orlando went just 26-25 in the 51 games that Wagner mostly missed.
Ultimately, Banchero could not deliver that last win the Magic needed with the Detroit Pistons on the brink of elimination, despite individual brilliance that saw him score 45 points in Game 5 and 38 points in Game 7.
The curse of stardom is that the only statistic that matters is wins. And after three straight first-round exits, Banchero has failed to take the next leap in his game.
Like his team, Banchero has become something of an afterthought. He is not considered a surefire All-Star much like the Magic are considered a team fighting to avoid the Play-In again. It is on him to change that narrative.
Banchero believes he can be among those elite players. He told Kelly Iko that he believes he can be a 25-8-7 player who can do it all for his team.
Like his recovery from the oblique injury in 2025, Banchero turned it up after the All-Star Break last year, averaging 23.6 points, 8.3 rebounds and 5.8 assists per game on 46.7 percent shooting and a 57.7 percent true shooting percentage. He even had a positive plus-minus. The Magic had a +3.1 net rating with Banchero on the floor after the All-Star break.
Banchero is still chasing the promise of his first five games in the 2025 season before he tore his oblique. Everyone forgot how good that version of Banchero was and can be. The Magic are eager to see him get back to that.
And if he can, the magic suddenly become a much more difficult and promising team.
A new coach, a new challenge
The biggest change for the Orlando Magic this offseason was the hiring of new coach Sean Sweeney.
There remains a lot of mystery about how Sweeney will change things for this Magic team. There will still be that focus on defense. But he will bring some new ideas offensively.
And his relationship with Paolo Banchero and how quickly he can help maximize this budding star will be vital to what this team hopes they can do.
Banchero's early conversations with Sweeney seem to have gone well. Banchero said Sweeney visited and worked out with him in Seattle last week. Banchero said he likes Sweeney's direct approach.
"Me and him have really hit it off so far," Banchero told Kelly Iko. "He came out to Seattle last week, worked out with me for a couple days. And obviously we've been working out here in Vegas with the rest of the coaching staff. I'm just really excited about what he can do for me and the team. Like you said, he's a great mind on both sides of the ball. Extremely detail-oriented and he's an intense guy too. And I feel like that's what I need, that's what the team needs. So it's really exciting."
It will be on Sweeney to put Banchero in positions to succeed. But it will still be on Banchero to make the growth into a true star.
If the Magic are going to accomplish the goals they want to accomplish, it will be on Banchero's shoulders. He and Franz Wagner will carry a lot of responsibility to be the team's stars.
Orlando kept its roster together on that duo's unfulfilled potential.
The rest of the league has slept on the Magic a bit. It is on Banchero and his team to wake them up.
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