5 Lineup ideas Orlando Magic fans should be eager to see this season
The Orlando Magic have something that is an envy around the league. They have a roster that feels truly versatile. Coach Jamahl Mosley seems only bound by his imagination and what he is comfortable with as he devises lineups and his plans for the 2025 season.
He should be able to adjust to whatever opponents throw at him.
President of basketball operations Jeff Weltman values versatility in everything he seeks. He wants players who can play multiple positions and have the skills to play all over the court. The Magic want to be an amoeba able to adapt and change with everything.
Those are the kinds of players the Magic have drafted and the kinds of players the team is building around. Paolo Banchero and Franz Wagner are do-everything forwards who take on a lot of the ball-handling duties for the team. They can guard any position and play any position on the floor.
This is the Magic's ultimate vision. And because they have that versatility, they can seemingly do anything with their lineups.
Orlando may be stretching those possibilities as far as they can. The team's starting lineup for the 2025 season seems set with Jalen Suggs, Kentavious Caldwell-Pope, Franz Wagner, Paolo Banchero, and Wendell Carter Jr. Even that lineup features plenty of versatility and intrigue.
The Magic are betting on Suggs' growth as a playmaker and creator to anchor the lineup. But no one is pretending that Banchero and Wagner will not be the ones manning the point and making decisions on the ball.
Leaning on your forwards to be playmakers opens up creativity elsewhere. Just like having multi-positional defenders allows flexibility when Jamahl Mosley creates defensive standards and rules. The Magic work because the puzzle pieces are not so rigid, they lock into place easily with any combination.
Mosley may not fully unleash his creativity with some of these lineups. But there are a lot of ideas to explore. And many ideas fans should be eager to see the Magic explore to unleash how flexible the Magic's lineup can be.
5. The "Small" Lineup
PG: Cole Anthony
SG: Jalen Suggs
SF: Gary Harris
PF: Franz Wagner
C: Paolo Banchero
The Orlando Magic's obsession with size creates an exciting prospect of building a "small" lineup. Their "small" lineups are not actually small. It probably entails more than anything of placing Paolo Banchero or Jonathan Isaac at center and trying to get him in the dunker spot or spreading the floor around him with better shooters.
The Magic just do not have any "small" players they lean on significantly. As Jamahl Mosley put it in an interview with Steve Aschburner of NBA.com: "You hope to take advantage of what you have and our advantage is our size. We can size up or size down, and if we happen to size down, we’re still bigger than most teams."
The Magic, in other words, are not going to size down very often. And if they go to smaller lineups, they likely will remain a bigger team than their opponent. That is the power of the versatility the Magic have. And a lineup like this is only one idea to use that versatility.
This lineup specifically played six minutes together in one game with a 100.0/118.8 offensive/defensive rating split. Hardly enough to judge anything. It is something they considered for a bit.
The crux of this idea is Magic fans' fascination with using Banchero at center. According to Basketball-Reference, Banchero played seven percent of his minutes at center last year.
The Magic's starting lineup with Jonathan Isaac in for Wendell Carter played 44 minutes together with a 106.2/101.0 offensive/defensive rating split. A lineup with Cole Anthony in at guard instead of Gary Harris had a 134.8/104.3 split in 12 minutes together.
Those are the only two lineups that would roll over to this year. But the Magic found some success on both ends going small, particularly with Isaac to anchor the defense.
Maybe that takes Banchero off the dunker spot and makes him not the center. But again, the possibilities of moving Banchero around the lineup and creating some matchup advantages—and especially space—for him is exciting.
It is something to explore.