Healthy summer will be key to successful 2024-25 season for Jonathan Isaac

Every summer for Jonathan Isaac for the last five years has been full of questions.

The biggest question, of course, being: Will he actually play?

Isaac's odyssey to recover from a torn ACL in the Bubble in 2020 has been a long one. But the 2024 season saw him finally put those injuries fully behind him.

The team still limited his exposure and limited his minutes and appearances in back-to-backs. But he made it through the entire season and was a key player in the team's push to make the playoffs and in the playoffs themselves.

The question for Isaac now that he had put those injury questions behind him was: What is next? Perhaps, more importantly, the question was whether he could scale up and be something more than a quick defensive chaos engine.

It certainly seems like the Magic are planning for Isaac to play a major role in the 2025 season and their future plans. And Isaac is certainly eager to answer some of those questions.

Isaac has spent most of his summer in Orlando training. And that might be the most important thing this summer for him.

For the first time since 2019, Isaac is using his summer to train and work on his own game rather than in rehab some knee or leg injury that slowed him down. That is something that had Isaac excited for his summer as he recently shared on a short episode of Magic All-Access last week.

"This is my first real offseason without an inkling of an injury, fill in or rehab," Isaac said. "I'm excited about that. I've been working hard, spending time with the guys before Summer League. I went to Summer League."

It has indeed been a long time since Isaac could claim to have a real offseason.

He tore his ACL in the Bubble in August 2020 and missed the entire COVID-shortened 2021 season. He was making progress to a return in 2022 when he suffered a setback that required surgery on his left hamstring.

Isaac did not return to the court until Jan. 23, 2023. He played 11 cautious games before his hamstring flared up. He needed what was deemed "minor" hamstring surgery in the wake of that cameo, spending another summer rehabbing.

Isaac was healthy enough to start the season. But the Magic were understandably cautious throughout the season.

Still, his 2024 season was a success because he made it through, appearing in 58 games with two starts and averaging 6.8 points per game in the regular season.

Isaac made a clear impact for the team too, widely recognized as the best per-minute defender in the league (perhaps a back-handed compliment acknowledging how little he played at 15.8 minutes per game). The Magic had a team-best 102.1 defensive rating with Isaac on the floor, more than eight points per 100 possessions better than the team's already sterling average.

By the end of the season, the Magic were stretching Isaac's minutes and experimenting with where to use him in their lineups. That culminated with Isaac starting the first two games of the playoffs at center (an experiment that may not have worked, but showed the team's confidence in his abilities).

The more Isaac they could get the better. And that certainly seems to be the approach the Magic want to bring to this upcoming season. It is one of the great unknowns what Isaac will bring because it has been so long since he had a healthy offseason to improve his play.

The last time Isaac was fully healthy during an offseason was after the Magic's run to the 2019 Playoffs. Isaac was having a career season and was on his way to an All-Defensive team showing before he injured his knee (a lateral corner injury, not the ACL injury) on Jan. 1. It is likely Isaac was ramping up to return to the court before COVID shut the season down.

In the 2020 season, Isaac averaged 11.9 points, 6.8 rebounds, 1.6 steals, and 2.3 blocks per game. As a starter for that playoff-bound team, Isaac was everywhere.

That season included some of the best games of Isaac's career like his near 5x5 against the Dallas Mavericks when he had 13 points, 10 rebounds, five assists, four steals, and six blocks.

That season also included one of the best offensive games of his career when he scored 25 points and grabbed nine rebounds for an undermanned Orlando Magic team against the Indiana Pacers.

Both of those games were a long time ago. But it was clear seeing the leap Isaac made between his first fully healthy season in 2019 and his season in 2020 where his scoring went up and his defensive impact became much clearer.

That is what a healthy offseason can do for a young player.

Everyone, including probably Isaac, is wondering what a healthy offseason will do for him this time.

Isaac has gotten better in a lot of respects, but he just has not had time to cement any gains. As he said, he has spent most of his offseasons just trying to get his body healthy so he could be ready for training camp.

Now there is no doubt Isaac will be available for the start of the season. There is no doubt that Isaac will play a big role for the Magic this season—just check the five-year extension he signed this offseason.

The exciting prospect is: How much better will Isaac be able to get with a summer to focus on his play rather than his health?