NBA fans have had to learn a lot of accounting terms this offseason.
The league's new CBA came with new restrictions and spending rules for executives and teams to follow. And since the offseason garners as much interest as the season's results, everyone has been trying to understand these new rules.
The situation for the Magic this offseason was pretty straightforward. They were a cap room team and had nearly $50 million in cap space to spend. There were no concerns about avoiding the apron or much maneuvering to fit players under the cap.
Orlando did end up using extra cap room in a unique contract extension for Jonathan Isaac. And it may be a worthwhile exercise to figure out if the Magic used the room mid-level exception to retain Goga Bitadze.
But that is for the cap nerds. The Orlando Magic were not concerned with the same things that concerned other teams—in fact, the team likely took advantage of those fears to sign Kentavious Caldwell-Pope away from the Denver Nuggets.
If there were complaints about how conservative the Magic were though, it was because president of basketball operations Jeff Weltman knew what was coming. The time for the Magic to have their top players on below-market, cost-controlled rookie contracts was coming to a close. The team's payroll is about to balloon.
The Magic may have avoided these early discussions about the apron and the new rules governing the salary cap. But that will not last forever. That day may be coming sooner than expected.
The apron and the salary cap come for everyone. Even Weltman knows it.
While the Magic bet on continuity this offseason—bringing back most of the team's own free agents—they know their time to do that will come to a close. This is a luxury they have for now. But tough decisions are on the horizon. The realities of the league's new cap rules come for everyone.
"I've always said to you guys continuity is only valuable if your team is winning," Weltman said when the team introduced Caldwell-Pope before Summer League. "There's no sense in continuously bringing back the same guys if it's not working. We do feel like we have landed on a good group of players who fit on the court, off the court.
"With the new CBA being what it is, that's not going to be able to hold forever and we are going to have some hard decisions to make. Where we can, we like to bring back familiar faces who know one another, who understand the commitment, dedicated to making each other better and focused on winning."
Orlando stuck with continuity in large part because the team is successful. The team has taken steps forward year over year, going from 5-20 in 2023 to a 34-win season and then expanding to a 47-win season and a Playoff berth last year. Weltman did not see a need to change course.
But even success will not keep the team together and Weltman can acknowledge that too. This summer needed to be spent preparing for a future where the Magic are a tax team.
The CBA comes for everyone.
Orlando Magic's window to spend has closed
The Orlando Magic know there is a small window here to compete and spend money to set their contracts up for the future. It may make Orlando more active in the trade market now that it has exhausted its free-agent capital
A sure sign of this was the decision to give Franz Wagner a max contract now rather than wait until next summer and perhaps take another swing at free agency.
Then again, Weltman has warned of the team's future before. He knows the bills are coming due with Jalen Suggs set to earn a contract worth well more than $30 million per year and Paolo Banchero set to get his own max deal next summer.
Orlando is going to have to be creative to keep the roster together. And it has to have faith that it is investing its resources in the right core group in Banchero, Wagner and Suggs.
That is why doing creative things like the extension for Isaac—a five-year, $85-million renegotiate-and-extend deal that will reportedly bring his salary to $25 million this year before dropping to $15 million and $14.5 million in the next three seasons with injury guranatees baked in.
The Magic used their offseason to set up their books for when the team faces a different cap reality and they may bump up against the apron (even with the increase in the cap coming with the impending NBA TV rights deal that will increase the cap by 10 percent for the foresseable future).
The Magic's summer was as much about aligning those books as it was adding talent to the roster.
"This is a unique situation where we just happened to have the cap space to be able to do something like we did with ," Weltman said after announcing the extension. "Because as I've told you guys, this new CBA is going to be restrictive for everybody. It's coming at everybody. To be able to try to re align the existing contracts so you can set yourself up to face that is part of what we hoped to accomplish this summer."
The Magic appeared to accomplish that goal. They should be better positioned for trades and to move around without using cap room. They created enough flexibility to plan for their future.
Orlando has $164.4 million in salary committed to the 2026 season (including Cory Joseph's second-year team option). The cap is expected to be $154.6 million.
The Magic will be over the salary cap (but likely beneath the projected tax line). And this is before Suggs' contract extension would push the Magic into the tax.
This is where the Magic are expected to exist for the foreseeable future. If Orlando wanted to be conservative this offseason it was to prepare for this reality they are facing financially.
Magic fans did not have to learn about aprons or any accounting this summer. But every team is going to deal with these realities and salary cap structures sooner or later. That is the reality of the new NBA.
The team had to be creative to keep the roster together and prepare for the spending spree to come. They will have to continue to be creative—and take some risks—to keep improving the roster now that their time for spending in free agency has passed.