The Orlando Magic will face a lot of questions this season.
Injuries defined the last two seasons, but it is also made clear there are shortcomings. Fans have put their focus on Jalen Suggs and Wendell Carter as places for the team to improve.
The Magic have held onto both, trying to give their starting lineup a chance to play together at long last.
It also helps that Jalen Suggs and Wendell Carter are two of the team's best and most consistent defenders -- along with Franz Wagner, who should be getting far more recognition for the All-Defensive team.
In the last two years, Carter has been a surprising rock of health. And while there is plenty of focus on his offensive inconsistencies, Carter does most of his work quietly as a defensive anchor for the team.
He remains a vastly underrated defender and key part to this team. It is amplifying his quiet game that has been the sticking point for this team.
But there are plenty who have noticed the quiet ways he anchors this team:
"I think he's so good positionally," Sam Vecenie said on Game Theory's ranking of the best defenders in the league, where Carter received an honorable mention. "He's so good at using his lower half and his frame to push guys out of positions that he doesn't want them to be in. He's really good at angling his body. It's more like the work he does before the ball gets there to move guys out of position that I think is really solid. And he has really good footwork on the perimeter. He's not the quickest guy in the world but he really understands how to use angles. I think Wendell Carter is really underrated."
Sam Vecenie's co-host, Bryce Simon agreed, saying that Wendell Carter was a big reason for Jalen Duren's struggles in the Playoffs. He was a rock defensively throughout.
The issue for Carter is that his defense is not loud -- the opposite problem with Suggs, who is constantly making eye-popping defensive pays.
Carter does his work early and rarely gets stats tracked for that early critical work of pushing a player off his spot or being there to challenge shots constantly.
Carter remains a vastly underrated defender and key to the Magic's defense.
A quiet defender
When most people think of the best defensive centers in the league, they mostly think about the high-flying shot-blockers and rim protectors. They make loud plays at the rim and gobble up rebounds en masse.
That is certainly a big part of the job.
Some of the best defenses are built around funneling players to centers who can protect the rim or deter shots and recover to their man to get rebounds. It remains a big question facing Wendell Carter.
Carter is certainly not one of those players. He averaged only 0.6 blocks per game last year and he has not averaged more than a block per game since his rookie season.
Additionally, Carter only grabbed 7.4 rebounds per game last season. His career average is 8.1 per game.
The Magic were still one of the better defensive rebounding teams in the league, ranking fifth in the league with a 71.0 percent defensive rebound rate. But it remains an open question whether Carter can anchor the team at the highest level.
But Carter makes up for lacking in these loud plays in so many other ways. He indeed does his work early to gain position and force players into uncomfortable positions. His defensive foundations are strong.
The Magic had a 111.3 defensive rating with Carter on the floor, 2.3 points per 100 possessions better than the team's average and trailing only Jalen Suggs and Goga Bitadze among regular rotation players.
This is consistent across years too.
In 2025, the Magic had a 107.8 defensive rating with Carter on the floor, 1.3 point sper 100 possessions better than the teams average. In 2024, the team had a 109.6 defensive rating, 0.8 points per 100 possessions better than the team's average and the best among the team's centers.
According to data from Synergy Sports, Carter rated above average defending the ball handler in pick and rolls (83.6 points per 100 possessions, placing him in the top third of the league), isolation (83.2 points per 100 possessions, placing him in the top 30 percent in the league) and post-ups (94.5 points per 100 possessions).
That versatility and ability to defend the perimeter is what makes him so valuable. The Magic could pressure ball handlers more or switch Carter onto them and have him hold his own.
That Wendell Carter defended the roll man roughly the same percentage of the time that Dennis Schroder defended the roll man speaks to how much Carter can deter interior passes. And how much that can disrupt opposing offenses.
Carter has proven his worth on defense in ways that a lot of people do not always readily recognize.
The quiet part out loud?
The question for Wendell Carter remains translating this into a clearer and bigger impact.
Undoubtedly, Wendell Carter's tough defense on the interior and positioning made it difficult for the Detroit Pistons to get Jalen Duren going. Neutralizing the Detroit Pistons' All-Star center was essential to the Orlando Magic having a chance in that series.
That is where the numbers often hide. The Magic were at their worst defensively with Carter on the floor for the entire series -- a byproduct of the Game 6 and 7 disasters. Playoff numbers can be deceiving because it is the best players against the best players so often.
Even through five games, the Magic had an otherwise solid 107.0 defensive rating with Carter on the floor. More important, in the first five games of that series, the Magic had a team-best 113.2 offensive rating with Carter on the floor.
Carter clears the path for others to succeed on defense by being a backstop and being able to pressure the ball from the center position or keep other big men off the glass. But the quiet part remains that Carter's offense is the key to unlocking much more in his game too.
With Sean Sweeney joining the team and the Magic expected to play a higher pressure style, Carter's versatility and ability to defend the perimeter will be key to the team's ultimate success. That is a big part of the Magic's thesis and roster construction.
But Carter's play needs to be a bit louder to pull everything together. The foundations are strong, Carter must grow from them.
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