Rebuild Retrospective: Orlando Magic

Let there be light

Mar 13, 2024

When does this story start? Perhaps in June 2009, when the Dwight Howard-led Orlando Magic beat LeBron James and the Cleveland Cavaliers in the ECF and made the franchise’s first NBA Finals since 1995.

No, that’s not right. That team was great though. I wonder what Skip 2 My Lou is up to these days.

Maybe the story starts in 2019, when Orlando made it back to the playoffs after a six-year hiatus.

No, no, I don’t think that’s quite it, either. That playoff run was more like a slow walk.

Maybe it starts last week, when the Magic took possession of the East’s fourth seed with just over a month of regular season basketball left.

Shit, no, we went too far. That’s closer to the end of our story.

Ok, ok, I know when to start. March 25th, 2021.

I. End of an Eh-ra

March 25th, 2021 was a busy day: a big ship got stuck in the Suez Canal, the US mourned victims of a mass shooting (no, the other one… no, the other one… no, the other one… forget it) and Nikola Vucevic was traded to the Chicago Bulls after spending more than eight years in Orlando. In return, the Magic picked up two first-round picks and young center Wendell Carter Jr— who Chicago coveted, but had to include in the deal to entice the Magic into giving up Vucevic, who was in the midst of an All-Star campaign.

This trade didn’t catch anyone by surprise. Prior to 2020-21, the Magic were allegedly “trying to win” by cobbling together rosters led by Nikola Vucevic, Aaron Gordon and DJ Augustin then telling head coach Steve Clifford “that’s basically an NBA roster, go win.” That didn’t work, because— respect to those three players, two of whom are still quite good— obviously that would never work.

Orlando won 42 games and 33 games in the two seasons prior to 2020-21, respectively, making the postseason both of those years but never having a realistic shot of advancing past the first round. Essentially, there wasn’t anywhere for Orlando left to go with the roster it had. We had seen the peak, and it was underwhelming. This era of the Magic scrapped on defense and played clean basketball under Steve Clifford, but simply didn’t have enough talent to compete with great teams. So Vucevic, the team’s leading scorer, was—somewhat anticlimactically— gone.

About an hour and a half later, Gordon was gone, too, shipped off to Denver in a trade that would shift the NBA’s landscape pretty significantly, but we’re not here to talk about the Nuggets! We do that enough every other day!

How did Gordon feel about being traded from Orlando?

"There's been times where I just expressed my frustration to management. Frustration with the losses, the injuries, the way we've been playing and how many losses have accumulated over the years. So it's just my frustration kind of boiling over, I would say. ... I think a lot of people share that sentiment with me, of frustration."

Well, ok. Not great for the Magic. “Accumulated losses” is kinda the motto of the Orlando Magic franchise from the minute Dwight Howard left in 2012 until, like, last Wednesday. I can’t stress enough how bleak things were for Orlando at this time… and for the eight years leading up to this moment. This story will eventually have a happy ending because, spoiler alert, the Magic are good in 2024, but for that ending to feel monumental, we must understand how much of a disaster this franchise was throughout the 2010s.

From 2012 to 2021, the Orlando Magic made the playoffs twice, winning two total playoff games. In those nine seasons, the team won 50+ games zero times, 40+ games one time, and 30+ games three times. In nine seasons. Do you know how hard it is to win under 30 games six times in nine seasons? Hard!

May 16, 2021: Ok, we’re jumping forward a few months. (Don’t worry, we didn’t miss much.) The Magic lost 128-117 to the Philadelphia 76ers in their season finale, mercifully completing the franchise’s eighth losing season in nine years. Orlando finished 21-51— and 6-21 after the trades— but at least, and at last, the team had a real direction. The direction was going to be down, down, way down into the dirt for a few years because the team traded away all of its best players mid-season but that’s— at least theoretically—better than winning around 28 games every season. Going forward, the losing would be productive losing as opposed to… whatever the hell was happening in those past nine seasons.

Fans talk about being stuck in mediocrity like being a fine team is a fate worse than hell. I tend to disagree with that idea—there’s nobility in being a solid team year in and year out— but Orlando wasn’t even fine during this stretch. They were at least pretty bad every year, making the Gordon and Vucevic trades very necessary.

II. Starhunting, Part One

Finding a cornerstone, franchise-changing, All-Star talent is the ultimate goal of a rebuild. You tank for the star. You gather assets for a chance at getting the star.

Orlando didn’t find that player in the summer of 2021.

But it found two players who will both be of incredible importance to the team’s long-term success in their own rights. A versatile, athletic forward in Franz Wagner who provides secondary ballhandling chops with weird, exciting driving abilities, and the team’s Resident Dawg, Jalen Suggs, who became an energy-setter from day one.

Orlando drafted Suggs fifth and Wagner eighth in the 2021 Draft.

The importance of hitting on these picks cannot be overstated. These two selections— the ladder of which came from Chicago in the Nikola Vucevic deal— were the first returns in the Magic rebuild. The instant scales on which to weigh the legitimacy of this rebuild, with the power to potentially tip it one way or the other. Getting these picks right could mean the onset of something more promising than scraping by for 30 wins a year.

Orlando got both picks right. The players selected directly after Suggs and Wagner? Josh Giddey and Davion Mitchell, one of whom is struggling to keep his starting spot while the other is fighting for minutes on a nightly basis. Phew.

The margins are where rebuilds either surge forward or collapse into dust. When there isn’t a superstar available to pluck off the vine, when a team and front office have to actually do the work—those are the moments that make or break a team building towards contention. Orlando knocking these picks out of the park is a massive catalyst for why the young Magic are so ahead of the curve on their rebuild today. Because even if Orlando gets the star player that every rebuilding franchise needs— and the Magic do, eventually get that player— that doesn’t mean much if he’s surrounded by lost causes.

III. Still Bad, But it’s Fine Now

The 2021-22 Orlando Magic were bad. Awful, really. Second-to-last in points per game, third-to-last in net rating, 22-60 record. It was ugly— but it was ugly with a purpose. Year one of any rebuild is going include some nasty basketball, so looking for rainbows among the storm is the only way to keep sane as a fan.

There were a few rainbows!

Wendell Carter Jr, who Orlando acquired from Chicago in the trade, posted 15.0 points and 10.5 rebounds per game in his first full season as a Magic, showing quickly that he’s a quality starting center in the NBA.

Franz Wagner flashed some starpower his rookie season, enough to earn him a fifth place finish in Rookie of the Year voting. Jalen Suggs struggled to score efficiently but his understanding of the game and defensive instincts were impressive enough as a rookie to give fans confidence about his career prospects.

Also, first-year head coach Jamahl Mosley gained the respect of his peers and buy-in from his players in year one. He did that by establishing an identity for Orlando, which was a near-average defensive team despite losing 60 games— Mosley preached defensive intensity from day one, and to actually see that translate to the court from a young, inexperienced team that was losing most nights is a great sign that a coach is getting the most from his roster.

The 2021-22 Magic were the worst Magic team by winning percentage in almost a decade. Yet I’m fairly sure that if you took a straw poll of Magic fans, confidence in the direction of the franchise would be higher after 2021-22 than it was after most other seasons since 2012-13 because for once, the “accumulated losses” as Aaron Gordon said, felt as though they were leading towards something.

Imagine the Magic finally put a down payment on a house after years of renting. It would still take a while before they were financially comfortable, but there was reason to be excited. Fuck landlords by the way. That metaphor kind of fell apart. Moving on…

IV: Starhunting, Part 2

It would be ignorant of me to pretend that luck plays no part in rebuilding; it does! Sometimes you have to get lucky, and I believe Orlando’s lack of luck for like, most of its existence, means the franchise deserved some ping pong balls to bounce its way. And the ping pong balls obliged!

I love watching fan reactions to their team winning the NBA Draft Lottery, partly because explaining the event to non-NBA fans is nearly impossible. How do I explain that one of the most important days in franchise history for multiple teams is a day when they don’t play any basketball or make a draft pick, and instead one random representative is chosen—sometimes a child— to go before Our Lord Mark Tatum and beg for him to open the envelope containing that representatives’ team logo last?

Anyway, Orlando won the 2022 Draft Lottery and— though it tried to convince us otherwise for some reason— was always going to pick Paolo Banchero with the first overall pick in the 2022 NBA Draft.

I remember the first time I saw highlights of Paolo Banchero. I let out a guffaw, befuddled at how and why this man— who appeared to be about 7-foot-9— was handling the ball, crossing over defenders, and dunking on his opponents (who looked like children in his presence) all so effortlessly. On first watch, he definitely looked like an NBA player.

Throughout the draft cycle, it was clear that Banchero was a franchise-changing talent, the kind rebuilding teams thirst over, and on June 22nd, 2022, he was officially an Orlando Magic.

I’m coming. And… we’re gonna win.
-Paolo Banchero on draft night

V: Faster Than Expected

Prior to the 2022-23 season, I published an article for a website titled Best and Worst Case Scenarios for Each Eastern Conference Team.

Regarding the Magic, I wrote this:

Best Case: The Magic go 30-52, exceeding their projected win total while experimenting with some funky, fun big-ball lineups that include Franz Wagner, Wendell Carter, Jr and Paolo Banchero. The team shows they can be competitive while still locking down one more top-end draft pick before making its big “leap” in 2023-24.

I thought that my outlook on the Magic was undeniably positive. The r/OrlandoMagic subreddit disagreed, however, ripping me to shreds and letting it be known how stupid my prediction was and how thoroughly I was disrespecting the Magic’s young core.

Well, turns out the Orlando Magic subreddit was right (bastards) because the 2022-23 Magic exceeded even my “best case” scenario. Jamahl Mosley’s team finished the season 34-48, a mark that’s even more impressive considering the team started 5-20 before getting hot and posting a .508 winning percentage from games 26 to 82. There were plenty of positives for Magic fans to hang their hats on, most notably a Paolo Banchero Rookie of the Year victory.

At this point, the Magic’s rebuild checklist was looking solid:

Franchise player ✔️

Coach who establishes team identity ✔️

Superstar role players ✔️

Patience ☐

Ah, that last one is always finicky. Striking a balance between having patience in a rebuild by trusting the systems you put in place as a franchise with not becoming complacent is damn hard.

VI: Patience Pays Off

Orlando stayed patient! Good job, team.

The Magic entered 2023-24 with mostly the same roster from the year prior. Anthony Black, the versatile 6-foot-7 guard/forward/whatever from Arkansas, and Jett Howard, the sharpshooting son of former NBA player Juwan Howard, both joined the team via draft while Joe Ingles signed a two-year deal with the Magic just for fun, I think, but outside of that trio, Orlando banked on big leaps from its core cast of characters.

It was pretty clear from game one that Jalen Suggs and Paolo Banchero made those leaps. For Suggs, it was a leap from good energy player to perhaps the best guard defender in the league. His three-point percentage skyrocketing about ten percentage points didn’t hurt, either.

And for Banchero, the leap was from very good rookie to very good player. His passing improved, his three-point shooting improved, his efficiency improved… the sophomore slump is nowhere to be found. (Yes, I know Banchero’s efficiency still isn’t great, and I… don’t… give… a… shit! Really, I don’t care at all. A 21 year-old leading his shooting-challenged team in scoring on anything close to league-average efficiency does not happen often, and I will not nitpick it. If Banchero never improves his efficiency numbers then something went wrong and he’ll hit his proverbial ceiling a lot sooner than expected, but as a sophomore? I’m not losing sleep over it.)

Remember way back at the beginning of this piece when we overshot the beginning of our story to when Orlando took possession of fourth place in the Eastern Conference? Well, we’ve officially made it to that point in our story.

At 37-26, with half of the East decimated by injuries, the Magic slowly crept up the standings until they had control of fourth place. They’ve done it how Jamahl Mosley’s teams have always done it. Actually, they’ve done it how Jamahl Mosley teams have always tried to do it, but this year’s team has the personnel to get it done: on the defensive end. Orlando ranks fourth in defensive rating, second in defensive rebounding rate, fourth in steals, third in opposing second chance points. Young teams seldom care this much about getting stops and it’s a joy to watch.

Are we competing every single night? Are we detailing our work? Are we playing the right way? Are you covering for each other and fighting for each other? Then are you having sense of joy and enthusiasm every time you touch the floor? I don’t want them to take it for granted.
-Jamahl Mosley, via andscape

VII: The Next Step… or Lack Thereof

In the OKC version of Rebuild Retrospective, I didn’t write a ton in the “what’s next” section because the Thunder rebuild is pretty much over. Of course there are always moves to make to improve a team year over year, but OKC is a contender and I don’t see that changing for a bunch of years.

Orlando, meanwhile, hasn’t hit that peak yet; the question now becomes whether it can hit that peak with the roster it currently employs. I’m fully confident in Paolo’s ability to lead a contending team in the next five years. I have varying levels of confidence in Franz Wagner, Jalen Suggs, Wendell Carter Jr and (eventually) Anthony Black being talented enough to play major roles on a truly elite team.

So what’s next? Well, Orlando stood pat at the trade deadline, implying confidence in its current roster. I like that move— why break up a team that’s just starting to mesh? So for now at least, we’ll see how high this Magic team can fly. Its lack of three-point shooting will clip its wings in the postseason, but these Magic are good enough defensively to be a real pest in the first round.

After this year’s playoffs, no matter the result, the road splits. One route leads to continued patience, a true commitment to the guys that Orlando drafted and developed itself. Winning on this route is noble— it’s incredibly laborious, too, taking years and years of continuity and marginal improvements.

The other route points toward a big change. A big trade. An immediate upgrade. If it works, it catapults you into contention. If it doesn’t, all the work required to get just to this point floats away in the wind. Orlando has the pieces to swing a trade for a star, whenever the next one inevitably becomes available… but is that the route this franchise wants to go?

I don’t know. Frankly, even getting to this point is impressive when you remember how far away this franchise was from relevance just a few years ago.

In the meantime, there’s only one thing to do…

PLAY

THE

SONG

Thanks for reading Rebuild Retrospective! This is a multi-part series where I cover the rises of the best young teams in the NBA. You can read part one, on Shai Gilgeous-Alexander and the Oklahoma City Thunder, right here. Feel free to subscribe to The Broken Press if you enjoy what you read :)