When the bubble wrapped up in 2020, the Orlando Magic were in a weird place. Their post-Dwight Howard team had finally broken through for back-to-back playoff appearances, but the Magic had been bounced in five games both times. The team Jeff Weltman and staff inherited was fine, but fine was never the goal.
Four years later, the Magic are finally growing into the team they always wanted to be post-Howard.
Following the bubble season, Weltman and crew went about tearing down the Magic. Out went mainstays Nikola Vucevic, Aaron Gordon and Evan Fournier. In came young players and draft picks.
The rebuild was on yet again in Orlando. But this time around it felt different.
A few years of losing delivered Paolo Banchero, Franz Wagnerand Jalen Suggs. Jonathan Isaac finally got healthy. Cole Anthony grew into a very good sixth man. A handful of vets signed to savvy, short-term contracts outplayed their deals.
In 2023-24, the Magic surprised everyone but themselves by making the playoffs. In fact, we all should have seen it coming the year before. After playing the first third of the 2022-23 season without any healthy guards and tasking their young forwards to do literally everything, Orlando was a forgettable 5-20.
Then the team started to get healthy. All the additional do-it-all reps Banchero and Wagner had forced upon them started to pay off. The Magic finished that season 29-28 over the final two-thirds of the season. The leap happened while most NBA fans were barely paying any attention.
Last season, Orlando announced their presence pretty early. Walkover wins over the Los Angeles Lakers and the Boston Celtics were signature early-season moments. The blowout of Boston came in the midst of a nine-game win streak to close out November.
The winning never really stopped. Orlando competed for as high as the second seed in the Eastern Conference playoffs all the way until the end of the season. Ultimately, the Magic fell to fifth and lost in a seven-game battle to the Cleveland Cavaliers in the first round of the playoffs.
Immediately upon that Game 7 loss came decision time for Weltman and the Orlando brain trust. And that decision started with the age-old question for a young team making the leap: Is it time to go all-in?
We’ll pause about the Magic here for a moment to look at this situation, because it’s a fairly common one in the NBA. And, more importantly, it’s one that teams still haven’t been able to really solve for.
The question: Is our young team ready for us to add to it? Or do we still need more time and seasoning?
Add too early, and you end up stepping back because your team wasn’t ready. Add too late and you might miss your window entirely.
It’s a question of timing and it’s one a front office has to get correct. Far too many up-and-coming NBA teams never got there because their front office went too early or waited too long to add talent.
This is where the Orlando Magic found themselves this summer. Realistically, Jeff Weltman had two summers to use to cap space to add talent. It was happening in either 2024 or 2025. By the summer of 2026, Paolo Banchero would join Franz Wagner on a max extension, and presumably Jalen Suggs would be in a sizable deal of his own. By then, going the cap space route would be very unlikely.
It wasn’t quite now or never for the Magic, but more sooner or later. Orlando chose sooner.
Weltman decided his young, and still improving, stars were ready for reinforcements. Unlike the other cap space teams this offseason, the Magic didn’t go all-in on outside talent. They didn’t just use their space to retain their own players either. Instead, Orlando did a little bit of both.
When free agency opened, the Magic were one of the teams that were linked to Paul George. It was even reported that Orlando was one of the few teams who would get a meeting with George. Whether that meeting ever happened is unclear, but the Magic pivoted away from George fairly.
Orlando agreed to a three-year, $66 million team with Kentavious Caldwell-Pope before the first night of free agency was even two hours old. That suggests Caldwell-Pope was the Magic’s real target all along.
Instead of spending all of their cap space to bring in George, who undoubtedly would have helped Orlando, the Magic went with a player nearly three years younger. And Caldwell-Pope is additive without upsetting the ecosystem that Orlando has been building over the past few years.
All along, the Magic wanted players who would support, enhance and lift Banchero and Wagner. Those two are the Orlando’s pillars. Anyone the team added had to fit in alongside Banchero and Wagner but without taking anything away from them.
In Caldwell-Pope, the Magic have added a role player-plus. Over the last several years, Caldwell-Pope has figured out how to play off his teammates on offense, while maintaining an elite level on defense. Given he’s spent years playing with LeBron James and Nikola Jokic, Caldwell-Pope clearly knows how to play with big ballhandlers and playmakers. That’ll fit nicely within Orlando’s offensive system keyed by Banchero and Wagner. On defense, Magic coach Jamahl Mosley and staff have to be salivating at the thought of unleashing the combo of Caldwell-Pope and Suggs on opposing ballhandlers.
After signing Caldwell-Pope, Weltman and staff went about the task of retaining their own players. Moe Wagner, Gary Harris and Goga Bitadze are all key reserves and all are returning to Orlando. Only Bitadze got a contract with more than next season guaranteed, and his deal declines from year to year over the next two seasons.
With the bulk of the bench taken care of, the Magic turned their eyes towards the future. Franz Wagner agreed to a five-year, maximum rookie scale extension worth at least a projected $224 million. One pillar is in place years to come. It’s a great bet that Banchero will join him on a similar deal next summer. If Banchero makes All-NBA this season – which is a decent bet – he’ll be on an even bigger deal starting in 2026.
In a move to foster continuity, the Magic’s final big move was to renegotiate-and-extend Jonathan Isaac. After a year where Isaac got and stayed healthy, Orlando took care of him long-term. The Magic used their remaining cap space to bump Isaac’s salary from $17.4 million to $25 million for this season. Orlando then tacked on $59 million over the next four years through 2028-29. To protect themselves, the Magic are only on the hook for $23 million, unless Isaac hits some games-played markers each season.
Effectively, once Suggs inks an extension, Orlando will have this group in place for at least the next two to three seasons, with the major players locked in even longer.
The Orlando Magic didn’t quite go all-in this summer. But they didn’t sit the summer out either. Instead, they followed the same patient approach they’ve followed since Jeff Weltman took over the team.
The Magic added a veteran who outplays his 3&D tag. Orlando rewarded players who have done well for them by bringing them back. In every case, minus Franz Wagner’s max deal, the Magic are also fairly well-protected too.
For a team that had nothing but question marks as the team cratered following the bubble season, the Magic have turned things around in a big way. And their patient approach means they still have some flexibility moving forward too.
There isn’t a bad contract on the books in Orlando. Every single deal is very tradable. As this season and beyond show the Magic what they need to take the step from playoff team to contender, they’ll have the ability to fill those holes. That’s excellent drafting, good player development, terrific cap management and solid roster work all around.
It’s been 12 years since Dwight Howard left Orlando. There were a couple of nice seasons along the long road back to relevancy, but this is the team Magic fans have been waiting and hoping for.
This team has homegrown talent that wants to be in Orlando. They’ve supplemented with smart veteran additions, followed by savvy re-signings. This is where everyone wanted to be a dozen years ago when the Dwightmare ended.
It took longer than expected, but the Magic are here now. And they aren’t going anywhere anytime soon.
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