The Orlando Magic will carry a measure of regret into the NBA offseason. That said, the frustration attached to early tee times — at least there are plenty of great golfing options in Orlando — will burn off when the Magic consider how many resources lie at their disposal.
However, check back with this team in two years.
Yes, reality offers a zigzag for the Magic and their fans. Optimism should be the prevailing feeling as the offseason arrives, but whereas a few non-playoff organizations should revel in unbridled enthusiasm, there’s just enough uncertainty to put the Magic’s long-term future in doubt.
Let’s first make this acknowledgment: Within a certain context, a team often has to be bad enough to lift hopes for the future. Teams that threaten to make the playoffs and establish a certain standard of performance, only to then retreat from that standard, can create the appearance of regression or weakness (or both). If you never establish a higher standard (from which it’s possible to regress), you can’t disappoint the public… at least not too much.
The Minnesota Timberwolves and Denver Nuggets embody this dynamic.
The T-Wolves and Nuggets inspire more optimism than any other non-playoff teams in the league. That’s most centrally a product of the talent they possess, but it’s also a creation of the fact that neither team entered the 2016 portion of this past season as a legitimate playoff contender. When December was done, so were the Wolves and Nuggets. Those teams didn’t steadily ascend, so they never had a real chance to fall from a greater height. Their players fill the future with happiness more than anything else, but the reality of never ascending is a part of why the future feels comparatively sunny in Minneapolis and Denver.
For the Orlando Magic, the future offers reason for confidence, but unlike the cases of Minnesota and Denver, the Magic genuinely began to reinforce the idea that they were ahead of schedule this past season. When they fell from that loftier perch, they prevented themselves and their fans from fully savoring the joys of being a young team on the rise.
When December ended, Minnesota and Denver were shipwrecked, but Orlando stood at 19-13. First-year head coach Scott Skiles had skillfully piloted his young club not just to the position of being a potential playoff contender, but a likely playoff team.
Yes, we can all debate the point in a season when various labels ought to apply to (or be withheld from) a given team. However, regardless of where you might come down in that particular discussion, one can reasonably say that the Magic carried legitimate playoff aspirations deeper into the season than most of the other non-playoff teams in the league. The fact that this team went 10-30 after its 19-13 start could be used as cause for concern — if not dread — heading into November.
It is tempting to be pessimistic with Orlando in ways which simply don’t apply to Minnesota and Denver. However, on balance, Magic fans should still feel their team has grown, and will get better the next two seasons.
This website used to be edited — quite well, in fact — by Philip Rossman-Reich. Philip now edits Orlando Magic Daily and its companion site, Orlando Sports Daily (among other sites). At Orlando Magic Daily, Phil is taking stock of the Magic’s season. This is one in a series of evaluations you would do well to read. You’ll get an excellent window into where the franchise stands from Phil and OMD.
A basic thesis offered by Phil is that a confluence of interlocking factors contributed to that 10-30 nosedive which hijacked the season. Regression on defense despite pronounced offensive potency and potential — embodied in players such as 2015 lottery pick Mario Hezonja (pictured, above) — certainly stood at the heart of the Magic’s downfall, but it can’t be emphasized to the exclusion of other reasons. An inevitable offensive decline after a torrid start to the season; injuries; losing three overtime games in a five-game stretch in January — a lot of ingredients went into the not-so-Magical months which removed the playoffs from the equation.
That multiplicity of reasons might seem uncomfortable and disconcerting, but in the end, they all point to one unifying element: youthfulness.
One could become depressed by that 10-30 stretch, before the Magic have rebounded to win five of their last seven. However, the most reasonable — and accurate — source of that downturn was and is the simple fact that Orlando’s roster had not been through this rodeo before.
It’s true that Orlando was picked by some to be the 8 seed in the East before the season began. Pundits saw the potential in Victor Oladipo and Elfrid Payton, potential which emerged at times during the season, but wasn’t sustained the whole way through. Yet, that expectation from some portions of the NBA cognoscenti doesn’t change the newness of the Magic’s journey and the law of the jungle in the league, which is that teams have to walk over the hot coals of pressure in one season in order to move up the ladder the following season.
We’ll have to wait until the 2017 season in order to fully know if the Magic “get it,” if they really have learned the lessons this season has to offer. Nevertheless, there’s so much talent oozing from this roster — which has often made it look very easy to score — that merely modest defensive improvements over 82 games will produce a playoff team next year. This is true even with the lamentable trade which shipped Tobias Harris to Detroit, something the organization simply did not need to do.
Given Scott Skiles’s reputation as a coach who gets young teams to work hard, Orlando inhabits a favorable position in the near term (even with the Harris mistake). The next two seasons might not bring aboard a soaring ascendancy, but they should create a steady upward progression.
It’s in the window beyond two seasons which offers some cause for concern.
Skiles — if known for his ability to get players to work hard for him in the short run — is also known as a coach who eventually wears out his players and doesn’t forge supremely durable tenures with various NBA teams. History suggests that Skiles will not be the coach of this organization in 2020. However, history also points to the Magic being a lot better in 2018.
If you’re the Magic, you’ll welcome whatever improvements lie in store the next 24 months. There should be many of them.
Then check back and see where you are.
It’s not the best place to be… but it’s a very good place to be.
