The Magic Are Reloaded And Ready For Next Season
With free agency just a couple days underway, this NBA playoff team has already made a splash with regard to their roster.
There’s still potential signings and trades that will likely transpire throughout the league in the coming days, but for right now, the Orlando Magic are reloaded and focused on building a competitive team in what’s sure to be a highly competitive Eastern Conference for the 2024-25 campaign.
It’s hard to compare the current Eastern Conference landscape to the days of the early-2010s when the conference was driven by star-studded teams like the Miami Heat with LeBron James, Dwyane Wade and Chris Bosh, the Indiana Pacers with Paul George, the Boston Celtics with Paul Pierce and Kevin Garnett or even the New York Knicks with Carmelo Anthony.
But the East may be making a resurgence, and the Celtics winning the NBA Finals back in June certainly helped the conference’s case.
The Philadelphia 76ers are reloaded, the New York Knicks just added yet another former Villanova University star in Mikal Bridges, the Cleveland Cavaliers just locked up Donovan Mitchell for the next three years and the Magic are right there as well, coming off their first playoff appearance since before the pandemic.
Which Magic players have re-signed so far?
For starters, Orlando added Kentavious Caldwell-Pope, which is a strong addition for a young team like the Magic that needs some veteran experience to help get them over the hump.
Caldwell-Pope brings with him a championship mindset, given that he’s won two rings over the last five seasons. He knows what an NBA Finals-bound team looks like and that will undoubtedly rub off on the younger players on this Magic team.
Not to mention Caldwell-Pope’s shooting ability, which will give the Magic another source of offense. He averaged 10.1 points per game this past season with the Nuggets on 40.6% shooting from 3-point range, and he will only increase his numbers on a team like Orlando where he would be a primary option.
The Magic also locked down Moritz Wagner on a two-year, $22 million deal, Gary Harris on a two-year, $14 million deal and Franz Wagner on a five-year, potentially $270 million deal to stay with Orlando. The Wagner brothers and Harris have both proven to be solid options for the Magic over the past four seasons. Last season, Moritz averaged 10.9 points per game, Franz averaged 19.7 points per game and Harris averaged 6.9 points per game.
Center Goga Bitadze and forward Jonathan Isaac will also be back in Orlando, with Bitadze signing a three-year, $25 million deal and Isaac a five-year, $84 million deal to remain on the roster. The 6-foot-11 Bitadze averaged 5.0 points per game last season, while Isaac, who finished ninth in Sixth Man of the year voting, averaged 6.8 points per game.
Orlando's young core and where they stand
Additionally, the Magic have young players with big upside who are still under contract, including 2023 Rookie of the Year and budding superstar Paolo Banchero.
This past season, the first-time all star increased his rookie season average of 20.0 points per game to 22.6 points per game. He also continued to be a force on the boards, as he averaged 6.9 rebounds per game for the second-straight year with the Magic.
Orlando’s home-grown talent pool doesn’t stop there.
Jalen Suggs is coming off a career season in which he averaged a career-high 12.6 points per game and was also named to the NBA All-Defensive Second Team. And while Cole Anthony averaged a career-low 11.6 points per game, this past season was his fourth-straight contributing double figures to the Magic’s box score totals.
The Magic also still have Wendell Carter Jr. and possibly Markelle Fultz, a free agent, to rely on, who have both been successful in their career stops with Orlando. By way of this year’s draft, the Magic added four-year Colorado forward Tristan da Silva as well, who averaged 16.0 points and 5.1 rebounds per game for the Buffaloes this past season.
According to ESPN’s Adrian Wojnarowski, Joe Ingles had his team option with the Magic declined, and while there was a chance he may have ended up with Orlando next season, he ultimately ended up signing with the Minnesota Timberwolves.
Looking to the rest of the summer and beyond
As for other offseason moves, who knows how the rest of Orlando's roster may shake out in the coming days.
“It’s gonna be a long evaluation process in the summer of what we’ll need to do to keep getting better, and then a big portion of it is just our young guys continuing to get better and work on aspects of their game,” Magic Head Coach Jamahl Mosley said in his final interview of the season back on May 7.
Regardless, the roster Orlando plans to run with this year just may have the best chances of making a deep playoff run since the 2008-09 Magic led by Dwight Howard, Rashard Lewis and Jameer Nelson.
That team, which remarkably had two future NBA head coaches on its roster at the time – the Los Angeles Clippers’ Tyronn Lue and the Los Angeles Lakers’ JJ Redick – made it all the way to the Finals, where Orlando was ultimately stopped in its tracks by the Kobe Bryant and Pau Gasol-led Lakers.
It’s hard to hypothesize about how the 2024-25 NBA season will unfold, as Summer League hasn’t even commenced yet. Up until October, question marks will still loom over how the Magic will fare this upcoming season, given Orlando will have to fight their way through the NBA champion Celtics and a 76ers team that just added Paul George.
But the Magic have undoubtedly gotten better already this offseason, and this team, which may be just a few playoff runs away, could make some serious noise in the Eastern Conference come next April.
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