Armed with Desmond Bane and a new head coach, Paolo Banchero must navigate a reinforced Eastern Conference to escape the play-in trap and prove Orlando's championship potential.
After a disappointing end to the season for the Orlando Magic, getting bounced out of the first round for the third straight season, questions have arisen if this core can get the ultimate job of winning an NBA championship done.
The Magic have made moves to help their star, including acquiring Desmond Bane to provide more perimeter spacing and hiring Sean Sweeney as the team's new head coach. With Orlando setting up their core for the future, the pressure now falls on Banchero to turn those pieces into meaningful improvement.
But with rising competition in the Eastern Conference, many believe the Magic have a tough road ahead. Roundtable host Don Strouble spoke about this topic recently with RJ Saunders of 1010XL Magic. Here is what he had to say:
On Eastern Conference projections and Orlando's realistic ceiling:
"I think that best case, this is a team that falls into that 5-to-6 range and just gets outside that play-in territory. It's imperative that they escape the play-in because when this team has a little bit of rest after the regular season, like when they were a 5-seed against Cleveland, they can push a good team to seven games. They did that without rest against the Detroit Pistons last season. So they need to set themselves up where they don't have to play those two extra games and put everything they have into it just to get to the playoffs.
As we talked about, the Eastern Conference landscape has become much more difficult with so many seismic moves, even just within their own division. The Southeast Division is going to be hard enough with Giannis, Klay Thompson, and Bobby Portis going to Miami. That's a team that's thin on depth, but if those guys stay healthy, they're going to be trying to compete for a title. You look at the Atlanta Hawks continuing to build in the post-Trae Young era, going to get Aaron Wiggins and Lu Dort—two defensive anchors from the champion Oklahoma City Thunder. You look at even the Washington Wizards—their rebuild is building like a super-team of vets between AD (if they can keep him healthy), Trae Young, and Khris Middleton. So it's not even going to be easy just in the division, let alone the conference at large."
On media perceptions of the Magic as a middle-of-the-pack team:
"I think people are operating off precedent and just seeing what has already occurred. The Magic have a bunch of untapped potential that they just haven't accessed yet for a number of reasons. We'll see if this year is the year. In terms of whether or not it's fair, I think that's a gray area. On one end of the spectrum, you'll see writers really leaning into them in their columns and opinion pieces, and then on the other side, you'll see more objective takes.
My goal with being a guy on the daily beat is to never make it seem like I'm trashing this team or taking things out of context. I want to bring people analysis through my eyes as someone who's in the building and looks at this stuff every single day. How I see this group is one that can reach great heights, but we just don't have proof of it yet. Maybe this is the year, but until then, people go off what they've seen. What they have seen is a group that, on its best days, is a real, formidable opponent for everybody else, and on its worst days, is barely hanging on to a playoff spot. Until I am given reason to believe otherwise, I think that they just fall somewhere in the middle."
Watch the interview here:
