ORLANDO — Orlando Magic guard Desmond Bane was as advertised during his first season with the team, and now he is looking to be even better.

During the Magic's Media Day on Sept. 28, Bane talked about what he has worked on over the summer and the plan of development that he has built with new head coach Sean Sweeney. Bane also emphasized that the team is different heading into this season than they were before, and he highlighted that the group is not getting too high on itself.

Bane appeared for Orlando in all 82 regular-season games during the 2025-26 campaign, and he played in each of the postseason games as well. In that span, he averaged 20.1 points per game while shooting 39.1% from 3-point range.

Bane proved to be durable and reliable — the exact kind of player the Magic needed. Now he will have to minimally replicate his production if Orlando wants to achieve greater heights.

On the latest episode of the Full Court Magic podcast, I recapped Bane's Media Day availability and talked about what stood out to me:

"Another thing that stuck out to me was Desmond Bane's press conference, and you know, he compared last season's media day with this one, and you know, after the Magic traded for Bane in June 2025, we all remember that they were the talk of the NBA. They were the next hot team up. The expectations on the outside were deafening. There were talks of Eastern Conference Finals, especially given the state that the East was in then, but then that didn't happen for the Magic. They lost in the first round once again.

They almost didn't make it there at all. It came down to that one play-in game against Charlotte, when they finally woke up and showed us what they could be. They showed us what they could be through the first four games of that series against the Pistons, but ultimately, that was a very flawed team last year that dealt with a lot of stuff; now it's a new year, and Bane talked about how this team essentially isn't getting too high on itself. It's just quietly working. They're quietly putting together the foundational pieces to be successful, and they're letting the results do the talking. 

There's no more speculation. There's no more hype around this team. In fact, I mean, there have been some media members out there who have been pretty brutal when discussing the Magic. You know talking about how they're going to be a lower seed. There are chances of missing the playoffs, so the Magic are just doing what they do, and that's for the best, especially for a young group, because there's no room to get high on yourself when you haven't proven yourself yet. I think everybody in the building understands that, and that is going to be good moving forward, especially under new head coach Sean Sweeney. 

Because he can just implement exactly what it is that he wants to do and how he wants this team to operate, and the standard that he is implementing within the building is what comes first, and that is paramount to this team's success, not what anybody else thinks. And so, I thought that that was important from Bane, someone who was exactly as advertised and more for the Magic. First time in his career [he] played all 82 games last season, all the postseason games, and he talked about his own recovery and his own development over the summer to be a better version of himself this year as well."