Anthony Black enters this season with something simple and demanding hanging over him: he has to show the Orlando Magic that his breakout was real, and that he can do it again in the role the team needs from him now.
The Magic have plenty of talent to believe in. They expect Paolo Banchero to get back to All-Star form.
They think a healthy season from Franz Wagner can carry him to the All-Star Game. They added Desmond Bane for the spacing and shooting they needed so badly last year.
Their starting five was the shiny centerpiece of the offseason, the part of the roster that had fans buying in hard.
Black is part of that optimism, too. But he’s also in a different spot than most of the roster.
He broke out last season, helped carry the team in December and January when he was in the starting lineup, and now he heads into a year where the bench is likely where he’ll be asked to make his biggest impact. All of that is happening before he’s due a new contract.
That makes this season bigger than just another step forward. For Black, it’s about confirmation.
His 2025 season was the one where everything started to click. The third-year guard showed real scoring instincts and confidence after two years of trying to find his place.
In his first two seasons, he was a useful defender but didn’t have a clear offensive identity, and his jumper never looked fully settled. In both 2024 and 2025 playoffs, he faded quickly.
The early-season flashes, though, told a different story. He dropped 20 points in the second quarter of Orlando’s blowout win over the Philadelphia 76ers in the NBA Cup.
He followed that with a 38-point performance against the Denver Nuggets that included several clutch plays. And then there was the dunk heard around the world in Berlin against the Memphis Grizzlies.
When Wagner went down, Black stepped into a bigger role and delivered. He became a more aggressive scorer and a more confident attacker.
By season’s end, he was averaging 15.0 points per game, which was a 59.6 percent increase from his 2025 scoring average, and he shot 33.3 percent on 4.5 3-point attempts per game. His defense still held up, even if the heavier offensive load asked him to give some ground there.
The season did not finish cleanly. Black suffered an abdominal strain in early March, came back late, and wasn’t at the same level in the playoffs.
He averaged 8.6 points per game in the postseason and shot 37.0 percent from the floor and 31.8 percent from three. He only really started to settle in late in the series after Franz Wagner’s injury, scoring 19 in Game 5, eight in Game 6 and 11 in Game 7.
Now the question is whether that version of Black is the real one.
Orlando is expected to weigh a new extension for him, and the math gets tricky fast because of the team’s financial situation and the uncertainty around whether he can repeat what he just did. The belief is there. The proof still has to come.
The most revealing stretch of Black’s year came when he was in the starting lineup and playing starter’s minutes. From Wagner’s injury through the end of January, he averaged 19.0 points per game, shot 47.0 percent from the floor and 38.0 percent from three, and logged 34.6 minutes per game over 23 games.
That was the run that made everyone sit up. Black absolutely looked capable of carrying real offensive weight.
But this season, the expectation is that he’ll spend more time coming off the bench, and that’s where the picture gets more complicated. His bench numbers were pulled down by the difficult stretch after his abdominal injury, but the overall production still leaves room for scrutiny. In 24 games off the bench, he averaged 12.4 points per game while shooting 44.3 percent from the floor and 28.2 percent from three.
There’s one important caveat: Orlando was still +5.1 points per game with Black off the bench, compared to -3.0 points per game when he started. He wasn’t empty production. He still helped those reserve groups.
And if you split the bench games further, the case for him gets stronger. Before Wagner’s injury, Black averaged 13.2 points per game and shot 45.4 percent from the floor and 31.8 percent from three in 20 of those 24 bench games. The four games he played in April after returning from injury dragged the totals down, with him averaging 10.5 points per game and shooting 36.1 percent from the floor and 23.5 percent from three.
That’s why the Magic are looking at him as such a central piece of what they want to be. They want the bench to be a force again, and Black has the ability to be the main scoring engine in that group. If Orlando gets more scoring from Nikola Vucevic and Black turns into the kind of reserve threat his breakout suggested, the bench can again become one of the league’s highest-scoring units.
FanDuel Sportsbook currently has Black at +2000 to win Sixth Man of the Year, the sixth-best odds. That says plenty about the expectations around him.
Now he has to meet them. The Magic need him to prove the breakout wasn’t a one-year spike, and they need him to do it in the role that best fits the roster this season. For a team with a lot of pieces that still need to fall into place, Black may be one of the biggest ones.
In Other News...
Magic Just Added Two Guards To A Roster Battle Worth Watching
The Magic have added a pair of veteran guards to the mix, signing free agents Malaki Branham and JD Davison to Exhibit 10 contracts as training camp competition starts to take shape. Both arrive with four years of NBA experience, giving Orlando a couple of capable backcourt options to look at as the roster begins to sort itself out.
Branham has already spent time with the Spurs, Wizards and Hornets, while Davison was waived by Houston after stops with the Celtics and Rockets. For a team still weighing the bottom end of its roster, these are the kinds of low-risk additions that can turn a quiet camp battle into something worth watching. [Read more 🡒]
Magic Young Core Now Faces A Pressure Test Fans Will Feel
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For a roster built around growth, the early test is as much about identity as it is about results. Fans should expect the preseason and the opening stretch of the regular season to show whether Orlando is actually getting better offensively and defensively, or just talking about the right things in the abstract. Sweeney inherits a team with clear ambitions, and the pressure will be on the Magic to prove the offseason change can translate into real progress when the games start to matter. [Read more 🡒]
Magic Season May Come Down To This From Their Top Three
A lot of Orlandos next step hinges on the same simple idea: the Magic need their top three to be on the floor and making the most of the shots that swing modern playoff basketball. Desmond Bane arrives with a clean bill of health and the kind of perimeter shooting that can change the geometry of an offense, while Franz Wagner and Paolo Banchero remain the drivers of everything Orlando wants to do on that end.
The bigger issue is whether the trio can bring both consistency and spacing at the same time. Wagners games played dropped last season, Bancheros availability remains central to the teams ceiling, and if those two can stay on the court while Bane keeps punishing defenses from deep, Orlandos attack starts to look a lot more dangerous. The talent is there, but for this team, the real separator may be whether its best players can simply give the Magic enough of a steady runway. [Read more 🡒]