The Orlando Magic are walking into a tougher Eastern Conference, but they’ve got one thing that can steady the ground under them: continuity. That matters more now than ever, because a lot of the league spent the offseason reshuffling the deck while Orlando mostly kept its core intact.
Paolo Banchero, Franz Wagner and Jalen Suggs have already logged multiple seasons together, and Desmond Bane is heading into year two as one of the team’s key pieces. That kind of familiarity gives the Magic a base to work from. But the most intriguing part of this season may be what happens when Bane and Suggs take another step together.
Their first year as teammates was still a getting-to-know-you process. Suggs played fewer than 60 games.
Bane played all 82. And the two guards brought very different jobs to the table.
Suggs is the defensive tone-setter, the kind of on-ball pest who can make life miserable in the half court. Bane, by contrast, is built around offense.
He can create his own shot, get to a bucket, and carry real scoring responsibility when asked.
That split showed up in the playoffs, too. Suggs had a rough series against Detroit, with the only real bright spot coming from his hot start in Game 1, which helped jump-start Orlando.
After that, the offense cratered for him. Still, there were signs of growth over the course of the season.
Suggs finished with a career-high 5.5 assists, even while posting the lowest usage rate among the Magic’s core four players.
The next question is how Sean Sweeney fits all of it together. Neither Suggs nor Bane is a true point guard, which makes the backcourt dynamic especially interesting. The challenge is finding a way to maximize both players so Orlando gets elite guard play at both ends without the pieces fighting each other.
Bane, for his part, already gave the Magic plenty. He averaged 20.1 points last season and delivered exactly what he was supposed to deliver.
But there’s still room for more. He’s shown in Memphis that he can do more than share touches, even alongside Ja Morant and Jaren Jackson Jr., and the idea here is that year two in Orlando could bring another jump.
At minimum, the Magic know what they have. At best, they may be getting ready to find out just how dangerous that Suggs-Bane pairing can become.
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