The Orlando Magic want to believe they’re built for a championship run, but one glaring issue keeps hanging over the roster: the shooting still isn’t there.
That concern only gets sharper when you zoom out at the Eastern Conference and look at what Orlando is trying to do with a roster that’s already expensive and boxed in by First Apron restrictions. The front office has plenty to work with at the top, but the margin for fixing the perimeter remains thin.
Last postseason, the Magic were one win away from the second round after racing out to a 3-1 series lead over the top-seeded Detroit Pistons. Then Franz Wagner got hurt, Orlando couldn’t finish the job, and the team wound up with a third straight first-round exit.
Full Court Magic host and Roundtable contributor Don Strouble recently broke down what Orlando got right and wrong this offseason in a conversation with RJ Saunders of 1010XL Magic. His focus landed squarely on the same old issue: the perimeter offense.
"This has been the Achilles' heel of this team since I've been covering them, and even before I was covering them, when I first moved to Orlando, this was the problem that the Magic faced. I think that Desmond Bane alleviates it to a degree, but he can't be the sole guy with that responsibility on his shoulders.
It's just so hard with the Magic because they suffer from two things: one, it's an expensive roster and they are handicapped by those First Apron restrictions; and two, Jeff Weltman is so convinced that this roster is the one that I feel like it's hindering the type of moves that he wants to make as an executive. It feels like he is paralyzed by his belief sometimes.
For folks who have kept up with my stories on Roundtable Sports or my podcast, maybe it sounds like I'm attacking this guy because I've spoken about this ad nauseam, but that's not what I'm trying to do-it's just objective. When you talk to Jeff Weltman, the first thing he does is point to the injuries.
Luckily for the Magic, it didn't paralyze them so much into keeping Jamahl Mosley when that clearly wasn't the right move. But this team still needs shooters, and none of the guys have proven that they can do that yet.
You talk about Tristan da Silva-we saw what he did in Germany; he kind of laid an egg out there, as it wasn't a good showing by him this summer. You talk about Jevon Carter-he was good when he was in Chicago, but he had a precipitous drop-off in his three-point percentage when he came to Orlando.
So really, they have to work with who they have in-house, with the addition of Nikola Vučević. You really just hope that you get what you can from this roster, and if it's going bad in the first half of the season, hopefully Jeff Weltman makes the tough decision to make a trade and bring someone in."
That’s the bind for Orlando. The talent is there to talk about contention, but the spacing issues haven’t gone anywhere, and the roster constraints make solving them harder than ever. If the shot-making doesn’t improve, the Magic may be left hoping the answer comes from within - or from a trade later on.
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