The Orlando Magic are back in the gym, and the focus is already where it should be: on the players who have to carry them.
On Tuesday, the team’s official X account posted photos from workouts inside the AdventHealth Training Center, with Paolo Banchero, Franz Wagner, Wendell Carter Jr., Anthony Black and Nikola Vucevic all pictured getting to work as the 2026-27 NBA season draws closer. Each has spent the summer on his own regimen. Now the challenge is turning that work into something bigger when the games start counting.
For Orlando, that starts with Banchero. The Magic have close to $160 million tied up in Banchero, Wagner, Desmond Bane and Jalen Suggs this season, and Banchero sits just behind Wagner as the team’s highest-paid player.
That kind of investment comes with a clear demand: he has to look like the franchise centerpiece every night. He showed flashes of that last season, but there were also stretches where he didn’t quite impose his will.
Banchero has acknowledged his shortcomings, and this offseason has been about trimming down while building a body that can hold up over a long season. When he’s decisive and attacking, that’s when he looks like his best self.
Injuries didn’t derail him much last year - he missed only 10 games because of a groin strain - so a healthy version of Banchero has to be a force.
Wagner’s situation is different, but just as important. He is the established second option when he and Banchero share the floor, and that arrangement works.
Wagner has thrived in that role. The issue is availability.
He carries the team’s highest cap hit next season at $41.7 million, and that number looms large because he was limited to 34 regular-season games in 2025-26 and saw his playoff run end because of a calf strain. When he’s right, he’s exactly the kind of two-way presence Orlando needs.
But that value disappears if he’s not on the floor. That’s why his decision not to play for Germany this summer mattered so much; it gave him a crucial chance to recover after an injury-filled year.
If the Magic are going to hit their ceiling, they need Wagner and Banchero on the court together. The expectation should be at least 65 games from Wagner next season.
Carter has already shown how much stability matters. In his fifth full season with the Magic, he played 78 games, a major help for a team that had to deal with injuries elsewhere.
He had his moments, too, including a big Game 3 in Orlando’s first-round playoff series against the Detroit Pistons, when he put up 14 points and 17 rebounds. Still, the Magic need that kind of impact more often.
Carter averaged 11.8 points and 7.4 rebounds last season, and those numbers fall short of Nikola Vucevic’s production. Vucevic, who was traded for Carter in 2021, is back in Orlando now and will provide bench support behind him, but at 35 years old he cannot be the more productive option.
For Carter, the assignment is simple: be steadier, be better, and make sure the Magic get more from the center spot than they did a year ago.
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