The Orlando Magic are about to find out what Paolo Banchero really is.
When the 2026-27 NBA season arrives, Banchero will be stepping into the most important stretch of his young career. His rookie extension is kicking in, the money gets serious, and Orlando is going to ask him to carry this team deeper than it has gone in recent seasons.
That kind of responsibility leaves no room for half-measures. The Magic need the best version of Banchero, and they need it now.
That’s what makes next season such a defining one. Banchero already owns a Rookie of the Year award and an All-Star nod, but he hasn’t added to that résumé since.
Injuries in the 2024-25 season and uneven play last season kept him from another All-Star selection in both years. For a player who has flashed real star power, that’s not enough.
At his peak, Banchero has looked every bit like a franchise centerpiece. He has had stretches where the superstar label didn’t feel like a stretch at all.
But flashes only go so far. Orlando needs him to turn that promise into something permanent, and the 2026-27 season is where that has to happen.
“I think that an All-Star has to be the floor. That's the bare minimum here, right?
This is someone who had comparisons to LeBron James, just in the way that he would play. At the peak of his powers, his young powers that we've seen, and some of the plays that he made when he came into the league as a leaner, kind of power-forward-style player, he was drawing comparisons to LeBron.
Now, I wrote about this recently too, nobody is LeBron. The type of longevity that he has put forward over nearly a generation's worth of time playing NBA basketball, that may never get replicated again.
Paolo can do his best to try and recapture some of those comparisons, and by slimming down and building muscle, it's hard to stop a 6 '10 frame, you know, of his caliber, of his skill caliber, when he's at his best. And there were times last year where he looked slow and indecisive, and the good thing about Paolo is he acknowledged all of his shortcomings.
He acknowledged why he didn't become an All-Star.
He acknowledged when he played poorly in that first play-in tournament game against the Philadelphia 76ers. He is doing the intangible things right that great players need to do, and now he's putting things together tangibly, off the court, in the weight room, you know, so on and so forth, in his private practice sessions, and now we are going to see it come all together. But yeah, RJ, I mean, All-Star, he has to get back to that point.”
That’s the challenge in front of him: turn the moments, the tools and the potential into something the league has to recognize again. For Orlando, that’s not a luxury. It’s the assignment.
In Other News...
Magic Still Havent Unlocked The Desmond Bane They Traded For
Desmond Bane arrived in Orlando with a clear expectation attached to him: bring elite shooting and make the floor easier to play on for everyone else. He did plenty of scoring in his first season with the Magic, averaging 20.1 points per game while knocking down 39.1 percent of his threes, but the role never quite looked like the one that was envisioned when the trade was made.
Instead of living almost exclusively as a high-volume spacer, Bane spent much of the regular season carrying more of the ball-handling load after injuries hit the roster, which cut into the number of threes he got up. The fit looked more natural in the playoffs, when his three-point attempts climbed and his shooting became a bigger part of Orlando's attack, but the broader question remains for the Magic heading forward: how do they unlock the version of Bane they traded for over the course of a full season? [Read more 🡒]