Paolo Banchero didn’t just open the season with a big night in Orlando. He opened it with a message.
And by the end of Wednesday’s game, that message had turned into a little friction with Jalen Johnson, enough to spark a pull-apart after the final horn.
“He wanted to wait until the clock hit zero to say something,” Banchero said after Wednesday's game. “I wanted to hear what he said. Just game one.”
Whatever was said between the two, Banchero did the heavier lifting on the floor. In a game that felt like a statement from the start, he finished with 35 points on 10-for-12 shooting, hit all seven of his attempts in the restricted area, took just one mid-range shot and knocked down three of four 3-pointers.
He also got to the line 16 times, though he left four points there. And while six turnovers showed some sloppiness in his reads, he offset that with 10 assists in a performance that belonged squarely in the spotlight.
As far as opening statements go, this one came in loud.
“I loved his aggressiveness,” coach Sean Sweeney said after Wednesday's game. “I think he did a gerat job trying to put pressure on the defense.
He can be even better. He did a great job in a lot of areas.
He did a good job of drawing the defnse, attacking, finishing, obviously he shot the ball very well and got to the free throw line a lot. He did a great job and keep getting better.”
Banchero also carved out a little history in the process. His 35-point, 10-assist, 80-percent-plus shooting night made him the first player in NBA history to post 35-plus points, 10-plus assists and shoot better than 80 percent in an opening game.
For Banchero, though, the bigger battle has never been about piling up numbers. It’s been about what those numbers mean.
The criticism hanging over him has long been the same: that he can look like a stats machine without fully moving winning in the right direction. The Magic have not posted a positive net rating with him on the floor in any of his first four seasons, including last year’s minus-0.2 points per 100 possessions. That has fed the national storyline that he slows things down, holds the ball too long and leans too often on mid-range jumpers.
He has already started pushing back at that image. Last season, he took the fewest mid-range jumpers of his career and posted his best true shooting percentage. The jumper still came and went, but the signs were there.
Now, with Sean Sweeney’s new offense asking Orlando to play faster and move more, Banchero appears to be leaning into that shift. According to Second Spectrum, he averaged 4.09 seconds per touch and 2.61 dribbles per touch last season. On Wednesday, those numbers dropped to 3.13 seconds per touch and 2.73 dribbles per touch, a clear sign he was getting to his spots faster and making quicker decisions.
“Whether it is one move or no move and straight downhill, there are not many guys in this league who can guard him,” Wendell Carter said after Wednesday's game. “Our style of play is allowing him to get into the paint quite easily.
Being able to allow teammates to make decisions on the back end. Paolo is one of none in my opinion.
If we continue to feed off of him and he continues to play the way he plays, we're going to be in a really good spot for sure.”
It was the kind of night that reminded everyone what Banchero can look like when the game bends his way.
Still, the other side of the story is hard to ignore. The Magic have disappointed in the last two seasons, failing to build on their 2024 breakthrough into the Playoffs and falling short of the bigger expectations that followed. That has pushed Banchero down the pecking order among the league’s young stars, and it has made this year feel like a turning point.
Johnson, meanwhile, had his own case to make. He finished with 20 points, 14 rebounds and six assists on 7-for-19 shooting, and Atlanta was plus-8 in his minutes. The Hawks also won, giving them a fifth straight victory over Orlando.
Banchero’s plus-minus told a tougher story. The Magic were minus-9 with him on the floor in his 41 minutes, even though he helped keep them afloat while they were outscored in a 44-point second quarter and saw an early lead slip away.
Franz Wagner’s foul trouble didn’t help, but Orlando still has enough reason to feel good about the way its best player opened the season. With that level of efficiency from Banchero, the Magic should win plenty of games.
And when they see the Hawks again, they’re likely to bring a little more noise with them.
In Other News...
Magic Opener Put One New Backcourt Question Front And Center
Opening night offered the first real look at how Sean Sweeney wants the Orlando offense to function, and it came with the kind of early-season uncertainty that can linger for a while. The Magic are trying a point-guard-by-committee approach, and in the first game the ball moved through a few different hands as the team settled into new rotations and responsibilities.
Jalen Suggs and Franz Wagner both found themselves in expanded roles, but the arrangement also exposed how much the Magic still have to sort out in the backcourt and on the wing. Wagner handled more of the creation duty than anyone else before foul trouble shortened his night, while Suggs had an uneven opener that reflected both the opportunity and the growing pains of a new system. [Read more 🡒]
Magic Get An Early Chance To Expose Minnesotas New Identity
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For the Magic, that makes this matchup more than just another regular-season measuring stick. Orlando has enough size and physicality to ask questions of a team that has deliberately traded some of its interior heft for spacing, and that contrast should be part of the story all night. The bigger issue for Minnesota is whether this new identity can hold up when opponents can punish them inside or make them win possession battles away from the arc. [Read more 🡒]
Magic Already Face A Worrying Defensive Question After Opener
The opening night loss to the Atlanta Hawks gave Orlando an immediate reminder that its defensive standard has to be sharper than it showed out of the gate. The Magic were left to sort through the film after a late breakdown decided the game, and the postgame mood made clear the issue was bigger than one possession. Players and coaches pointed to the need for better communication, cleaner positioning and a stricter commitment to the teams defensive principles.
For a group that has long treated defense as its foundation, this is the sort of early-season warning that cant be brushed aside. The Magic know the offense will have stretches to find its rhythm, but the defense is supposed to keep them steady while that happens. Instead, the opener left them with a familiar message and an uncomfortable question: how quickly can they turn the lessons from one loss into something more dependable? [Read more 🡒]