Orlando Magic: Chasing the 8-seed seems foolish

With a retooled roster, the Orlando Magic have reason to believe they’ll be more competitive this season, but going after the eighth seed could backfire.

With lots of new faces throughout the ranks and the 2017-18 NBA season less than a month away, now is a time of optimism for the Orlando Magic.

They haven’t yet hit their first losing streak, long road trip or injury setback (knocks on wood), and everything seems better than it has in years. So much so in fact, that making a run at the eighth seed in a poor Eastern Conference this coming season doesn’t even seem out of the question.

There’s no doubt the Magic aren’t favorites to snag their first postseason berth since 2012, but stranger things have certainly happened in this league.

While it would be great to go back to the playoffs in theory, would it actually help the team in the long-term though? Would it be beneficial?

Let’s take a look at how others teams have gotten on since the turn of the decade, while also working under the assumption that the final postseason spot is the best the Magic can hope for.

Since 2010, only one 8-seed has gotten out of the first round, and that was the anomaly that was the Philadelphia 76ers of 2011-12.

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Led by Andre Iguodala, they went 35-31 in a lockout shortened year, before advancing past a Chicago Bulls team that saw MVP Derrick Rose go down with an ACL injury in the first game of their series.

After dispatching the Bulls in six, they then fought valiantly against the much more fancied Boston Celtics, eventually succumbing to them in seven games.

Now, a run like that is not going to happen for an 8-seed again anytime soon. There are too many quirks to what the 76ers did to be replicated by anybody else.

They also had unusual depth for a team heading into the postseason in their position, with Iguodala, Jrue Holiday and Lou Williams, as well as a still upright Elton Brand, and even a wide-eyed rookie named Nikola Vucevic.

Most of those guys would walk onto the Magic team as it looks at this moment, and for this reason we can’t compare the two.

Beyond that unexpected break, however, the rest of the viewing is pretty bleak. Between 2010017, 8-seeds won a combined 16 games.

Seven of those wins came from the aforementioned Sixers, skewing the numbers somewhat.

There were also two sweeps in that period, the 2013 Milwaukee Bucks and 2016 Detroit Pistons, both roundly hammered by LeBron James-led teams.

The flip side of this argument, however, and one that could fill the Magic with hope, is how each of the teams fared after being an 8-seed. Here is the list of teams who have been in that position this decade:

• Chicago Bulls (2010, 2017)
• Indiana Pacers (2011)
• Philadelphia 76ers (2012)
• Milwaukee Bucks (2013)
• Atlanta Hawks (2014)
• Brooklyn Nets (2015)
• Detroit Pistons (2016)

The 76ers looked set to be a playoff team the season after their playoff heroics, but instead hit self-destruct and became known as The Process not too long afterwards.

The Bulls were building towards becoming legit contenders after 2010’s initial showing, before Rose’s knee gave out on him.

Those versions of the Bucks and Nets flamed out, but the Bucks have done a great job of coming back from that drubbing to the point they’re at now. They are the kind of small market team the Magic can take inspiration from, and why they might think another trip to the lottery makes sense for them.

They’ve even gone a step further than this, and this past summer hired former Bucks general manager John Hammond to replace the bumbling Rob Hennigan. If nothing else, that guy was part of the group that drafted Giannis Antetokounmpo, the kind of under-the-radar addition small market teams love.

Also worth bringing up is how the Bulls went from 8-seeds to 1-seeds between 2011-12, and the Hawks replicated that feat in 2014-15.

There’s not a chance that the Magic would be able to pull something like this off, unless they had the greatest offseason in franchise history next summer.

After all, the case could be made here that, were it not for injury and steering the team into a rebuild, 4-5 of the six teams would have built on their initial place as an 8-seed.

But it does at least show that going after this position, and being eliminated in the first round, may not be the complete waste of time many feel it is. Even more so when you factor in the proposed new NBA Draft Lottery rule changes that could come to fruition by 2019.

Besides, the team had pretty bad draft luck and selected relatively poorly through five years of actually being a terrible team. Anybody want to do that again?

Now that there’s a semblance of a balanced roster with capable veterans and improving young players, why actively try and lose again?

Well, because a run at the 8-seed is only going to end in disappointment and missing out on the chance to draft highly once more — this time with a revamped front office that deserves more trust.

Given that those rule changes likely will happen sooner rather than later, it makes sense to bottom out while the incentive is still there to do so.

Next: Complete 2017 NBA offseason grades for all 30 teams

This is why the Orlando Magic thinking about going after a playoff spot in 2017-18 is fool’s gold, even if it’s also shinier than the dark hole they’ve inhabited since 2012.