Orlando Magic: 5 takeaways from 2017-18 NBA season

2. The Magic need to re-sign Aaron Gordon

Forward Aaron Gordon had the best season of his young career, but he also only appeared in 58 games for the team. This was because of a series of unfortunate injuries, which tried to hold his inevitable growth back but still failed to do so.

A restricted free agent this summer, the expectation is that the team will re-sign him to a max deal. You could argue his play doesn’t quite warrant money like that, but watching the Magic this season, it became abundantly clear why they need to lock Gordon up for the future.

They really don’t have much else going for them, from the aforementioned defensive errors to an offense (25th, 102.8 offensive rating) that oftentimes wasn’t up to much either.

The team let a future face of the franchise in Victor Oladipo slip through its fingers, and it absolutely cannot let that happen again.

This year saw Gordon find a much more consistent jump shot, hitting (33.6 percent) from deep, a career high. That number would have been much better had he not trailed off in this category as the season wore on. Again, injuries didn’t help his consistency here.

More than any of that though, fans wanted to see Gordon step into those shots and take them, something that hadn’t been true before this season. Gordon made (115) 3-pointers this season, just shy of the 132 he logged for his first three seasons combined.

His Player Efficiency Rating of 16.5 was another career high, and above the league average of 15 — a welcome sight.

Really though, when it comes to Gordon and this team, the fear is in what he might become should the Magic decide to let him walk for some reason. Which is why they won’t, and the steadily improving play of Gordon throughout the campaign was a rare bright spot.

He was the team’s best player when on the court, and if he can make another leap next season he will truly be knocking on the door of star status.