Orlando Magic: 5 takeaways from 2017-18 NBA season
By Luke Duffy
1. Injuries an underlying factor
It’s no secret that injuries set the tone for the Orlando Magic this season. Whether it was Gordon’s niggles, Terrence Ross missing 57 games with a knee injury or somebody else, they were never healthy.
Rookie Isaac missed a lot of game time himself (55 games), so while he should have been a real positive for the team, he never really got going. There’s much to like about what he can bring to the team already, and his late season return appeared to coincide with their rise up the defensive ranking charts.
The Magic had a defensive rating of 101.1 when he was on the court — a great foundation to build upon alongside players like Birch and Rodney Purvis.
Yet Isaac’s first season will be remembered more for what could have been, as too often he sat on the sidelines in a suit. The same also goes for Nikola Vucevic (missed 25 games), Evan Fournier (25 games) and Terrence Ross (58 games).
This team was never making the playoffs no matter who was on the court for them, but there’s a sense that this was a season in which some of those rare good moments were robbed from Orlando.
There’s simply no way the Magic can have such bad injury luck next season, and if they do, they will seriously need to look into their training regime and staff.
Next: 2017-18 Week 26 NBA Power Rankings
That, more than anything else, was the underlying factor on why the Orlando Magic performed so badly this season: They were never healthy.