Orlando Magic: 5 goals for the 2018 offseason

5. Bring in better leaders

Last summer, the Magic added Jonathon Simmons, Marreese Speights and Arron Afflalo to be the veteran leaders for this young team. Each addition was applauded, as the three players brought something different to the table in how they would mentor the younger players on the team.

Speights had won a championship with the Golden State Warriors, Afflalo was coming back for a second stint with the team and Simmons was a hard-working professional with the San Antonio Spurs.

Related Story: Orlando Magic - Top 10 moments from 2017-18 NBA season

Fans had absolutely no issues with these guys being brought into the fold. In fact, all three were seen as good moves for those reasons.

Simmons in particular was expected to grab the opportunity to be featured and run with it, while the long range shooting of Speights was going to help them spread the floor.

While the season began this way, Simmons only showed brief flashes of looking to take the next step in his career early on. Speights played exactly as advertised, which was a nice boost for the team offensively, but Afflalo? Well, he didn’t always exactly lead by example.

https://twitter.com/World_Wide_Wob/status/953428389343449089

So while the team did well in this department last summer, they simply have to do better this offseason in identifying veteran players to pair with their youngsters. There’s no guarantee this will even be possible, but it is a sneakily important aspect of putting a playoff-caliber roster together for next season.