The newest new era for the Orlando Magic features highly-touted rookie Mohamed Bamba and returning potential star Aaron Gordon as its main attractions.
It’s bad enough that the Orlando Magic have gone six straight seasons without an NBA playoff appearance, but on top of that, in five of those seasons the Magic failed to win at least 30 games.
Plenty of teams around the league could be described as being mired in mediocrity, but the Magic have spent the last half-decade flailing in futility. Immersed in irrelevance. Wading in weak sauce.
Orlando’s latest rebuilding effort kicked off in 2018 when the franchise parted ways with head coach Frank Vogel and replaced him with Steve Clifford, who most recently coached the Charlotte Hornets and is a renowned culture-changer and teacher of young players.
The Magic’s next move was using the sixth overall pick in the draft to get Mohamed Bamba, the most promising prospect the franchise has had since Dwight Howard began his Hall of Fame career in Orlando 14 years ago.
With (hopefully) their next interior anchor in place, the Magic spent the rest of the summer filling some role player vacancies and re-signing power forward Aaron Gordon, another young talent with All-Star potential who finished second on the team in scoring and rebounding last season.
You’ve heard this before, but things are looking up in Orlando. The young core and new leadership are taking steps in the right direction toward becoming a serious threat in the Eastern Conference.
Here are the grades for every offseason move the Magic made in 2018.