Orlando Magic: 3 players facing most pressure in 2019-20

3. Jonathan Isaac

It is a little unfair to see Jonathan Isaac make this list, but that is more out of circumstance than anything else. Entering his third season as a pro, he finds himself a part of a young core but with the brightest future currently of any of these players on the roster.

Mohamed Bamba is coming off a rookie season that was cut short by a broken leg (he appeared in only 47 games, averaging 16.3 minutes per contest), while Aaron Gordon, still only 23 himself, appears to have settled into the role of best two-way player the Orlando Magic have.

There is nothing wrong with this and it is great to have a guy like Gordon, their best player in the playoffs against the Toronto Raptors, he just likely won’t be the best player on a championship team.

Isaac may not prove to be that either, but right now there is still a lot of potential to get excited about, and in the second half of last season he started putting it together.

In the month of February he averaged 13.7 points in just over 29 minutes of action. For the season as a whole those numbers were a less impressive 9.6 points in 26.6 minutes. His 3-point shooting (32.2 percent) needs to improve, and was actually a regression on his rookie season (34.8 percent).

He was also a factor in the Magic having the eighth-best defensive rating in the league during the regular season (107.6, with that number improving slightly to 107.3 when Isaac was on the court).

Fully healthy after a rocky rookie season himself (he played in 75 games, starting 64), Isaac looked like the player most likely to make a jump next.

We’ve have already mentioned how important it is for the Magic to grow from within, and as of now much of that responsibility is on Isaac’s shoulders.

It is still too early to ask this of Bamba (who could struggle for consistent minutes with Nikola Vucevic and Khem Birch both re-signed) and Gordon’s continued improvements on both ends are being relied upon enough as it is.

We need to see growth from Isaac, and it will be a worry if that does not come.