Orlando Magic: 5 reasons to be excited for 2019-20 NBA season

1. They’ll actually be good

It may be obvious, but really the most exciting thing about being a Orlando Magic fan heading into the 2019-20 season is that they will actually be good again.

Everything else already mentioned feeds into this, from the growth of Jonathan Isaac and Aaron Gordon to the hopeful re-emergence of Markelle Fultz. The defensive system is already in place and veterans like Al-Farouq Aminu should help too.

The continuity on their roster and bringing everybody back from last season should help them hit the ground running as well. You only need to look at where the Magic have come from over the last seven years to realize why them being good again is such a big deal.

They have won only 199 games since the start of the 2012-13 season and that includes the 42 that got them to the playoffs last year. During that span they have drafted Victor Oladipo and traded him away, only to watch him bloom into an All-NBA level player.

The same is true of Tobias Harris, who they got rid of before he looked like a borderline All-Star with the LA Clippers.

There was the disastrous trade for Serge Ibaka which sent Oladipo to the Oklahoma City Thunder, while other lottery picks such as Mario Hezonja and Elfrid Payton never worked out and moved on, with the Magic getting nothing in return.

Even Maurice Harkless, who wasn’t exactly missed badly when he left the Magic, has become a productive player for the Trail Blazers.

At one point in time they had the rights to both Domantas Sabonis and Dario Saric, with neither ever playing in Orlando. Imagine having one or both of them now and how they could make the roster even better.

They also gave Bismack Biyombo a four-year, $72 million deal, in what was one of the worst contracts in the league at the time. They had to take on Timofey Mozgov to get out from under that deal.

But since Jeff Weltman and John Hammond have come on board, they have made smart decisions and done an admirable job of cleaning up the roster and drafting players (Isaac and Mohamed Bamba) who are much more suited to the league today.

Other than the $34 million owed to Evan Fournier over the next two seasons (and which this front office didn’t give him in the first place), the Magic are able to enter into trade negotiations if they want to, and have a degree of flexibility.

So with an attractive product on the court, and just as importantly, a competent front office off of it, the Magic are have put themselves in position to finally be good again.

It was a long, long road back to this point, but the Orlando Magic are exciting, and after years of misery it is no more than their fans deserve.