Magic will meet higher expectations; 5 predictions
By Luke Duffy
The Orlando Magic enter the 2019-20 season with higher expectations than in years gone by and the predictions for this team reflect that.
With the kind of continuity in place for the 2019-20 season that most other NBA teams cannot match, the Orlando Magic have emerged as an organization to watch heading into this season. Their young core surrounded by veterans such as the All-Star center Nikola Vucevic, sixth man extraordinaire Terrence Ross and new recruit Al-Farouq Aminu.
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Add a former first overall pick in Markelle Fultz, who is now actually playing games, to the mix and head coach Steve Clifford has a lot to work with as they attempt to move up the Eastern Conference standings.
On paper they should do exactly that, the trio of Aaron Gordon, Jonathan Isaac and Mohamed Bamba among the better young groupings in the league. Right now it looks like being a question of how much each of these three guys improve over the course of the year, as opposed to which, if any, will make a leap at all.
Games aren’t won on paper, however, and even the teams who finished around them in the postseason race last season improved. The Brooklyn Nets added Kyrie Irving, while the Indiana Pacers brought in Malcolm Brogdon and will get one-time Magic player Victor Oladipo back at some point throughout the seaso.
The Detroit Pistons find themselves in a similar position to the Magic in that they brought back much of last year’s team and the Miami Heat, who finished 10th in the standings last time out, added Jimmy Butler and drafted a guy in Tyler Herro who would have made a lot of sense playing for the other team in Florida as well.
All of which is to say this coming season will not be easy, despite the real positivity surrounding the Magic at the moment. The following are five predictions for how the organization will get on and are more grounded than some of what has been written about the Magic already this summer.