Just when it seemed like the Orlando Magic were trending in the right direction, an ACL tear to young stud Jonathan Isaac has muddied their future.
The Orlando Magic can’t have nice things. At this point, that just seems to be a fact. Going right back to Shaquille O’Neal’s decision to leave all those years ago, followed by injuries robbing the franchise of some prime Penny Hardaway, Tracy McGrady and Grant Hill years, it has never been straightforward for the Magic.
Dwight Howard’s decision to leave in 2012 was another low point, one which took more than half a decade to begin to recover from. That process began to turn last season, when the Magic made it back to the playoffs and looked to have some young players they could finally build around.
Then last night happened. In a bubble, in Florida, with no fans in attendance, potential franchise savior Jonathan Isaac went down with what looked immediately like a bad knee injury. Given that we have seen this before, on New Year’s Day no less, there was hope that perhaps this might just be another sprain.
Then you remember this is the Magic we’re talking about. Lucky escapes like that barely ever happen once for them, never mind twice. The news broke not long after the game. ACL tear. Isaac going to be lost for somewhere between six to nine months depending on how his rehab goes. Perhaps it will be longer. Knowing the Magic’s luck, it probably will be.
Could this have been avoided?
Nobody wants to say I told you so, especially when it comes to the health of a player but, well, we did say last week that this could happen. Bringing Isaac back in the bubble, despite his continued desire to play, was always going to be a risk, and for what? To maybe move up into the seventh seed and a rematch with the Toronto Raptors in the first round of the playoffs?
As fun as that would be to see, and it still looks on course to happen, can you really be honest with yourself and say the Magic had a shot in that series? Taking them to six games would be seen as a success, and it also means avoiding the Milwaukee Bucks in round one and not getting swept by one of the best teams in basketball.
But if Isaac was brought back in order to help this happen, and that has to have been behind some of the thinking here, such is his impact defensively, can you say that it was worth it now? Isaac looked amazing to close out scrimmage play in a win over the Denver Nuggets, and versus the Brooklyn Nets in the Magic’s first seeding game he was at his disruptive best defensively too.
Now he’s gone until well into next season, and the question marks surrounding this franchise have returned with a bang. Continuity and knowing what young players they had to build around, namely Isaac, Markelle Fultz and Aaron Gordon, were the real selling point for the Magic. Especially if they hoped to snag a veteran or two to join the cause down the line.
But because of this the Magic will now have to lean into the present even more, which on the surface appears fine because of how well Nikola Vucevic, Terrence Ross and Evan Fournier (sometimes) have led this team in pursuit of the playoffs. But they won’t be around forever, and they certainly aren’t the answer to turning into a contending outfit.
What the Orlando Magic will miss
Isaac could have been, and perhaps he still might be down the road, but another significant leg injury in only his third year in the league raises all kinds of questions. ACL tears aren’t the death sentence to careers that they once were, but there is no doubt now that making him the centerpiece of a potential contender in the future is a risk.
That is not to say that Isaac’s career is over, or anything close to it. The Magic still have a young player with tremendous defensive potential, who will surely come back from this injury and help the organization on the court. Off the court, he appears to be a genuine and really well-liked guy as well. There are just now question marks over quite how much he can be depended on in the future.
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We could speak here about Isaac’s decision to stand during the National Anthem during the two seeding games he featured in, but that is a conversation not to be had now. The ways in which a player chooses to support a cause are unique to them, and there is no doubt that Isaac is vocal in all of the right ways about the social justice issues we are currently living through.
Which makes some of the comments seen on social media after he went down, with plenty of people appearing to revel in the misfortune of the injury as a result of his decision to stand during the anthem, ugly to watch. Ill will towards another isn’t going to solve anything, and the lack of compassion shown by some in that moment was telling.
For the Orlando Magic though, there really is no good way to cut this. They have lost their most promising young player to a long-term injury, at a time when the stakes weren’t even that high. There is no championship to be won for them this season, and they’re already essentially guaranteed a playoff spot. The fear now, however, is that the path to a championship in the future just got longer as well.