Orlando Magic: 3 bold predictions for the 2021-22 season
By Luke Duffy
Although the Orlando Magic have had a quietly successful last 12 months in the grand scheme of things, it is still easy to predict how this coming season is going to go for them. With a whole host of young players, and veteran help in the form of Terrence Ross and Robin Lopez leading the charge, plenty of losing will be on the agenda.
This will be no problem if the youngsters on the roster show improvement, and if it leads to another lottery pick for the organization as well. At that point, the Magic will be well on their way to fielding a competitive roster, and head coach Jamahl Mosley will have hopefully implemented the kind of culture that the team buys into as well.
The Orlando Magic don’t figure to be very good next season, but that doesn’t mean that they won’t surprise people with how they perform in 2021-22.
There are always surprises in the NBA, and the Magic are a franchise that are so often overlooked if they don’t have a superstar on their roster. Even when Nikola Vucevic was in town, himself an All-Star on two occasions, casual fans just didn’t care about what the Magic were doing. They made the postseason two years running and were a nice little team, but it didn’t matter.
Clearly, the expectations are now different, but that doesn’t mean that this group can’t surprise, even if the manner of these shocks will look very different. Any team that has Jalen Suggs, R.J. Hampton, Cole Anthony and Chuma Okeke is going to be intriguing to watch, and you can bet there will be some surprise wins and performances this coming year.
The Magic are still miles away from where they want to be, but they look to have done this mini rebuild more correctly than previous attempts. They are going to be worse, but the feeling is that a genuinely competitive team is going to grow out of that experience sooner rather than later. In the meantime, here are three bold predictions for the organization in 2021-22.