Orlando Magic: 3 takeaways from 2021 media day
By Luke Duffy
The arrival of the Orlando Magic‘s media day signaled the end of an offseason full of speculation about what the future could hold for this group. Instead, members of the media got the chance to sit down and talk with the players, as well as get a general feel for where this young team is in their development.
To that end, all went well. As expected players were in good spirits, which has become something of a hallmark since coming together in the summer for some team bonding, and everybody said all of the right things about the upcoming season. Robin Lopez in particular, looking every inch the superb locker room presence it was hoped he would be.
Even the proverbial elephant in the room, Jonathan Isaac’s stance on vaccinations, was handled extremely well.
The Orlando Magic media day is in the books, and it was one that brought with it a lot of positives ahead of what is an important year for the group.
After a piece published by Rolling Stone recently, and which garnered plenty of negative attention for some, Isaac fielded questions and spoke well about his reasoning for continuing to not get the vaccine. Outside of what is going on with Ben Simmons in Philadelphia, plus Kyrie Irving’s own opinions on vaccines and how it impacts the Brooklyn Nets, this looked like one of the trickier conversations in the entire league to navigate.
Instead, the Magic sailed through the day, with attentions now turning to a preseason slate of games which will give us some clues as to the rotation and roles of a number of players. Back to the matter of playing games and finding ways to get better, which is all fans want at this stage in the franchise’s development.
There were many takeaways from the media day, but the following three stuck out more than anything else because of their importance for the Magic both this season, and hopefully in years to come as well.