The Magic will need to get creative this offseason to build on strong foundation

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BOSTON — It seems perfectly appropriate that the final game of the Orlando Magic’s 2024-25 season — a 120-89 loss Tuesday night to the Boston Celtics in Game 5 of their first-round playoff series— revealed the team’s positives and negatives in one fell swoop.

For one half Tuesday night, as well as for the four full games that preceded it, the Magic battled the reigning NBA champions toe-to-toe and at times outplayed the more experienced Celtics. The perceived star potential of Paolo Banchero and Franz Wagner, the quality of the team’s defense and the team’s effort all met, or even exceeded, expectations. There’s no doubt the Celtics are the better team, but the Magic made the Celtics’ 4-1 series victory a tough one. The Magic showed they have a foundation they can build on.

But the final 22 minutes of Game 5 demonstrated the same weaknesses that plagued Orlando for the entire season and throughout the playoff series. After Banchero picked up his fifth foul (and his foul trouble is a debate for another day), the Magic did not have the shooting skill to compete with the far more balanced Celtics.

“We wanted to go to the second round, so I don’t think anyone is necessarily happy that we didn’t get blown out four games,” Banchero said. “That wasn’t the goal. The goal was to win and go to the second round. So, I’m not taking any moral victories from this series. The goal was to win.”

Orlando played perhaps its best half of the series during the first half, with its defense limiting Boston to 0-of-6 shooting from 3-point range, almost unthinkable for one of the most potent 3-point shooting teams in league history. Remember, Boston averaged 18 3-point makes per game on 48 attempts per game during the regular season. During Tuesday night’s first half, the Celtics’ futility was not an accident; it was largely the result of the Magic’s defense, which was determined to run Celtics players off the 3-point line.

The Magic’s defense, which ranked second in the NBA during the regular season, showed it’s ready for high-level playoff basketball.

The Magic’s offense, which ranked 27th during the regular season, with one of the worst 3-point shooting percentages in recent NBA history, is nowhere near ready for high-level playoff basketball, even when Banchero and Wagner are at their best.

During Tuesday’s first half, Orlando made only 36 percent of its field-goal attempts and went 4 of 18 from 3-point range — and that was with Banchero on the court for most of that time.

Franz Wagner averaged 25.8 points, 4.8 rebounds and 5.6 assists per game in Orlando’s playoff series against Boston. (David Butler II / Imagn Images)

For the final 9:47 of the third quarter — with Banchero on the bench because he received three quick fouls early in the quarter — the Magic lost their moorings. Even though they generated some good looks at the basket, they shot 4 of 17 from the field, including misses on all nine of their attempts from deep. The futile stretch resembled their many droughts during the regular season and their disastrous final four minutes of a winnable Game 4.

“Yeah, it’s frustrating, for sure,” a subdued Wagner said late Tuesday night. “I think it’s very obvious looking at the stat sheet. It’s definitely something everybody on the team has to work on. I think there’s also a lot of good in that, knowing that if we improve that, I think that we’re an extremely dangerous team.”

No one could have said it better. If the Magic repair their Achilles’ heel while retaining their elite defense, they could go farther in the playoffs.

But where will that improvement come from? For the last several years, the front office has banked on seeing internal improvement from its still-young roster. But key players — Banchero, Wagner, Jalen Suggs, Anthony Black and Jonathan Isaac among them — regressed as long-range shooters during the season. Kentavious Caldwell-Pope, Orlando’s marquee free-agent signing last summer, turned out to be a significant disappointment on offense.

Big-money extensions for Wagner and Suggs that will kick in during the 2025-26 season, as well as what surely will be a maximum-salary contract for Banchero that would begin during the 2026-27 season, will inhibit Orlando’s cap flexibility. The league’s still-newish collective bargaining agreement is so punitive to teams that exceed certain thresholds that Magic president of basketball operations Jeff Weltman and general manager Anthony Parker will need to be opportunistic and creative this offseason.

Magic officials and coaches have noted, correctly, that injuries to Banchero, Wagner, Suggs and sixth man Moe Wagner torpedoed their hopes of securing a top-six seed this past season. The expected returns of Suggs and Moe Wagner from the knee injuries that ended their 2024-25 seasons prematurely should give the team a boost.

But it’s difficult to envision the returns of Suggs and Wagner solving Orlando’s shooting problems completely. During last spring’s first round, when the Magic pushed the Cleveland Cavaliers to seven games, the team was at full strength but struggled to shoot then, too.

And here’s another question: If Weltman and Parker resort to trades to improve the offense, will the players’ departures disrupt the team’s stellar chemistry?

The chemistry this season remained strong.

After Game 5 ended, coach Jamahl Mosley told his players that he was proud of them.

“You can go down the list for the things that have happened to this group and (have) every reason to understand that we could have felt sorry for ourselves, and we never did,” Mosley told reporters.

Still, their playoff exit hit hard.

“Especially with two of our main guys being out, it shows that we found ways to get wins in the regular season,” center Wendell Carter Jr. said. “We won one in the series, but we’re not satisfied. I think as competitors, guys want to do better, want to do better not only for themselves but for this team. So, yeah, a moral victory. We can look at the good, but at the end of the day, we’re competitors and we want to win.”

They have the foundation in place to do better next year, as their series against the Celtics showed. But they need to augment that foundation.

The offseason will be a critical one.

(Top photo of Paolo Banchero and Jayson Tatum: David Butler II / Imagn Images)

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