How The Orlando Magic Made The Perfect Trade!

How The Orlando Magic Made The Perfect Trade!

the Orlando Magic just made their big swing in what they believe will make them a contender but are they actually ready to compete with the Beasts of the East in the first blockbuster move of the offseason the Magic traded for Desmond Maine while Memphis got back what could possibly be their new starting shooting guard in KCP another depth guard in Cole Anthony while also getting a ton of draft picks most notably in the short term they will get the 16th pick in the 2025 draft a Suns 2026 first round pick which could become quite decent depending on the Suns off season and ensuing health next year this is alongside a 2028 and 2030 first round pick those two and the Suns picks are unprotected as well as a 2029 firstround pick swap now we’ll get into the Grizzly side of things in a future video but let’s look at the fit of Desmond Bane in Orlando how he does but doesn’t address many of their key weaknesses and whether the hefty price of four first round picks plus two rotational pieces from their most recent postseason will be the detriment of Orlando’s future goals let’s start with the most obvious and biggest benefit of Desmond Bane joining the Magic three-point shooting off the catch Desmond Bane is one of the best in the league whether it’s on the wing out of the corner or straight on he’s a 41% career three-point shooter on over six attempts a game and a lot of that impact is done off of the catch from behind the ark immediately Bane offers a level of production and commands such a tight level of defense that will result in significantly improved floor spacing around Desmond Bane for the likes of Paulo Beno another thing this era of Magic basketball has not had a single ounce of is movement shooting ability the Magic tried to address this in the 2023 draft with the selection of Jet Howard however his production as a shooting wing hasn’t panned out in the slightest bane immediately comes in as a very solid movement shooter that should completely open up this offense in ways they have never been able to do before part of it is the movement shooting itself of course but it’s the combination of his great movement shooting and his counters out of it that will truly open up this offense bane will get to run off pin downs off of great screeners in Wendell Carter Jr and Goa Bataz which could lead to very good open threes for himself but could also lead into dishes into Wendo Carter Jr in the short role who’s a very underrated short roll passer who could then be finding a cutting poorer and deadly they could even run this action with Paulo where Paulo and Bane get to have a twoman game and Paulo is in the short role which is a deadly threat as a creator and as a pure bucket getter out of that short role this doesn’t even include the fact that Bane himself is great at attacking closeouts and being a secondary creator he has improved significantly as a playmaker over the last couple of seasons and so attacking these closeouts is going to be a strength of his here his gravity as a great movement shooter will command many aggressive closeouts which will result in some easy mid-range jumpers and push shots for Bane but could also result in him setting up easy buckets for say Wendel Carter Jr in the dunker spot or a cutting po now the weak side shooting out of all of these actions is limited and that’s why I didn’t mention how Bane could drive and kick to a three-point shooter because you know they still don’t have many of those but at the very least the three-point shooting off movement and ensuing ability counters from Bane will open up many layers of this Orlando offense that they simply have never been able to consider use or exploit up to this point outside of the great offball scoring threat Bane will add another layer of team creation and self-creation on this roster again similar to Sugs Fron and Paulo better and worse than some of them bane is ideally not a primary lead creator but it’s a very good secondary one the hope is now is that with all four of their core plus Wendo Carter Jr who’s an above average passer for the five spot that the playmake by committee system will work they’re not going to have a true lead guard but pretty much everyone on the floor is an above average passer at their position outside of Jaylen Suggs and all of them are going to be positive creators in terms of their core four whether they can succeed without that true number one lead guard creator that remains to be seen but another secondary playmaker will certainly help now whether Bane does add a new layer in the creation department in terms of playmaking is a little bit uncertain but where he certainly will add a new layer is within his self-creation now certainly Paulo has great traits as a self-creator and has even expanded into hitting off the dribble threes at a higher clip as we saw in the postseason certainly Suggs has some moments as does France Vagner but Bane will add a pullup three-point threat that currently does not exist on this Magic roster late in games especially in the postseason having a player who can hit from deep off the dribble is essential and as mentioned earlier this will likely play into a deadly twoman game with Paulo Mano the seal on top of everything is that all of this production is done with absurd efficiency he’s consistently a 50/40 90 threat while posting an assist to turnover ratio of 2.2 this past season now although the core thought with Bane joining the Magic is how he significantly improves the offense he also fits in perfectly with their defensive culture now he may be the worst defender in their starting lineup but that’s a representation of how good this Magic’s defense is more so than it is an indictment on Bane bane has been and I’m sure will continue to be a very good defender he has a relatively high motor and good perimeter defense and on a team that already has a great defensive identity I don’t doubt that that factored into the Magic’s willingness to make a big move for him sure they wanted someone that could improve the offense but they wanted someone who fit their defensive identity the great component of Bane’s fit defensively on this team is that contrary to a lot of his time in Memphis especially prior to this season and the emergence of Jaylen Wells he will spend basically zero time defending the opposition’s best players and if anything we’ll be often guarding their worst guard as Jaylen Suggs will get that primary matchup this will allow even more energy for Bane to do his thing on the offensive end and potentially get even more efficient and more productive now before going any further and looking at some of the negatives I want to acknowledge the impact of no KCP and no Cole Anthony in the future of Orlando ultimately there’s not significant loss here cole Anthony can have his moments off the bench as an offensive spark but it has continued to be very inconsistent and Anthony Black will now likely step into a larger role to fill that void alongside Bane and Suggs splitting some of their time with the bench units in terms of the loss of KCP obviously when the Magic signed him last summer the hope was just going to be he was going to be a high level role player he was going to shoot threes well he was going to be a three-point shooter and floor spacer for this team obviously that didn’t happen disastrous season shooting the ball and became a negative at times on the court because of it bane obviously fills in that starting role at a significantly higher level and although having KCP off the bench would have been a nice luxury without the three-point shot rebounding and getting back to where he was in Denver it’s really not a significant loss the loss of the picks that’s where it’s of more concern and we’ll get into that shortly but let’s get back to beyond the court impact even with all the offensive improvements that Desmond Bane will now bring how many concerns remain the answer probably still quite a lot unfortunately ultimately the weak side shooting options when Bane has the ball in his hands are going to be very very limited and as three-point heavy dominant as the league is now that could be an issue caleb Houston was the only guy on the roster last season who shot above league average efficiency from three and the only ones hovering around league average were Cory Joseph pre-injury Movagner and Gary Harris and two of them are old and one of them’s coming off injury no guarantee Cory Joseph and Gary Harris are even on the roster barring another big move that adds more shooting depth which would likely have to be a feature move of Fran Vagner which likely isn’t happening anytime soon then the only way Orlando is going to improve this is via internal improvement which hasn’t exactly gone well so far paula Banko Jaylen Suggs and France Vagner especially need to continue to improve from three especially in the case of France who continues to seemingly get worse from three instead of better throughout his NBA career ideally you’re also going to see some bounceback seasons from three closer to league average or at least average further position in the likes of Wendell Carter Jr and Jonathan Isaac anthony Black is another guy who’s shown flashes and someone ideally you’d like to see improve from three but that wasn’t a projectable part of his game as a prospect it was never something he was expected to be great at so maybe more realistically you’d get Tristan D Silva to get to be at least league average as that could be something that opens up his game as a true playoff usable wing point being there’s still going to be a severe lack of spacing and three-point shooting in many scenarios desmond Bane just improves it from very very bad to quite bad you know it’s like from horrific to it’s still pretty bad wildly enough based on where they were last year that’s still going to open up a lot of their offense because last year it was again horrific at its best this team can likely hover around or just below league average on offensive rating now compared to where they were last year but I struggle to see how they’ll get any better without significant improvements from three now that could be enough alongside having a top three defense in the league maybe to push them into contender status but it’s still going to be their biggest struggle going forward so let’s finally talk about the picks four first round picks got sent to Memphis including a potential short-term roster building tool in pick 16 in this year’s draft but I’ll be completely honest I’m not at all concerned about the picks in terms of drafting players for their roster especially post trade all of these picks borrowing the one out of their control that being the 2026 Suns pick are picks that are going to be in the 20s and ultimately aren’t likely to yield a great playoff level rotational player the biggest loss is the opportunity cost of not being able to use these picks for future trades to acquire different stars or highlevel starters in the future after this trade they have no future tradable first round picks their future first consists of the Nuggets first in this year’s draft at pick 25 and then a 2027 2029 and 2031 first round pick all of which are not going to be eligible to be traded until their respective drafts thanks to the Stefen rule the Stefen rule being you cannot trade firsts in consecutive seasons long story short the Magic now have zero flexibility in terms of moving picks in future trades as none of those first round picks as mentioned can be traded until each pick’s respective draft meaning unless another big trade occurs as they trade away one of their core this magic core is pretty well locked in for the next few years as they don’t have significant ways to add to it now if you believe this core four of Sugs Bane Vagner and Paulo is good enough to challenge for a title then it’s worth giving up that flexibility as well what’s flexibility if you can win however if you think there’s still a move or two away where they might need to package a couple of first round picks together then there’s reason to be concerned about pushing all the chips into acquiring Bane and in turn committing to this core 4 via their lack of flexibility on the trade front going forward either way there’s no doubt the Magic should be one of the best teams in the Eastern Conference next season when you consider the fact that they’re hopefully healthier next year compared to the injuries to Paulo Beno to France Vagner to Jaylen Suggs and even Mo Vogner this season plus the addition of Desmond Bane and the Magic should be able to compete for a top three seed in the East i still have some real concerns about their offense but it’s improved enough that in a wide open Eastern Conference that’s going to be even more hampered by the injury of Jason Tatum for next season the Magic have every reason to be optimistic about reaching new heights and pushing for an NBA title as soon as next season but the best part their core is all just entering or not yet entering their prime the best is yet to come in Orlando and I respect their front office for making a splash to push for their first NBA title in franchise history

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