EP. 542 – What Could Go Wrong? – Orlando Magic Podcast

EP. 542 – What Could Go Wrong? – Orlando Magic Podcast

This is the Sixth Man Show, an Orlando Magic podcast with your hosts Kevin Tucker and Jonathan Osborne covering all things Magic Basketball by fans for fans. Go Magic. What’s going on Orlando Magic fans? You guys are back with the six-man show. Today is August 7th, 2025. Jonathan Osborne here as always, joined by my co-host Kevin Tucker. Kevin Tucker after like a few days off. We we kind of got a little break there. How we doing? How we feeling? Doing pretty well. I’m excited to get back to talking to Magic Basketball. You know, anything but Magic Mailbag is fun. The second annual one was very fun, but it’s good to be getting back to Magic Basketball. I had a uh a friend of mine who lives uh in Orlando who I guess you know has some sort of family member who’s a Magic fan and he was like hey Kevin what’s the name of your podcast I want to tell my friend to listen to it and I was like well it’s the sixman show number one number two tell maybe not to don’t listen to the last two episodes if he wants magic content he’s be like what the heck is this but no it was a lot of fun what at least not first like maybe that’s not the best introduction to the show you know necessarily But yeah, we appreciate everybody’s uh you know questions obviously and tuning in and listening and like the feedback is always super fun. So appreciate that. But we’re right back in the swing of things here. Magic Basketball for the from here on out until next year and then obviously we’ll we’ll do that again. Um, yeah, little bit of a I don’t necessarily want to call it a fun episode because it’s not really the the kind of fun that usually I I envision when I think of Magic Basketball, but today we’re going to have the conversation of like what could go wrong. We’ve spent basically almost two full months since Father’s Day. Yeah. Talking and like building up and just flat out glazing the Orlando Magic and just been talking about sunshines and rainbows and trophies and parades and all the things that you know could be really awesome from this. But we haven’t really spent a lot of time talking about the other side of things, like what could go wrong and kind of what could get in the way of this team accomplishing what they want to and and really what we should expect that they can. Yeah, exactly. It’s going to be a a glass half empty type of episode, which is, you know, we don’t try to do it very often. And I don’t mean that in a bad way, but it is good to take a step back and go, “Okay, we’re excited and we’re still going to be excited, but let’s let’s think about what could happen and let’s just mentally prepare yourselves.” You know, what is it? Uh, hope for the worst. Hope for the best, expect the worst or something like that. This is an expect the worst episode, but I think it’s going to be good to kind of uh put those glasses on, I guess, and kind of help us prepare for the season, which by the way, we’re into August now. You know, the last time we recorded was July. We’re into August. So, we’re now in the two-month window away from preseason basketball. I’m excited about that. If it sounds like a long way away, but the schedule should come out next week if you know history is any indicator. Obviously, it’s a little bit different this summer because the new TV deals, so maybe they won’t release it, but should be next week sometime. So, that’ll be huge. Obviously, we had the announcement of the the European tour and everything. So, we got part of the schedule figured out, but things are slowly taking shape. Season’s around the corner, and I’m definitely excited for it. Yeah, I I’m really at the point of the the offseason in the summer where I I need the schedule to come out so we can pour over that. that’ll give us, you know, obviously some content, but a couple of days to get our minds off of, man, like the season so far away and kind of the dog days of summer. And when I think about the fact that the Desmond Bane trade and Father’s Day, like what we’re talking about here was already two months ago. Like if we just do that same amount of time again now, I do think this next two months is going to feel longer than the last two months because we had like a solid month there of like the Bane trade, the draft, summer league, everybody just kind of like what was that? The rebrand. Yeah, the rebrand as well. Like and everybody just hyping up the magic. So that’s been a lot of fun and and we’re not going to get so much of that. really looking forward to like Euro basket and and that kind of supplementing, you know, that basketball. And obviously, we’re going to cover that, you know, in a good amount of depth. And actually, we’re going to talk a little bit about that in just a second here. So, that’ll get us through a couple of weeks. But by the end of that, then we’re into, you know, the first week of September. And then we’re like two and a half weeks away from media day, which is the start of training camp. And then after that week, we’re right into preseason. And then you’ve got preseason for like two weeks. and then you got like a week and then the season will be here. So, it it it does kind of seem like it’s it’s pretty far, but it’s not it’s not that far. And I’m just hoping that you and I will be able to get through, you know, doing this for those little pockets where there isn’t a ton going on. Yeah, absolutely. And in the meantime, during this offseason, we’ve seen some Magic uh players and personnel kind of spread out all over the world, honestly. You know, we saw uh The Magic released a new episode of All Access where Ryan Anderson and Shelley Wils and some other people from the Magic organization were over in Germany, you know, for the uh the whole event there getting ready for the big uh game in Berlin in January. That was really cool. Um we saw Jonathan Isaac in Bhutan of all places. You know, if I were to pick a a country, that’s not necessarily the one I would guess, you know, if you were to have me guess. But I definitely wouldn’t have cuz I didn’t even know that it existed until a few days ago. It is a place. It is a country there in uh Southeast Asia. Um so yeah, doing I guess some kind of basketball camp there with a couple other NBA dudes, right? Hoops for Happiness. Okay. Some type of like NBA initiative. It was Ji, AJ Green, Justin Holiday, and Mason Plumbley over there. Oh, that was cool. What? We shared it from our socials. Couple moves from Ji now against what kind of competition were they? Kids maybe. I don’t know. Less than like less than subpar competition. Like we’re like I don’t like this is I don’t even know if we would say this is like LA fitness kind of, you know, competition. Like this might be like the Newport Richie Rec Center which I used to, you know, frequent back in the day. Like to me it wasn’t so much about like oh look how good he looks playing basketball more than like look look how good he looks just moving around and like you know the explosiveness like off the ground. obviously he had like the big dunk as he’s going through the lane and he’s significantly trimmed down from especially where he was at the beginning of last season and that’s obviously one of the things that we’re going to talk about of like hey what could go wrong this definitely could go wrong with Ji but um the fact that you know he slimmed down looks to be moving well again like I don’t recall seeing that type of explosiveness at out of him at all last season so again we don’t want to sit here and overanalyze and overreact to a you know video from a clinic in Bhutan, but the the JI stock, you know, it it feels like it’s up a little bit today. Yeah, it it’s definitely not down. I’ll at least give it that. You know, there’s nothing that we saw that was like, oh no. Um but yeah, so that was cool. Uh what else? Oh, Germany, you know, we just mentioned they’re getting ready to, you know, start their their uh not preseason, but I guess their warm-up games, but they put out some footage from their practices. Fron, Tristan both looking good in Germany, which I’m just saying this out loud. We’ve got like the Orlando Magic World Tour this summer. We got guys in Germany, we got guys in Bhutan, we got, you know, everywhere. But, uh, yeah, they’re looking Georgia. Yeah. You know, exactly. Where Eurob basket? Finland this year, right? I think I think that’s correct. F I N that’s got to be the the you know abbreviation for for where it is. Let me Yeah, it’s Finland. Yeah, Tampere is where at least the the first round of of Euro Basket is is taking place. But yeah, um the 10th, which is that what day of the week is that here? That’s Sunday. Um in Mannheim, Germany, uh there’s going to be a friendly between Germany and Slovenia. And then on the 15th, so what would that be? Next Friday, not this coming Friday, but the next Friday, correct, Kev? Um, is going to be the start of the Turkish Airlines Super Cup 2025 in Munich. Uh, Super Cup. Usually Germany does this right before Euro Basket. I don’t remember if they did it right before the World Cup, but um, it’s going to be Germany, Turkey, and then Serbia, and the Czech Republic. So, just four teams. So, both of those teams will play next Friday. Uh, Germany is going to be at 12:00 Eastern. They’ll take on Turkey. And then at 2:45 Eastern, Serbia will take on the Czech Republic. And then the winner of Germany, Turkey will face the winner of Serbia and the Czech Republic in like the final. And then the loser of those first games will play in the third place game. If Germany has like any issue with Turkey, probably not going to be a good sign. Obviously, Serbia, you know, Jokic playing on that team and, you know, a couple of other guys. It’s a it’s a good test. It’s a good warm-up before they really start, you know, getting going in uh the World Cup. And then they also play Spain on the 23rd, which I think is going to be like their last friendly before their first Euro basket game against Montenegro on the 27th. I don’t know if Vu is playing for Montenegro this time around, but we might see some, you know, current versus past Magic in that matchup. So, looking forward to all those or current versus future Magic, you know, you never know. Yeah, true. Uh, I was going to ask I I double check Eurob Basket this year is is one of those joint host tournaments. So, it’s across Cypress, Finland, Poland, and Latvia with the final being in Latvia. So, there you go. The more you know. Uh, but yeah, that’s going to be interesting and obviously exciting to get some uh some basketball in in our eyes again this summer. It’ll be fun. Yeah, we we got um I don’t want to say tagged. A lot of people sent us the clip that uh you know Deutlin Basketball posted earlier today of u Andy Oops who who looks like he’s been in the gym a little bit like he’s inbounding the ball inbounds it to Fron and then Tristan’s actually guarding Fron and Fron hits like this tween tween crossover like step back into a three that goes in everybody’s like look no hitch like the off the dribble stuff for Fron has always looked pretty smooth it’s the catch and shoot stuff that has really been the problem. And I was like, “Come on, just give us one more clip.” You know, like them shooting threes after practice or something like that so that we can get eyes on Fron. But he looks good. It looks smooth. That jumper looked fluid, but really, you know, we should be keeping our eyes on what the catch and shoot stuff looks like. And we’re going to talk about Fron as another like, hey, what could go wrong? At least in my mind. But like we see him knock down a couple of, you know, corner threes in Euro Basket with like no hitch and it looks really fluid and confident and we’re going to have to have some conversations. Yeah, of course. Some overreactions of course, but yeah. Yeah. You know, we’re we’re keeping an eye on the Fron’s shot, but you got to give Magic fans some credit for keeping an eye this weekend on Kia Center. The Monster Jam came to Kia Center. What What a great time to open up the venue and unveil the brand new Jumbotron that is hanging now over the Kia Center. Well, not floor, but over the dirt, I guess, from Monster Jam this weekend. If you haven’t seen it, you can go check on social media. Some people have posted it. I don’t remember if we posted or not, but we retweeted it. Yeah. Yeah. So, it’s, you know, obviously it wasn’t a rumor anymore. or it was confirmed earlier this summer that that was part of a brand like a whole slew of different upgrades coming to Kia Center. And so seeing that up there was pretty cool. Totally different layout. You know, obviously Kia Center known for that very vertical minded uh jumbotron. Uh this one’s more of a horizontal jumbotron. Uh you know, but I think it looks great and I’m excited to see in person this fall. The only question that I have is I could have sworn when we started to hear about it or, you know, we got hold of like that PDF that showed all of the upgrades that were coming to the lower bowl. I could have sworn that there were supposed to be like video boards on the inside of it so that like if you were courtside, you could just kind of look up. I haven’t seen that. I don’t think they’re done cuz I don’t think they’ve done like stuff like I think there’s a lot. They just got to do it in between each of these events that happen there. I’m just guessing that there’s more. I really hope that happens because like if not like it’s I think that would be pretty tough viewing like when before with it like vertical there were like four sides to it. So like anytime you look up but with it being so big it’s like you’re really going to have to like crank your neck and like look up into the side unless you just kind of look up underneath. Especially when you and I sit courtside all the time like it’s just so tough for Oh yeah. Yeah. Of course. Yeah. Definitely. Definitely. Well, yeah, I’m I’m looking forward to to seeing all that and, you know, we’ll see more in the weeks and and months to come as there are more events. People will continue to post photos and and then obviously, you know, when there’s preseason basketball in just a couple of months here. Yeah. Okay, let’s go ahead and I guess get into the bulk of the episode again. like we we spent the last two months and and some people are going to comment on this like, “Hey, you you guys might be being negative or you’re being unreasonable or whatever, but like there’s also been a ton of people letting us know over the course of the last months that we’re being like too positive, like overly confident. Let’s wait and see how, you know, everything looks on the floor.” So maybe this episode might not necessarily be for everyone. But even if you’re one of those people who are like, I don’t want to hear any of the negative. I just want to live in this like super positive dream world fantasy land. I do think there are are things that we’re going to discuss on this pod that maybe you haven’t considered yet that maybe you should be. Um because like it’s the NBA, anything can happen from season to season. It’s 82 games and we have seen it all, you know, in the last handful of years here. So, just thought it would be helpful um and a good idea at this point of the offseason to go through and just talk about like, hey, what could go wrong kind of thing, you know? So, Kev, why don’t you go ahead and and get us started like what are one of the things that you think could go wrong uh with the Magic this season. Um yeah, so there’s a couple I mean, I’ve got obviously a list here and I don’t know if I’m going to pick a specific order, but I I am going to start with the first one that this is the one that has weighed on me the most this offseason. Like when I look at this roster, when I look at um the moves we made this summer, as as great as many of them were, there’s still one glaring thing for me and it’s it’s just it’s a it’s a coin toss. It’s a coin flip, right? Like I just don’t know how this is going to go. I’m a little concerned for it. And it is the depth at specifically like the guard and wing position, right? Magic sign Tus Jones. On paper, it sounds great. you know, he’s a little older, but you know, assist to turnover ratio is great. Three-point shooting is great. I’m not concerned about that. Outside of that, there’s just a lot of question marks. The first name you think about is Anthony Black. Uh, you know, obviously Anthony Black, good player, has a lot of room to improve and and obviously very young player and could improve, but he’s the first question mark. After that though, that’s where it gets really concerning to me because there’s a lot of guys that are on this list that are going to have to step up. And so when I think about uh what could go wrong, the first thing that comes to my mind is that the the depth in those positions just is not good enough to compete. Again, I mentioned Taius AB. Think about Jace. You know, who knows what Jace is going to be. He’s a rookie. Jet Howard, I still don’t know what Jet Howard is. What we’ve seen so far hasn’t been great. Uh, you add Tristan in there, a guy that I really like, but again, he’s going to be called up to a bigger role this year than even last year. And then obviously no appenda. I don’t think we’re going to, at least on paper, I don’t expect us to have to rely on him, but to have to depend. I almost did that. I almost did that and I decided against it, but I’m glad you did it. But yeah, that’s my first thing because that’s the thing that’s just kind of been like I love so much of this summer, but that right there scares me. And the last thing I’ll say about it is this. it in the regular season, I’m super concerned. In the playoffs, maybe not as much, right? Because assuming you’re healthy, those rotations get smaller. And maybe they get smaller in the regular season this year. But that’s the first thing on my list is just the depth of our guard and wing spots just not being good enough. Yeah, I think I’m I’m aligned with your thinking there and especially when you’re talking about the the rotation and like how short the leash might be on some of these guys. Like we’re no longer in the development phase. We’re in the win now phase. Like we’re not at the point anymore where we shouldn’t be at the point where we’re like, “Oh, you know what? Like this guy’s really struggling, but we kind of just have to like, you know, let him learn.” And so like that’s not where we are at this point. So, if they do have a guy out there, you know, like a a Jace or like a Tristan Dilva and and they’re struggling and you feel like you have a better option, kind of just need to go right to that. Like, I don’t think we’re going to get to the point in the regular season where we have like an eight-man rotation. Certainly in the playoffs you I I think you probably will out of necessity in in some matchups, but I could absolutely see you know Mosley who for the most part the last you know three years uh is it three years or four years now with Mo. This has been four he’s had four full seasons with Mo. Yeah cuz he came every Fron and Jaylen season. Yeah. So okay so for the last four years we’ve run a 10-man rotation. You did steal a couple of mine. One, one of mine was like Tus Jones’s defense. Like if it I don’t expect it to just be like so bad, right? I don’t know if he’s even going to be like the same level of defender as as Cole, right? Like, you know, in terms of height, like they’re around the same size. Taius is a little bit more slight than Cole. And I I don’t know if Taius is going to play with that same level of of effort. I’m hoping that, you know, it was just last couple years he’s not played for great teams, you know, whether it be, you know, Washington or or Phoenix. And hopefully he’s like kind of like re-energized and revitalized a little bit playing with this team. And we’ve seen other guys who aren’t good defenders in in some spots like Paulo, you know, at Duke. That was like the one of the biggest, you know, wraps on him was like, this guy’s not a good defender. He’s going to be a cone in the NBA. and he’s been like a average or I would even argue like slightly above average like a plus defender for the Magic since day one here. So, I do think that could be a concern to have is just like how his defense will will hold up and like whether or not teams are really just going to target him consistently in the lineups that he’s a part of. The other part, you alluded to it a little bit, but for me is like if AB isn’t ready for a nightto-ight six-man type of role. Like outside of AB, we don’t really have anyone in that lineup, save for Mo Vagner, but I mean, that’s another concern that I have. I don’t want to step on the toes of that. I know we’ll talk about that, but is he going to be ready to just bounce back and and be the guy that he was, you know, for us prior to the injury last year? But like we we kind of need AB to take that kind of step, you know, whether Mo Vagner is healthy or not from night one. If he is, that’s awesome. But especially if he isn’t, we need AB to be that level of player this year. Like he’s now going into his third year and is shown flashes obviously, but we just need him to be consistent. Like Jamal Mosley talked so many times last year about AB and his energy and aggression kind of being one of the X factors for the Magic and we we need him to be that. You know, I I’ve had some conversations with with people, you know, comparing like Jaylen Suggs to Anthony Black and like, you know, what you see their ceilings being. And for me, one of the biggest things right now is like we know what Jaylen is going to be every single night. Whether or not the shots are going in or you whether he’s making a ton of plays offensively, we know that he’s going to bring 150% effort defensively, playing like his hair is on fire, bringing energy and bringing that edge to the rest of the team. Wow. I saw the face that you just made when I mentioned his hair. That was uncalled for. We’re going to move right past that. But my problem right now with AB is like we know he can be that good every single night. It’s just like is that guy going to show up or not? And that just cannot really be a question for the Magic and for him at this point. Like he’s a guy the Magic are gonna have to make a decision on pretty soon as whether or not they want to pay this guy, right? Or are they going to let him test like restricted free agency or are they just going to, you know, move him for, you know, another piece? Maybe you can talk somebody into saying, “Hey, like this kid’s still young. He’s still got a lot of potential. Give us like one of your proven pieces.” And like that just needs to not be a question for AB this year, right? I will say, I know we’re doing, you know, potentially bad outcomes and what could go wrong, but if if there is a bit of a silver lining to that whole Anthony Black thing, it’s that the addition of Desmond Bane, at least in theory on paper, does allow Anthony Black to have a little bit less pressure offensively. And what I mean by that is, we’ve talked about it a few times on the show. I just don’t expect there to be times this season where one of Paulo Fron Desmond Bane and at least those three, but maybe even Jaylen Stugs as well. One of those guys is is on the floor at all times. Yeah, exactly. If not two at all. I think that’s also part of a solution to your depth concern, right? Exactly. Yeah, that’s fair. Yeah. Yeah, the whole Anthony Black thing, like if that is the case, if one at least one, but maybe even two of those guys are on the floor at all times, then we just need Anthony Black to be a solid uh I don’t want to say role player, but almost like a glue guy, right? Like he’s he’s got the whole bag of tricks. There’s a lot he can do. And so sometimes that means we’re going to need some offense. Sometimes that means we’re going to need him to initiate the offense and distribute. And we always need his defense and all those kinds of things. So I think it relieves the pressure a little bit off of him. However, there is still pressure, right? Like he still is going to have to perform if this team is going to live up to the expectations that we hope to have this season. The six-man show is brought to you by Jam Hot Chicken. Jam Hot Chicken is bringing jams culture and hot chicken to the heart of Winter Park. 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But we hadn’t had a NBA player have that injury in like multiple seasons before it happened to both of our guys in the span of a month. And if those guys don’t both go down, the Magic are probably somewhere around like a, you know, 48 to 50 win team. Like you look at the way that Paulo is playing to start the year. If Fronze does go down at some point, Paulo is playing so well that he’s able to, you know, lift the team and just kind of keep everybody’s head above water. And then we saw when Pal went down how great Fron was that entire month of November legitimately playing at an allNBA, you know, MVP candidate type of caliber, you know, player during that time. So I think we would have been just fine. And then not to mention, let’s say, you know, Ji the minutes restriction and and Jaylen Suggs still goes down and Mo Vagner still goes down and, you know, there’s still the stuff with like, you know, Wendell and then Goa’s in the starting lineup. All that kind of stuff still happens. If Fron and Paulo are both healthy, which you know, both of those guys have been the majority of their careers to this point, like the overwhelming majority, not just like, oh, you know, 42 out of 82 games they’re healthy. Like, no, these guys have been playing, you know, 70 to 80 games a year. If both of those guys are healthy all last year, the Magic are a 50- win team. like regardless of the health outside of that, but the other ancillary pieces that we’re going to count on, we are going to need to for the most part be healthy if if we’re going to get where we think we can go. If these guys aren’t healthy that I’m going to mention now, the Magic can still be really good. I still think they could be a 50- win team if you know some of these guys miss some time. But if we want to talk about like maybe this team could get close to 60 and maybe they could be, you know, the one or two seed in the Eastern Conference and make an Eastern Conference Finals or a Finals run, like these guys are going to need to be healthy. But when I look at Jaylen Suggs, Wendell Carter, Jonathan Isaac, and a guy that honestly we really haven’t talked much about like the injury concerns, but a guy who has missed kind of chunks of the last few seasons is Desmond Bane. like one Jaylen Suggs if he either isn’t healthy or isn’t the same like this is a guy who had like kind of a serious you know knee cartilage type of injury that isn’t incredibly prevalent you know in the NBA you just don’t see it a ton and a guy who does rely so much on that non-stop 150% motor and relies on his athleticism if he isn’t the same athletically then kind of what does he look like when we talk about Wendell how many games is he going to play. Jonathan Isaac, how many games, how many minutes is he going to play? What if he doesn’t exactly bounce back like we’re hoping and I wouldn’t say expecting, but I I think there’s a reasonable expectation that he could. And then Desmond Bane, you know, a guy who has missed, you know, like 15, you know, 20 games, 25 games a year, you know, with with various things and um there’s stuff going on in Memphis, like, you know, job being out and him having a bigger load, but like all of the health stuff that could go wrong. Obviously, we just saw it as recent as last year. Like those are things that could really affect this season. And um but again, as long as like the main two guys are good, we should mostly be good. But if we’re going to get where we really want to go, like everybody needs to have a pretty good season health-wise. Yeah. And that that’s super important. And like those guys that you just mentioned, you know, when we think about last year, the two big injuries like you talk about the Fron and Paulo injuries derailed us. Um, but also the thing with those guys is historically they just aren’t super injuryprone, right? That’s also part of this. It’s like it’s just not been their history. Those guys that you just listed though, it’s been a recurring trend. And then I’d even add Mo Vagner to the list. By the way, obviously we know he’s going to come back from the ACL at some point, but even before uh what was it 23-24, you know, he had a a perfectly healthy season, but before that hadn’t really had one. I I don’t want to say he hadn’t been healthy. He hadn’t played a lot of games consistently. Sometimes it was because of health. sometimes earlier in his career he just wasn’t seeing playing time. So regardless peaked at 80 games played in 23 24 and the last season had the ACL. So all that to say we got a lot of guys on this team with uh some injury history. And so all it takes is for one or two or three of those to have some of those things reoccur and then again it goes back to the depth thing uh that we talked about earlier. That’s where things can can potentially get a little bit dicey. Um, but yeah, that’s going to be very interesting to watch as well. Uh, for me, where do I want to go next? I think I’d like to go I I I’ll also add, by the way, the Mo Vagner thing. We can go there next cuz that is injury related. Like part of it is what if, you know, he doesn’t come back as early as we’d like. You know, obviously we don’t know when that’s going to be. Uh we’ve heard rumblings of all kinds of different things, but we don’t know for sure. Um when is he going to come back? How is he going to come back? Is he going to be 100%? what kind of minutes restriction is there going to be or you know does he come back and he’s not ready and he has to sit for more like ACL you know we’ve seen all kinds of different things and so that’s a big question mark for me um how is he going to return how is that going to look I think that’s a big one we can add into the injury thing and I I I think the other thing that people aren’t talking about like Mo Vagner was in the middle of the best year of his career like what if even fully healthy he just naturally regresses because oh he was just having a really good couple of months like How many times have we seen that in the NBA? Like at at one point I thought like is TJ Warren all of a sudden going to be like an allNBA kind of guy? Like we’ve seen guys have these kind of stretches where they’re really good and they just kind of regress back to their mean? Like I don’t think that’s a very likely possibility, but especially with the injury, I don’t think you could rule that out. Yeah. Uh, next one I want to go to outside of injury. I want to take you back, Jonathan, to about 365 days ago where the Orlando Magic had made a signing and many of us, myself included, thought, “Wow, it’s a perfect fit. Great upgrade to Gary Harris as the starting two guard alongside Jaylen. Wow, defensive menace backcourt,” which it was. You know, I’m not going to take away from that. but he’s also going to unlock the offense because he’s going to knock down open threes and all these things and then it didn’t happen. And so my next like thing that could go wrong, we have never seen Desmond Bane play with Paliban, Fran Vog, Jaylen Suggs, all those things. What could go wrong is Bane is a bust. And not that he’s a bad basketball player. I I don’t think Kavis Cow Pope was a bad basketball player before coming to Orlando, but for whatever reason, things just didn’t work. And until we see it with our own eyes, we don’t know for a fact that Desmond Bane is going to work in Orlando. Do I think he’s going to? Yeah, I do. He’s got the track record to indicate that, but we’ve just never seen it. And so, I think there’s a world in which it just doesn’t click. Who knows? It’s possible. It just doesn’t click. And then then we have really, really big problems long term. But in the short term for this season, I think that’s something to keep an eye on. Again, I’m not going to lose sleep over it. I don’t think it’s going to be a problem. But if you look at the grand scheme of things, the unknowns going into the season, that’s a big one. We don’t know for sure cuz we haven’t seen it, but I would say Bane a bust doesn’t thrive like we hoped. That’s a big potentially bad what if. Well, uh I’m actually 100% regretting doing this episode now because that actually hadn’t entered my mind whatsoever. That possibility. But you’re welcome. I think that’s like what we’re talking about here. Like obviously it’s a possibility. anything is possible, right? But that’s one of those like super unlikely, you know, kind of things, right? But again, if we had the case, literally everyone will have been wrong. Correct. But that’s the thing like I I don’t think I would have brought it up if it wasn’t for the KCP thing cuz we literally just did this last year. Not to the same level, not to the same same extent. Obviously, Desmond Bane is a better player overall than JCP and better track record and borderline all-star and all those things, but I would say 90% at worst 80% of Magic fans last summer were sitting here saying, “Wow, we just got so much better because we added this guy.” And then it didn’t work. For whatever reason, it didn’t work. And so, I think if that hadn’t happened, I probably wouldn’t have thought twice about it. But because it did, I thought I’d bring it up. Yeah, that’s that’s totally fair. Another one that I have here is that everyone well, I guess everyone doesn’t forget, but no one remembers how to shoot again because last year everybody forgot how to shoot. You know, we had guys across the board two seasons ago who had like career-high shooting numbers. You know, especially when we talk about guys that we really need to be able to knock down threes, Kavius Cowwell Pope was one of them. like if Desmond Bane comes here and all of a sudden is like a 36% three-point shooter, it’s going to be really really bad for us. Um, but kind of like those ancillary guys like Wendell Carter Jr. in the starting lineup, need him to at least be an average three-point shooter. Need him to be a threat. Need to be need him to be like a last ditch kind of like, you know, pressure release valve off of those other four guys in the starting lineup. Like if for some reason we can’t get a good shot with one of those four guys, odds are his guy’s going to be sagging off him and kind of shading to one of those other three and Wendell is going to get a lot of open looks from behind the ark. He’s got to be able to knock those down at at least a respectable clip. If Wendell can be like a 38% three-point shooter this this season, like the Magic are winning 55 games if everything else like goes solid. But if like Wendell can take a real step, you know, in that department, that’s going to be huge. And then the other guy for the Magic is Jonathan Isaac. Like we talk about his defense, but like he was a legit like ne negative offensively last year because he just kind of gave you nothing, right? Like he, you know, especially towards the end of the year was giving you like a lot of offensive rebounds, giving the team, you know, second chance opportunities. Uh but like outside of that, like just wasn’t giving you really anything offensively. And then another guy that I would point to would be like Tristan Dilva. Like a guy who, you know, we expect to be a pretty good three-point shooter. And I think all signs kind of indicate that he will be, but like he needs to be like an above average kind of guy. Like if he shoots 36% next year, that’s not good enough. We need Tristan to be like a high30s, you know, on on like relatively decent volume. Like he should be taking three to four threes a game even in that second unit. Um, so like we need people to remember how to shoot again. Specifically Fron Vagner. Like that’s kind of my next point. That’s like I think you could argue that out of the things that are like most likely to happen that could be like the most important piece outside of health for this entire team because like out of the things that we should reasonably expect, Jaylen’s still going to be one of the best, you know, perimeter defenders in the league. We’ve talked all summer about what Desmond Bane can do. We know how good Paulo Bancero can be and outside of those guys like you know Fron is right there with Paulo in terms of like and and that’s really the next level for Fron to unlock. If France can get to that point where he’s even average, you know, 35 36% from three. if if teams do have to respect him from that part of the floor, he virtually becomes unstoppable because there’s not a situation or a role that you can put him in offensively that he can’t flourish in, right? Whether it’s, you know, on the ball scoring, whether you’re putting him in like pick and roll or like, you know, um, dribble handoff situations, he’s attacking the basket, he’s cutting to the rim off ball, or if he’s off ball, he’s just knocking down open threes. Like, there’s legitimately nowhere on the floor and kind of, you know, nothing that you can position yourself for to fully stop Fran Vagner at that point, you know, and Paulo is getting to that that level as well, especially if he’s able to shoot. But yeah, if if if you tell me, hey, everything goes about the way that you expect it to go this year, but Fron Ver is like a 36 37% three-point shooter, like that is what turns the Magic into like a 60- win team, first or second seed in the East and potentially a finals team. Yeah. That which again, it’s easy for many of our brains to start wandering that direction when you think about it because we’ve seen it like we know like it that’s the key, right? That’s the missing piece. Which it sounds so simple and it’s like really but it’s like yeah it really is. You unlock the shooting of the entire team obviously but even certain guys like Fron like it just changes it changes everything really. Um I obviously had shooting on my list as well. I had two aspects of shooting specifically. One like you said everyone still can’t shoot. That’s a big one. The next one, I need you to stay with me on this, okay? Because what I’m about to say doesn’t make sense, but let me explain it. Another thing that could go wrong is that improved shooting doesn’t fix our offense, okay? Which sounds weird, but follow me on this. Obviously, statistically, you think, okay, shooting improves, that’s better, right? And it and in theory, it would be. What I mean by that is so much of our offense over the last couple years has been just been totally stagnant, right? long possessions, 20 plus seconds long, a lot of standing and dribbling, a lot of guys watching, say, Palo Mano go to work and we’ve seen Paulo, you know, not defer sometimes to other guys because, you know, they’re not shooting the ball or whatever and he has to take tough shots or there’s a game of hot potato at the end of the shot clock where guys are having to make extra passes and someone’s left with the ball. All those kinds of things. In theory, all of that or at least most of it stems from bad shooting, right? But my, you know, bad what if is what if it doesn’t? What if what if there is some issues within this offense, within the the makeup of the team or the individual um strengths that some of these guys have that the offense is still not what it needs to be even if guys are making shots. And again, naturally, if you’re making threes, your offense, your offensive numbers are going to be better, but the flow of the offense, the rhythm of the offense could still not necessarily be good. Um, obviously, we’re hoping that some of the changes we’ve seen this summer with the coaching staff and changes in mentality, like we said, win now versus maybe focusing on development for some guys might change some of that. But again, that’s just something to keep an eye on. Again, not worried about it, but something that could go wrong is that the shooting doesn’t truly unlock the offense like we hope. I think the only way that happens, right, is if the volume isn’t there and if like cuz you know if we’re talking about like the team like shooting like if the team shoots like you know 37% from three as a whole, right? Like that’s that would be a massive improvement teamwide. But the really like mathematically the only way that wouldn’t work is if you’re not generating the looks and and the volume is is down which I don’t really see that being super realistic only because like it’s not that we don’t have a team full of like shot generators you know like Paulo is going to you know garner the attention that he does that’s going to open up at least one guy literally every single possession Fron you know is also going to start to see doubles you know Jaylen and Desmond are guys who are able to like get to their spots and generate open looks for others. So that like I don’t really have a concern of just like if if if it was a team where we just like didn’t have anybody who we could really trust with the ball to like generate their own shot, then maybe I would be a bit more concerned with that. But that would like legitimately be a nightmare if that were to be the case. The last one that I have probably isn’t super logical either, but if there’s just something that so many other people in the world are seeing that we’re not seeing when it comes to Palo Banero, if the the Excel boys and you know the Pythagorean theorem pushers and all of those that we see across social media, if by some odd chance those idiots happen to be the ones that are right and Paliban Carro just is not the guy that we all know, know that he is, you know, watching him on a nightly basis, like the trajectory that Paulo was on to start the year last year and the trajectory that I think he finished the regular season like last like 20 or so games and then obviously into the playoffs, like if he isn’t actually that guy, right, and he’s like the guy that we saw for the first, you know, 15 games when he came back from the injury, then we have we have a real problem because at that point, I don’t know that you have like a true superstar like number one kind of talent on this team. But like to me like that’s it it’s not likely but that obviously would be like a major problem for this team. But like if all everything that we have seen and everything that we you know and believe to be true with Paulo Bankro if it just doesn’t end up being true and all these other idiots that just punch numbers into a spreadsheet and don’t watch the basketball games like if those guys are right then we’re then we’re going to be in trouble. Yeah, that would be like one of the worst case scenarios you could possibly have. Um, yeah. Yeah, that’s almost Yeah, that that’d be wild. I again I’m I don’t see that happening, but I left it for last because I it’s the most ridiculous one that I have. But I mean, like it it is fair to say that if Paulo can’t do more with the roster that’s around him this year than in years past, I think that’s a fair way to assess things. And I don’t necessarily mean individually. You know, I think if anything, there’s a chance that Paulo’s individual numbers could potentially actually take a hit this year, meaning there should be other guys scoring the basketball more this year than last year, you know, in theory, right? And so in theory, maybe there’s a world in which Paulo doesn’t hit the same numbers statistically offensively, but you’d like to like to think the efficiency will be up and assists will be up and just the overall flow of the offense like we talked about with the last question should be up. But again, I think it’s a fair way to assess him if he’s not able to do more with this uh roster that’s around him. I think that’s fair. I really quickly I would encourage people that like if you’re just watching the box score next year, don’t pay attention to like the raw like counting stats. Like you want to be looking at his efficiency cuz if Paul’s efficient and other guys are scoring at a high clip, the Magic are going to win a ton of games. Absolutely. 100% 100%. I have two more. One of them kind of plays into your the Palo one there and it’s just um what could go wrong is there’s no natural progression from enough of the young guys. You we’ve talked about a few times this summer like obviously the additions to this roster are a big deal. Desmond Bane, Tus Jones, uh I almost said Noah Richardson, Jace Richardson, Noah Penda, etc. Big additions for this team, for the present, for the future, all those things. But people forget that when healthy, two years ago, this team won 47 games. Win healthy, by and large, the exact same team. And so there should be a natural progression that should make this team better. But again, my, you know, potential, you know, worst case scenario, what if that not enough of the young guys make that improvement? Guys, you know, we talked about earlier the depth that that whole bench unit, a lot of young guys, um, that’s a big concern. uh even you know a Jalen, Apollo, a Fron like who knows like maybe there’s a world in which they don’t take that step. Um I’m less concerned about those guys and more so about the the second unit guys and third unit guys but I think that’s a valid uh concern maybe. All right, my last one here less about the Magic, although maybe a little bit. What if the East is better than we think? All right, maybe not. But I think it’s it’s something worth thinking about, right? The Cavs on paper, maybe they got a little bit worse. Lost a couple guys this year, but on paper still look to be a very formidable team. New York Knicks on paper look to be a very formidable team. Probably your first and second seeds, obviously depending on what the Magic do, first and second seeds in the East. Then there’s all this talk about the East Wide Open and is it? Yeah, it feels like it. When you think about it, is it really just because of two or three teams? Right? Obviously, the Pacers know Hallebert and the Celtics know Jason Tatum. Plus, the Celtics had to blow it up pretty much with their whole roster. And then the Sixers, I don’t know if you saw the latest report this week with Joel Embiid. And the Sixers, like they’re saying he’s he’s in his knee is in bad shape and we’re in August. Like that’s cra that’s a whole different conversation. The the Philadelphia 76ers are a mess. At least when it comes to MB, at least they have Tyrese Maxi. is still good. I mean, no, no, that wasn’t a shot at Tyrese. It’s just like if Embiid isn’t Mbiid, you know, that team doesn’t go. No, cuz Paul George isn’t Paul George, right? So, it’s just like what are you going to do with that? Um, uh Oh, yeah. So, if the East isn’t the East, right? Like, I don’t know. I I I think or if the East isn’t as good as we is better than we think is what I was trying to say. If the East is better than we think, cuz we’re haven’t talked about like an Atlanta team. that Atlanta made a lot of moves this summer. Again, that’s part of the thing that’s different with a team like them. They’re not going to have as much continuity, which could be a bad thing, but also we have no idea what they’re going to be, right? That could be a very good basketball team. Detroit, yeah, they lost a couple guys this summer, but still a good team and a team that should naturally get better, similar to the Magic with, you know, some of their young players just again with that natural progression. Milwaukee, look, they have Giannis. Okay, outside of that, I don’t know. I mean, I know they got Gary, they got Cole now. Okay, whatever. Um, but I don’t know, you know, uh, Toronto in theory should be better. You could go down the list. There are a lot of teams that, you know, should be better. Should they be really good? I don’t know, but they should get better. And so, look, there’s a world in which the East is better than we think. We’ve talked down about it all summer long, and I think there’s a world in which it could be better than we think, but I still think the Magic will be right up there near the top with with the best of them. Um, do you have anything else? That’s the end of my list. Do you have anything else with with I’m glad I got that out of my system because the Magic winning 55 games, going to be at least the second seed in the Eastern Conference, making it to the Eastern Conference Finals. Everything’s going to be great. Nothing that we just mentioned is going to happen. Yeah. Everything’s going to be fantastic. Perfect season. Perfect season because no other reason than because we deserve it. That’s right. We definitely do deserve it. And look again, all the writings and and maybe it’s maybe this is a good way to finish the episode, Jonathan, like the list of the things that we just said, the two of us, there’s only one or two, maybe three that I think actually have a chance of happening. And I don’t even know if realistic or likely is is a right phrase to use. Some of them I just think the likelihoods are so slim that those things happen. And so I think that’s a good thing. I think if we had done this in years past, we could have listed off a bunch of like these things could go bad and the season’s ruined and the likelihood of some of those things happening would actually been pretty high. Um, obviously I think the biggest ones are injuries. Obviously, that’s that’s a no-brainer, but outside of that, you feel pretty good about where things are going into the season at least. I’ll just um stand on some of these takes that I have. I do think there’s a regression back to the mean for the shooting. I think multiple guys are going to have better shooting years this year. Jaylen Suggs I I do think is a is a fair question just because like it’s a significant knee injury and he’s a guy that does depend so much on his athleticism. Um I think that’s a fair question. Obviously like the Wendell health stuff is always going to be a question. The JI stuff, call me naive, call me, you know, whatever you want. I think he’s going to have a big bounceback season. I fully believe that the issue last year was the added weight that he put on. He’s already looking slimmer. He’s looking more explosive. The Desmond Bane thing, as long as he, you know, is able to play 65 games, Magic are going to be just fine there. The Fron shooting, I do think it improves. I don’t know that he gets right back to, you know, 35 36%. But if he’s 33% this year, that’s going to be a step in the right direction. I do think Palibano takes the leap into all NBA potential MVP conversation this year and Mo Vagner I just think that dude nothing is going to stop that dude from getting right back to where he was. It might take a little bit time. It might not be right away. Um but Mo Vagner is going to be a big contributor and is going to be really important to this team this year. So all of those negative takes I’m giving you the opposite positive takes that I have here and I’m standing on every single one of those. And I’ll just also add not exactly related but you inspired me by when you were talking about Mo. Today is August 6th. I mean this is a stupid prediction but I just had this vision now. Mosley is going to start Mo Vagner on January 15th in Berlin. Just so you know it’s going to happen. Brother, it’s going to happen. Oh brother, tell me I’m wrong. He’s gonna not only Vagner No longer is Mo Vagner going to be He’s not just going to be back. He’s going to be playing all that kind of stuff that day. He’s going to start. He’s going to start in Berlin alongside his brother. Heck, they might start Tristan just for the the heck of it. But it’s going to happen and it’s going to be great. I can’t wait. So, anyway, that’s all I have to say about that. I’m I’m feeling all types of all types of things right now that I I can’t I can’t describe right now. um our show would would would be off the airs permanently. But um no, that would actually be absolutely freaking awesome and I I really do hope that happens. But um yeah, I think you know, we’ve like I said, we got it out of our system. We talked about all the things that could go wrong. I’m just thinking about the positives and yeah, looking forward again, we got some Germany basketball coming up here in the next couple of weeks. looking forward to figuring out how to watch all of that from here in the states obviously. And then, you know, we have Fron, we also have Goa who’s gonna be playing for Georgia and Euro Basket. So, we’re gonna be paying attention to that. And then hopefully, you know, next week, maybe two weeks, we get the schedule. We can jump all over that. Um, and then all of a sudden, it’s like, hey, we got only a few weeks until uh media day and then we’re right back into the swing of things. Kevin, absolutely. Looking forward to it. And like I said, just NBA, just go ahead and just put the schedule out next week like you usually do. Just throw it out there. We’ll we’ll receive it. We’ll go over it. It’ll be fun. Looking forward to that. Okay, we’re going to put a wrap on this one. You all have been listening to the Sixman Show for Kevin Tucker. This has been Jonathan Osborne. And we will catch you guys next time. See you. Thanks for listening to the Sixth Man Show. Be sure to subscribe on iTunes and Spotify to get new episodes downloaded directly to your phone. If you enjoy the show, please take a minute to give us a five-star rating and a review. It helps out the show a lot. Follow us on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook. Sixman show. We’ll catch you guys next time. Go Magic. Let’s go Magic. Let’s go Magic. Let’s go back.

We’ve talked all offseason about the incredible possibilities and potential for the Magic next season. On this one we switch it up and talk about all of the things that could go wrong.

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