The Magic are about to go into a critical offseason with almost no idea how good they actually are

The season left Orlando with too many questions about what's real and what's not -- and if the Paolo Banchero-Franz Wagner pairing can work

Sam Quinn

May 3, 2026

6:40 pm ET

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8 min read

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This was almost so straightforward. The Orlando Magic were supposed to compete for the No. 1 seed in the Eastern Conference. Their regular season ended with a loss to Boston's B-Team that knocked them down to the No. 8 seed. When they lost their first Play-In Tournament game to the Philadelphia 76ers, they were treated as little more than Charlotte's stepping stone into the playoffs. Jamahl Mosley was a dead coach walking. The roster underwhelmed for 83 games in an 82-game season. The marching orders here were clear: revive the offense, fix the defense and settle the awkward partnership between two imperfect young stars by any means necessary.

And then, seemingly out of nowhere, the team Orlando spent six months waiting for finally arrived. They decimated Charlotte to snag the Eastern Conference's final playoff spot, punched the 60-win Pistons in the mouth in a Game 1 road stunner, took Games 3 and 4 at home and had the No. 1 seed on the ropes.

Everything came together. After falling out of the top five defensively for the first time since 2023, the Magic were suddenly impenetrable. An up-and-down season for Paolo Banchero culminated in yet another strong playoff series. Years of lineup data suggesting that the Magic were better offensively when Banchero and Franz Wagner played separately flipped in a Detroit series in which the Magic posted a strong 115.6 offensive rating when they shared the court. This was everything the Magic hoped this team could be. And then it was gone.

Wagner suffered a calf strain. Orlando's best Cade Cunningham defender was suddenly gone, and sure enough, Detroit's superstar guard dropped 45 points in Game 5. The Magic got out to a hot start in Game 6, but collapsed without Wagner creating offense. They scored just 19 second-half points and lost their last remaining home game. By Sunday's Game 7, the Magic were ready to turn back into a pumpkin. Their season ended in much the same way it began and remained until mid-April: in abject disappointment. That leaves the Magic with an unanswerable question: which version of their team was the real one? The version that underwhelmed for six months? Or the one that played the five most important games of the season?

Why the Magic have less time than it seems

Most younger teams would probably be happy to run it back and let next season answer the question for them. The Magic aren't really in a position to do that. By acquiring Desmond Bane, the Magic set themselves up for a monster payroll in the very near future. Bane and Wagner are on rookie max deals. Jalen Suggs isn't far behind. And three more players are about to get meaningfully more expensive:

- Banchero's max rookie extension, which will pay him $239 million over five years, kicks in. He will make around $41 million next season.

- Wendell Carter Jr. is about to start a three-year, $58.6 million extension. Before the Detroit series, that deal looked iffy. He'd just had his second consecutive poor 3-point shooting season, and his rim-protection numbers, never stellar, were also trending down. Then he completely outplayed likely All-NBA center Jalen Duren for seven games. Is that suddenly a good contract?

- Anthony Black is eligible for a rookie extension of his own. Though he comes off the bench for the Magic, he'd likely demand starter money in order to re-sign. The floor here is probably the four-year, $90 million deal Shaedon Sharpe got last offseason. Sharpe is the better scorer, but Portland barely trusted him to play in its first-round series against San Antonio. Black laps him in the impact metrics and played a bigger role against Detroit. With similarly iffy shooters Christian Braun and Dyson Daniels making $25 million per year, Black would be justified in at least demanding to cross $20 million annually.

The Magic are projected to have only about $4 million in room below the second apron next season with just 12 players on the roster. They have ways of generating more room, most notably by waiving the partially guaranteed Jonathan Isaac, but once a hypothetical Black extension kicks in for the 2026-27 season, there's no getting around the second apron. If the Magic keep this same, expensive six-man core together with any semblance of depth, that's where they're headed. That seems untenable since, you know, this group hasn't won a playoff series yet.

Maybe you roll the dice. Deny Black an extension while planning to use restricted free agency to leverage a more favorable outcome in a year, and use that extra time you've given yourself to evaluate the core further. But during all of that extra time you're taking, the rest of the league takes as well.