The 2024-25 season was a promising yet frustrating season for Orlando Magic.
Last year, Orlando’s Magic was one of the NBA’s beloved people. After starting a full-scale rebuild in 2021, they achieved a breakout run from 2023-24 by winning 47 wins.
With this meteorian success, many hoped that the promising team would improve even further this year. During the offseason, they brought in the acquisition of a veteran Marquee and the NBA champion of Kentavius Caldwell Pope.
However, just the second week of the new season, Paolo Bancello suffered from torn right diagonal muscles, so the magic immediately withstanded a dominant blow. It was a very devastating event, and Franz Wagner suffered the same injury a month later.
From that point on, injuries continued to pile up for Orlando. In mid-December, the dynamic sixth Big Moritz Wagner suffered a season-ending ACL injury.
Playing just 35 games, star point guard Jalen Suggs was announced for the rest of March after coming in and out of the team’s lineup and then undergoing arthroscopic surgery on his left knee.
The magic that withstanded the brutal and intense blows of injuries across the core players navigated the entire season completely unmanned. But in the end, they are still surprisingly over-achieved.
Although he was short-handed, Orlando suspended the season with 41 wins, wiped out the play-in tournament competition and scored a spot in the 2025 NBA playoffs.
They faced the second Boston Celtics and despite falling from a sweep at the gentleman’s rough first round slugfest, they were still standing in a laudable battle with the realistic champions under the Bunchelo superstar lead, which Jason Tatum praised.
Bill Simmons can imagine how special it was for magic this season if they could hit enough luck from a health perspective.
“I think the Celtics organization really impressed Orlando, and I think there’s a sense of security that the team wasn’t healthy this year,” an NBA analyst said in his The Bill Simmons podcast. “That team was probably the third best team in the East.
“Like Paolo goes down for a while, Franz goes down for a while, and Sags goes down 60-65% a year. But that team is really tough. They aren’t afraid of the Celtics.
“They had some playoff guys who weren’t afraid to rebound and close you, and if they had a healthy team all year round, I think the team would have been really good.”
They may not have achieved a season of hope due to undesired circumstances, but this year will serve as a magical moral victory that can be used to return to the next season.
The magic is set to get back on track as Wagner and Sugs are expected to fully recover from injuries this long offseason. It also has the flexibility to splash over a major blockbuster deal that former NBA star Demarcus Cousins proposed an intriguing name.
The healthy, rejuvenated magic team is very excited for the next 2025-26 outing and the entire NBA must be aware of the major shows they can definitely do.
“If they could get healthy from Mo Wagner and Jalen Suggs, I’m not going to let them go into the Celtics or Cavs class. They could have replaced Milwaukee in those three five tiers. And if they were healthy, they might have been there this year.”
“Their three best guys all missed a fair amount of time and they ended up in seventh place and won the match against the champions.
“This is something like the ladder rung that this organization has now and I think we should expect it to be a little higher next year.”