The Orlando Magic are currently eighth in the Eastern Conference but only a half-game behind the fifth-placed Miami Heat. With 23 games left, the squad has by far the easiest schedule remaining, with numerous outings against the Charlotte Hornets and Toronto Raptors. With that in mind, it is plausible for the Magic to avoid the play-in tournament and advance to at least a top-six spot in the conference to earn a spot in the NBA playoffs.
Paolo Banchero has been fantastic this season as he notched his first All-Star appearance, while Franz Wagner has been a tremendous complement and secondary scorer under head coach Jamahl Mosley. Unheralded role players like Mo Wagner and Goga Bitadze have been steady the whole year as they have been stepping up despite the injuries to their other bigs.
If this current iteration of the Magic do make it to their first postseason, there will be a major learning curve if they wanna consistently compete at the highest level. There is one current problem of this squad that will be heavily exposed in the playoffs if it is not rectified.
The Magic have unreliable outside shooting
The Magic are dead last in three-pointers made in the association and 25th in three-point percentage, so it is inevitable for their opponents to clog the paint and force them to convert long-range bombs. Jalen Suggs is the lone Magic player who makes at least two shots from behind the arc, while Wendell Carter Jr. and Joe Ingles are the two who swish over 40% of their threes, albeit at a low volume.
That cannot be the case when the lights are at the brightest because guys like Banchero, Wagner, and Suggs will have an insurmountable time utilizing their best asset which is slashing through the paint. Help defenders will be able to constantly surround the paint because they know that the corner men are not going to bomb threes on them at a high clip. Before the trade deadline, Orlando could have pursued someone like Luke Kennard or Bojan Bogdanovic.
These players would have not cost them a ton because their value in the market is not very high. Even if that is the case, their presence would have been a massive boost to the Magic rotation because they need the spacing to maximize the talent of their impressive core. In this generation of NBA basketball, outside shooting must be a major point of consideration when constructing a roster that would be a perennial contender for the Larry O'Brien trophy.
Since Orlando cannot add more pieces to fortify their shooting, it will be heavily dependent on their internal development. Guys like Cole Anthony and Gary Harris have shown spurts in their careers of being reliable marksmen, so the hope is for all their guys to get hot at the right time. Moreover, it is paramount for the Magic to hit the booming triples in the most critical juncture of the game even if they are ice cold early in the night.
If the Magic are able to showcase their superb defense and manufacture ways of creating baskets through drives and free throws, the threes will eventually come when the confidence is excellent already. In a game against the Sacramento Kings last month, Orlando converted 25 threes on a 56% conversion rate, so it is evident that they are capable of being hot on any given night.
The NBA playoffs are a whole different story but climbing up the leaderboard in three-pointers is vital if Orlando wants to make some noise in April or May.
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