Magic Had Potential Trade Partners But Refused to Make 'Panic Moves'

ORLANDO, Fla. – For a second consecutive season, the NBA trade deadline passed without a move from the Orlando Magic.

While they were one of just four teams to stand pat, it wasn't for a lack of effort.

"I don't think we made a decision not to make a deal," Magic president of basketball operations Jeff Weltman told the Orlando Sentinel shortly after Thursday's deadline passed. "I think we were aggressive in seeking out what we thought could be equitable deals and they didn't shape up. Honestly, right now we’re kind of at the low point of the season with the way that we’re playing, and when that happens, when that coincides with the trade deadline, teams are going to squeeze you.

"A lot of teams angled towards some of our long-term assets in return for short-term solutions to the team. In other words, moves we regarded as kind of ‘panic’ moves. And we don’t regard ourselves as having to panic right now. We think we're a very good team."

Orlando, sitting at 25-28 through 53 games and eighth in the Eastern Conference, has lost 14 of 19 games since Jan. 1.

After breaking through last season with 47 wins and a No. 5 seed in the East playoffs, Orlando is currently a Play-In team entering the final third of the regular season. The Magic trail No. 6 Miami, which occupies the last certain playoff seed, by two games. Orlando is 2.5 games ahead of No. 10 Chicago in the last Play-In spot.

Much of the Magic's struggles, Weltman said, are due to injuries. Orlando players have missed 166 total games to injury or illness — already nine more games than all of last year — before Saturday's home matchup with the San Antonio Spurs.

Of those misses games, 34 belong to 2024 All-Star Paolo Banchero and 20 to Franz Wagner because of torn right obliques; 18 belong to Jalen Suggs due to hamstring, back and quad ailments.

Those three are Orlando's best players and leading scorers, yet they have played together in just six of 53 games. (They've won four of them.)

"When you factor in the significance of players — so not just to say who’s lost the most games to injuries — but who’s lost the most significant players to games in injuries? By our metrics, we rank third in the league, right behind New Orleans and Philadelphia," Weltman said. "Those two teams are kind of recalibrating their season a little bit. We’ve kind of remained in the fight. We’re still in the hunt for the playoffs and I’m proud of our guys for forging through what’s been a significant wave of injuries to really important players.

"We didn’t feel it was the right thing to do to part ways with significant assets just to kind of plug holes and put a Band-Aid on something. We will assess the team, we’ll understand how best we need to look going forward and, in order to execute that, we will keep all of the arrows in our quiver."

Regardless of injuries, the Magic need to improve their shooting — an issue that Weltman described as "persistent."

Thursday night's 22-point blowout loss to the Denver Nuggets is the most recent example of their shortcomings and perhaps the most glaring. The Magic made just five of 31 threes and shot just 36.9 percent from the field.

Orlando ranks last in the NBA in three-point accuracy (30.3), effective field goal percentage (50.2), and points per game (103.8). The Magic have scored fewer than 100 points in 23 games, losing 20.

"I do feel that for whatever reason our team is populated with pretty good career shooters who are just underperforming to their career numbers," Weltman said. "Part of that is when you lose a good portion of your shot creation, the quality of your shots is going to be affected as well. It goes hand-in-hand with a lot of things. It’s the shots that we’re getting, the shot creation, the pressure that it puts on guys, and obviously it’s affected our confidence.

"That being said, I’m not saying we have the best shooting team in the league, but I don’t think our shooting numbers are representative of the shooters that we have on this team."

The Magic are 29th in offensive rating (107 points per 100 possessions) and play at the NBA's second-slowest pace. While Orlando's defense maintains a top-three ranking, allowing only 108.9 points per 100 possessions, the Magic's offense has been unable to capitalize.

That issue predates this entire Magic roster. The last time Orlando wasn't in the bottom third of the NBA in offensive rating was 2011-12.

But adding a shooter at the trade deadline who doesn't do other things well has the potential to diminish other aspects of the team, Weltman said, and that challenge becomes harder when factoring the injury-ravaged nature of his team.

"We did look, we were quite aggressive, I’ll say," Weltman said. "I thought we had a couple deals, maybe, lined up that could cross the finish line."

"Look, obviously (shooting is) an issue that we know we need to address, but it’s also something that we’ve kind of advanced without through the last couple of years from 34 [wins] to 47 and kind of tracking to win more than that before we did experience this wave of injuries. But these are all things — shooting obviously front and center — that we know we’re going to need to address.

"The question is, do you nibble now and give up long-range assets, or do you wait and see how this thing looks once again when healthy and then really seek to make more significant moves with all of your assets in your pocket?” Whenever that time comes, whether in the offseason or otherwise, Orlando has a stockpile of flexible contracts and future draft capital to potentially deal.

Orlando's current roster was constructed organically. Of the 17 players under contract (15 standard and two two-way deals), only two players were acquired via trade: Gary Harris and Wendell Carter Jr. in deals at the 2021 deadline that helped kick-start the Magic's rebuild.

The rest have been drafted and developed in house or signed in free agency.

Players such as Tristan da Silva, whom Weltman told the Sentinel they fielded calls on leading up to the deadline, and Anthony Black have been selected in the past two drafts and been relied upon to contribute. Banchero was the No. 1 pick in 2022 and Wagner and Suggs were each picked in the top 8 of the 2021 draft.

"We’ve talked a lot about the youth of our team and that we’re invested in developing these young players," Weltman said. "And we’ve kind of been very careful not to step on their development, which doesn’t always look great, but that’s kind of what we need to do to find out how we walk into the next phase of what this team is going to look like."

Weltman said there would come a point where an assessment of what's needed for the Magic to advance to the next phase and turn the corner. Whenever that time comes, whether in the offseason or otherwise, Orlando has a stockpile of flexible contracts and future draft capital to potentially deal.

In his eighth season with the team, the Magic's lead decision-maker looks forward to doing so. That excitement, however, didn't entice him to make a rash move as the season's home stretch approaches.

"For a young team where we really haven’t recruited over the young guys and brought in a whole bunch of free agents or traded first-round picks yet, any of that stuff, they’ve got our fan base excited. And they’ve got us excited. ... We want to go for it, but we also have to be understanding about when the right time to do that is, when the right deals present themselves, and it just didn’t happen to be this deadline."

Three games remain before the All-Star break, and 10 of the next 11 games total come at the Kia Center. On Saturday, De'Aaron Fox, Victor Wembanyama, and the new-look San Antonio Spurs are the opponents.

Orlando's group for that matchup, and every one going forward through this year, remains the same.

"I want to project this out to our fans, we’re okay. We’re in a very good position right now. I know that we had a really great start to the season and I feel like that’s who we are ... our young guys are going to get better and better and better, and we have all of our assets in our pocket. We didn’t jump [at Thursday's deadline] because we felt that the right deals didn’t present themselves [and] that the timing of the trade deadline kind of coincided with us being in a little bit of a slump, kind of generated a little bit of a squeeze effect where the league looks to squeeze long-term assets for short-term solutions.

"I think there are some teams that are in positions where they kind of need to make moves like that and we don’t count ourselves as one of those teams. We count ourselves as a growing team and we’re going to continue to grow. I remain very excited about where this team is headed.”

Related Stories on the Orlando Magic

• MAGIC QUIET AT DEADLINE: For a second straight season, the Orlando Magic made no moves at the trade deadline. CLICK HERE
• MAGIC'S EAST RIVALS WERE BUSY AT DEADLINE: See the moves other teams around the East made ahead of Thursday's trade deadline. CLICK HERE
• BANCHERO'S FIRST PLAYER-EXCLUSIVE SHOE TO HIT SHELVES: Orlando Magic forward Paolo Banchero will have his first-ever publicly available shoe released by Jordan Brand on February 17. CLICK HERE

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