The Magic's Moment
Second apron thoughts, and appreciating the Orlando Magic seizing a moment.
We’re all now familiar with the wildly (“unsustainably,” one might posit) punitive set of restrictions, ratified in 2023 and implemented in 2024, the “second apron,” that’s effectively hard-capped NBA payrolls (in 2025-26 at $207.8 million). It’s tough to isolate the precise aspect of the second apron that sucks most. Its ubiquity, along with the requisite calculus accompanying seemingly every NBA transaction, is lame.
That it strips away the leeway for continuity sucks. “Eras” are increasingly illusions. Even (Especially?) the best-run teams, if they’re lucky, have between three and five years to make the most of a particular core before brutal, artificial financial realities slam it into a rocky crag. Eventually, every non-superstar, homegrown or otherwise, will land somewhere between “financial liability to be offloaded” and “outright albatross to be jettisoned, whatever the cost.”
A profoundly dark offshoot is the inevitable hope among fans, consciously or not, that their team’s young talents succeed, but perhaps not “too much”—not so much that they all warrant max or supermax contracts. This sucks. That it provides convenient cover for oligarchs’ refusal to spend money they can absolutely afford, in the name of “flexibility,” fucking sucks.
Now, as ever, every dollar that flows from ownership to labor (even millionaire labor) is a strike in favor of good.
All manner of team, from legit contenders to those fashioning an assault on the top tier and interesting squads built on foundations too good to not pay but ultimately unserious as contenders, must have a place in the NBA. Teams that are a) fun, b) interesting, and c) willing to pay up to stay fun and interesting should be encouraged.
There’s nothing wrong with talented oddities becoming weird playoff fixtures. The NBA was neither worse off nor less interesting for the Jailblazers, the post-Webber Kings, or the Arenas-Jamison-Butler Wizards. One might counter this with tales of tedium involving recent iterations of the Chicago Bulls or spine-crawling tales of Mat Ishbia going bump in the night. Meh. If the oligarch atop the org chart is down to pay the going rate for whatever it is they’ve got, let them.
It was announced on June 16th that the Orlando Magic had acquired Desmond Bane (and the four years and $163 million remaining on his contract) from the Memphis Grizzlies, in exchange for guards Kentavious Caldwell-Pope ($21.6 million this season, plus a $21.6 million player option for next season) and Cole Anthony ($13.1 million this season and a $13.1 million team option for 2026-27), the 16th pick in the 2025 draft (traded to Portland on draft night, along with Orlando's 2028 first-rounder, to move up to #11 to select Washington State wing Cedric Coward), unprotected 2028 and 2030 first-round picks from Orlando, a pick swap (top-two protected) with Orlando in 2029, and an unprotected first in 2026 that could be Orlando’s but may be involved in a mindfuck of a swap.
In the two weeks since its announcement, this has become my favorite (non-Luka) trade in recent memory.
It’s relentlessly fascinating. Despite Bane’s talent and the bevvy of picks involved, this is not a blockbuster. What it is is a deal loaded with present-day value, motivated by each side’s desire to compete. The money is, of course, the money, but this deal, above all else, is about two young, shooting-light, defensively adept, increasingly expensive teams exploring exactly what they’ve got and the avenues to winning games (certainly for now) this season.
Whether you love it for one, both, or neither, it’s comprehensible for each side, in ways both old-school and of-the-moment.
Plans are fickle beasts. NBA executives know this well, having long watched their efforts to optimize and maximize rosters, timelines, and windows vaporize thanks to injury, interpersonal strife, dimwitted decision-making, shitty luck, or, artificial and draconian financial constraints.
Which brings us to central Florida. The Orlando Magic, on the heels of a 47-win breakout (and #5 playoff seed) in 2023-24, took a double-digit Game 7 halftime lead on the road against the Cleveland Cavaliers. Since then, they’ve turned in as bad a Game 7 quarter as we’ve ever seen (4-of-24, four turnovers, nine personal fouls in that third quarter) to lose that game, before falling back to .500, needing the play-in to earn the East’s #7 seed in 2024-25.
Every word there is absolutely true. Of course, this is also a team that entered last season with real expectations, led by an an outstanding coach in Jamahl Mosley, an excellent and deep front line featuring Wendell Carter Jr., Jonathan Isaac, Goga Bitadze, and Mo Wagner, one of the NBA’s top perimeter defenders in Jalen Suggs, potentially another in Anthony Black, and an outstanding two-way star in Franz Wagner (who, worryingly, has now failed to hit 30% of his 3-point tries for two straight seasons). And, of course, a bona fide ascending superstar in Paolo Banchero—for me the best non-Wemby NBAer under age 24—who kicked off his 2024-25 season with a 33-point 11-rebound, +42 in 31-minutes in a 19-point win in Miami. Five days later, he turned in a masterful 50-point near-triple-double against the eventual conference champion Indiana Pacers to bring the Magic’s mark to 3-1:
Unfortunately, his next time out, in a three-point loss in Chicago in which he had 31 points, seven boards, and four assists, Banchero tore his right oblique, which sidelined him for 34 games between November 1 and January 9.
Despite losing their first four with Banchero out, the team initially held down fort quite well in his absence. Thanks to a spectacular run from Wagner, who averaged 26-6-6 and nearly two steals in Banchero’s first 20 games on the shelf, the Magic won 13 of 16 over the ensuing month. Even after an eight-point loss in Phoenix on December 6, they had a stellar 16-9 record.
Unfortunately, that was the last we’d see of Wagner for 20 games, as he too was sidelines, eerily with a torn right oblique of his own. Despite a home win over the Suns their next time out, the Magic lost eight of their next 14 without both Banchero and Wagner.
Along the way, early in December 21 home game against the Heat, Mo Wagner, averaging career-highs of 12.9 points and 4.9 rebounds (a mark he’d posted twice before), was lost for the season to a torn ACL. Two weeks later, less than a week before Banchero’s January 10 return, Suggs was lost for the season to surgery to remove loose cartilage from the trochlea (the groove where the kneecap meets the femur) in his left knee.
The team lost two of three before Banchero’s return, after which they… lost ten of their next 12 to fall to 24-27. They righted the ship late, winning ten of 14 to close out the regular season, plus The Cole Anthony Game in the play-in against the Hawks. By then, though, any hope of an advantageous matchup was gone, and the Magic were summarily dispatched by the Celtics in five in the first round.
Was this a perfect team? Definitely not. Would they have won at least three more games and snagged the #6 seed had Banchero, Wagner, and Suggs played more than 97 minutes together? Probably. Could they have fashioned a run to position themselves as the conference’s next up-and-coming contender? Distinctly possible.
The financial situation in Orlando was always going to get more complicated after this season. The Magic’s moment to pony up and maximize this core’s competitive window was, if not now, not far in the future.
With Banchero winding down his rookie deal (at just under $20 million), this is the Magic’s last season for a while under both the salary cap (by about $10 million in ‘25-’26) and first apron (by $18 million). In a likely scenario in which Banchero stays healthy and earns an All-NBA nod, his five-year $296 million supermax extension (vs. five years, $246 million “normal max”), annual commitments to him (at 30% of the cap), Wagner, Suggs, Carter, and Jonathan Isaac would exceed $155 million in 2026-27 and rise from there. That will have the Magic flirting, rather heatedly, with the obscenely punitive second apron, with three players occupying 80% of their cap, and limited in their options to add upper-tier talent.
Sometimes, though, simply being upright and not crying when the rubber meets the road opens an unexpected championship window.
A spate of Achilles injuries over the past two months—to the best players on the last two conference (and nearly NBA) champs, Jayson Tatum and Tyrese Haliburton, as well as Damian Lillard—has left the tattered conference in which the Magic find themselves more “there for the taking” than any in recent memory. The Celtics are using Tatum’s absence to dump salary. The Pacers, a genuine contender the last two years, worthy of every accolade except, apparently, mainstream recognition, will remain fiery, deep, talented, and competitive. At the same time, it’s tough to see them sufficiently papering over the loss of their talisman. And, despite Giannis Antetokounmpo maintaining Prime Shaq production through his dozenth season, the Bucks were already no longer a serious contender in a fully healthy conference. However, a healthy Dame-Giannis duo might have been enough to slide into the current power vacuum. Whether or not Dame’s injury (and the team’s bleak short-to-medium-term outlook) ultimately jars Giannis out of Milwaukee, it’s certainly torpedoed the coming campaign.
All of which leaves an Eastern Conference contender class of:
An excellent Cavs squad facing multi-year charges of postseason fraudulence, that is currently about $11 million over the second apron, and just swapped Isaac Okoro, an objectively underwhelming player whom I quite like, for Lonzo Ball, a better player at his best, who’s played 70 total games over four seasons and (inspirationally, if not inevitably) is relying on a cadaver meniscus to help him author an unprecedent career revival. (You’ll find no better breakdown of the deal than this one from Kelly Dwyer.)
A fun, gritty, and very good Knicks team that fell two wins short of the Finals and should factor prominently again in 2025-26.
And… what? The just-got-good-after-being-historically-bad Detroit Pistons? I guess, maybe. Hopefully. I’ve come to really like that team. But we’re still talking about a 44-win outfit that just managed the franchise’s fourth playoff appearances and only two playoff wins since 2007-08. The roasted, carved, and plated Embiid Sixers? PLEASE.
The time was now.
Desmond Bane: Overpriced or Just Expensive?
“Four firsts and two contributors for four years and $163 of Desmond Bane??”
In a vacuum, four firsts and two of the top four guards from a playoff team (making the trade cap neutral for this season) is steep. These days, though, young, very-good-but-not-great players, like Bane, don’t come cheap. Considering the spiraling cost of secondary stars—from the Spurs’ 2022 haul from the Hawks for Dejounte Murray, to the incredible five first-rounders and first-round pick swap the Knicks sent to the Nets for Mikal Bridges—the price tag for Bane is, I dunno, in the ballpark?
Plus, the outgoing picks were always going to be more highly prized in theory than in practice by both potential trade partners and the Magic themselves. In a “normal” Eastern Conference, as long as Banchero, Wagner, and Suggs (who’s expected to make a full recovery) stay reasonably healthy, the Magic are too good to really fall off. In the one they currently inhabit, they can be forgiven for thinking Finals.
So, how good is Desmond Bane really, and where does he fit on a contending version of this team?
Bane is an interesting case. Like Bridges, he’s never been an All-Star. But where Bridges was dealt while on a four-year, $90 million deal that runs through this season, Bane comes with a huge contract already in place, and with years to run.
Your mileage may vary but, for me, Bane—who’s really fucking good, mind you—is uninspiringly excellent. A combination of not great enough and not good in the right way to be a front-line guy on a title team. With a genuinely great top two, I have to squint to see him as even the third-best guy on a title team. In a more egalitarian ecosystem, like the Pacers team that just delivered a fantastic Finals run and the Magic team he’s joining, where there’s less of a chasm between the #2/#3 and #5/#6 guys, he becomes much more intriguing.
However you slice it, though, he makes the Magic better. In the four seasons since his rookie year, Bane’s averaged 20.2 points, 5.0 rebounds, 4.3 assists, and 1.1 steals, while making just under 41% of seven 3-point attempts per game, putting him in pretty select company. Bane is adept off of ball screens or stepbacks and, per Sportradar (via The Ringer’s Michael Pina), trailed only Steph Curry on catch-and-shoot jumpers off movement in 2024-25.
For a Magic team that finished dead last in the NBA last season in 3-point shooting by virtually every meaningful metric, he’ll be a savior as a floor-spacer, which will help Banchero and Wagner enjoy better driving lanes. He’s also skilled off-ball and as a screener or ball-hander in a two-man game. For a team that’s chronically struggled to score when it needs, Bane should be a literal game-changer.
Also, his toughness and physicality on defense fit perfectly within Jamahl Mosley’s M.O. Banchero, Wagner, Carter (or Isaac; or Goga Bitadze), Suggs (or Anthony Black), and Bane should make for some stifling lineups.
Finally, timeline-wise, he fits perfectly with the existing core of Banchero (23 in November), Wagner (24 in August), Suggs (just turned 24), and Carter (26)—certainly better than whomever they’d have selected #16 overall this year, plus a series of end-of-decade draftees.
As with any big swing, of course, there are potential pitfalls.
An opportunity cost of acquiring Bane is that the Magic still need a lead guard who can push the ball and penetrate. Even with Banchero and Wagner on the ball a lot and Bane chipping in, a backcourt creator is a significant need. Assuming he returns at something like 100%, Suggs will be asked to shoulder the role. To do so, he’ll have to level up.
Before getting hurt, he was adding value from the free throw line, earning a solid 5.5 attempts per 100 possessions (Cade Cunningham was 20th in the league, at 6.2) and making almost 87% of them. He was also making 76.5% of his attempts from within three feet of the rim. Unfortunately, he attempted less than 15% of his shots from close range. He also wasn’t impactful as a playmaker, handing out just 6.4 assists per 100 possessions while turning the ball over 5.1 times per 100.
If Suggs underwhelms as the full-time point guard, Moseley could also turn to Anthony Black. The #6 overall in the 2023 draft out of Arkansas posted an identical assists per 100 mark to Suggs, with just 3.7 turnovers. He generates a comparable 5.2 FTA/100, although he only made them at a 76.5% clip. However, as an NBA sophomore, Black attempted more than a quarter of his shots at the rim, making 62.7%. Combined with his mark from 3-10 feet (41.4%), he took over 56% of his shots from within 10 feet, making 50.9% of them.
The Magic need one (or ideally both) of Suggs and Black to take strides as a penetrating playmaker. If both underwhelm, it will remain an exploitable hole come playoff time, as the Magic are a) locked into the Suggs-Bane-Wagner-Banchero core; b) creeping up on the aprons; c) unable to trade a first-rounder until 2032; and d) limited in their options, with team options and non-guarantees their only real pathways to further fringe additions.
Even considering all that, this is a bet the Magic couldn’t pass up. Whatever questions I may have about Bane’s “eliteness,” he’s a smart, solid floor- and ceiling-raiser in his prime, whose addition doesn’t create any new holes. He adds value at both ends, complements the existing core.
There are certainly no guarantees, but the Eastern Conference is up for grabs right now. I genuinely hope fortune favors the bold.
Believe it or not, the Orlando side of this deal is not the only one fascinating me. However, we are already way the hell up there in word count. Stay tuned for some thoughts on the Grizz of it all!