The 2024 playoffs were supposed to be the start of something special in Orlando. The Magic had drafted Jalen Suggs, Franz Wagner and Paolo Banchero in three straight lotteries and had just pushed Donovan Mitchell and the Cavaliers to seven games. They were young, talented, and when they went all in on the Desmond Bane trade last summer, just about everyone officially stamped them as an Eastern Conference contender.
Unfortunately, we've never fully gotten to see what this team could be, and it's starting to look like we never will. Injuries continue to hit them as hard as any team in the NBA. Two games into the 2026-27 season, it's Banchero reportedly headed for a four-to-six week hiatus after suffering a high ankle sprain in Orlando's loss to the Timberwolves on Friday.
The Magic just cannot catch a break. Over the last two seasons, the Banchero-Wagner-Suggs trio has managed to play in just 25 games together. Last year, Wagner and Suggs missed a combined 73 games to injury.
The year before that, Banchero and Wagner managed just 40 games together. They literally suffered the same injury that year. Banchero tore his oblique in the first week of the season, missed 34 games, and just as he was gearing up to come back, Wagner tore his oblique and missed the next six weeks.
It's all the more frustrating given the glimpses of actual magic we've seen from this team at full strength. They had the No. 1-seed Pistons down 3-1 in the first round last year until Wagner, of course, missed the last three games of the series with a calf strain and Detroit rallied to win the series. This season, you figured, or hoped, that the needle of injury luck would finally swing in their favor.
But here we go again with Banchero, who was off to a roaring start this year with 35 points in the opener and another 14 through the first half on Friday. He was shooting almost 70% from the field. He made three of his four 3-pointers against Atlanta.
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