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. 

Aside from the injuries, there have been real questions as to whether Banchero and Wagner can ultimately fit as a duo given both of their shooting inconsistencies. We need to see them together for longer stretches to see if they can make it work, or if Banchero's shooting can improve. The basketball gods just won't let the experiment get off the ground for any real length of time. 

It's too bad, because when Banchero is cooking, he's as lethal a scorer as there is in the league. The Magic can create a lot of inverted mismatches with Banchero's and Wagner's ability to handle the ball and initiate offense at 6-foot-10. Orlando's defense is elite; it had Detroit in a straitjacket for much of that series last year. The pieces are there. 

But this Banchero injury might seal the fate of this season before it even starts. That sounds premature, but the Magic are already 0-2, and without Banchero for potentially a month and a half, they're very likely going to have to dig out of another deep hole to even think about competing for a playoff spot in the extremely deep East. Truth be told, they were going to have an uphill battle even had they stayed healthy. 

Now all they can do is hold on as tightly as possible and pray to the basketball gods that nobody else gets hurt before Banchero comes back. The same basketball gods that have seemingly put a curse on a team that might be nearing its end without ever really having had the chance to get started. 

Again, that sounds dramatic. But this feels like a make-or-break year for the Banchero-Wagner duo. The Magic lack the future equity to make another big move. Moving off one of these two is the only real shakeup available. The Magic tried switching coaches, but that's not going to make Banchero or Wagner shoot better and it's not going to make them stay healthy. This was the last shot to really see if this duo can work, and it could not have gotten off to a worse start.