Desmond Bane trade shows Magic's days of playing it safe are over

New York Times

7 hours ago

After its titanic roster teardown at the 2021 NBA trade deadline, the Orlando Magic front office earned a reputation around the league as risk-averse. Magic officials built the nucleus of their roster through the draft, adding Jalen Suggs, Franz Wagner and Paolo Banchero. Orlando made a few trades here and there, none of them franchise-altering.
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But rival teams cannot call the Magic apprehensive anymore, not after what they did on Sunday.
Orlando traded for hard-nosed, floor-spacing wing Desmond Bane by sending four future first-round picks, a lightly protected 2029 first-round pick swap, veteran wing Kentavious Caldwell-Pope and guard Cole Anthony to Memphis.
It wasn't quite an 'all-in' move, but it sure is close to one.
Bane should be a significant upgrade offensively over Caldwell-Pope, who did not provide the floor-spacing or scoring that the Magic had hoped for when they signed him last summer to a three-year, $66 million deal. Anthony, an aggressive scorer, had fallen out of the Magic's playing rotation at times during the 2024-25 season because of his inefficiency on offense and his deficiencies as a defender.
Bane is a 41 percent career 3-point shooter who, in his five prior seasons, never shot worse than 38.1 percent from deep in a season. For the Magic, who finished last in the NBA this season in 3-point makes and last in 3-point shooting percentage, Bane's arrival should bring a welcome improvement.
He slots behind Banchero and Wagner as Orlando's third-best scoring option — a role he should have no problem filling given how he complemented Ja Morant and Jaren Jackson Jr. in Memphis. Bane can also serve at times as a primary ballhandler on a team that lacked a traditional point guard last season, other than 33-year-old journeyman Cory Joseph.
So, where's the risk, you ask?
The risk is sending out so many draft picks and adding Bane's significant annual salaries to a Magic cap sheet that, in the age of the punitive first and second aprons, is getting dangerously top-heavy.
Bane is under contract for four more full years, through the 2028-29 season. That's the good news from Orlando's perspective: The team won't have to worry about losing him in free agency anytime soon. The bad news is that his salary will escalate from $36.7 million in 2025-26 to $44.9 million in 2028-29. Those high salaries wouldn't be a problem on a team with little additional talent, but they are a concern for the Magic, who already have significant long-term commitments to Wagner and Suggs on the books and almost certainly will agree this offseason with Banchero on a maximum-salary extension that will begin with the 2026-27 season.
With the aprons threatening, the Magic front office will be hard-pressed to maintain its roster depth for the long term. Without jettisoning salary in an additional move, or moves, it's now more difficult to envision Orlando making any big move with the midlevel exception this summer. And that, too, is a worry. As awful as Orlando's 3-point shooting was last season, it's unrealistic to think that only one roster addition, even if it's Bane, will provide enough improvement to help it approach a league-average percentage from long range.
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Also worrisome: trading away so many future first-round picks. In the deal for Bane, the Magic traded the 16th overall pick in this year's draft, a first-round pick in 2026 (including swap rights from either Phoenix or Washington), a first-round pick in 2028, a first-round pick in 2030 and swap rights (top-two protected) in 2029.
Magic officials appear to think that a fully healthy roster will be a top-five team in the East through the end of the decade, which, in turn, likely would mean that those outgoing picks to the Grizzlies will land anywhere from 20th to 30th overall most of the time. I tend to think that the value of the on-court production from late first-round picks tends to be overstated. (Of course, you can pick holes in my argument. Just look at the final 10 picks of the 2020 draft's first round; those selections yielded Tyrese Maxey at No. 21, Immanuel Quickley at No. 25, Payton Pritchard at No. 26, Jaden McDaniels at No. 28 and Bane at No. 30.)
But, as others have noted, those outgoing picks potentially would have had significant value down the road as the grist for major trades. Simply put, by sending out four first-round picks now, plus a pick swap in 2029, the Magic have made it more difficult for themselves to swing their next blockbuster trade when they identify an additional major roster need down the road.
When Orlando inevitably finds itself with a cap crunch or with a roster deficiency, the front office will have to find creative ways to work itself out of salary hell.
The long-term impact of the aprons is not yet known for certain, given how new the current CBA is, but other teams have navigated similar constraints in the short term. Last summer, the New York Knicks acquired Mikal Bridges from the Brooklyn Nets in a trade similar to Sunday's Magic-Grizzlies trade. The Knicks sent the Nets four unprotected first-round picks, a 2028 pick swap and a 2025 top-four protected first-round pick via the Bucks and three players.
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A few months later, the Knicks completed a three-team deal that included sending Julius Randle, Donte DiVincenzo, Keita Bates-Diop and a 2025 first-round pick to the Minnesota Timberwolves for Karl-Anthony Towns.
A difference is that the Knicks are the largest of large-market teams, while the Magic are, at best, a midsized-market team. And keep in mind that Jalen Brunson, the Knicks' best player, wound up taking less money by extending his deal during the 2024 offseason instead of this offseason; those savings should help the Knicks avoid the second apron in 2025-26.
For now, the Magic are happy that they did not have to part with 21-year-old guard Anthony Black, who was the sixth pick in the 2023 draft, or with 24-year-old Tristan da Silva, the 18th pick in last year's draft. Although Orlando gave up the 16th overall pick this year, it retained the 25th pick, which it acquired from Denver as part of the 2021 Aaron Gordon trade.
Magic officials are also delighted to add Bane, who brings a toughness similar to what Banchero, Wagner and Suggs already offer.
Ahead of the 2020 draft, in the height of the pandemic, Magic officials interviewed Bane over a video call and came away raving about his smarts and attitude. But the Magic wound up selecting Anthony at No. 15.
Now, five years later, Orlando has added Bane to its roster. To do so, the Magic had to accept a significant amount of risk.
(Top photo of Desmond Bane: Chris Day / The Commercial Appeal / USA Today Network via Imagn Images)