LAS VEGAS — Blake Griffin paused for a moment to collect his thoughts.

The five-time All-NBA forward, now turned studio analyst for Amazon’s Prime Network, had just been asked who the Magic remind him of from past teams.

Acknowledging that the game has drastically changed over the years, Griffin didn’t overthink his answer.

“I mean, when would you see a 6-foot-9 guy from back in the day come down [the court] and shoot a transition 3 or anything like that?” he said Friday afternoon at T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas, the site of Saturday’s NBA Cup semifinal between Orlando and New York.

The Magic have two of those type of players in forwards Paolo Banchero and Franz Wagner, the latter of whom is back home rehabbing a left high ankle sprain.

But even without Wagner, Jamahl Mosley‘s squad can provide problems to opposing teams because of its versatile roster makeup, physical style of defense led by guard Jalen Suggs, and, new this season, an uptempo offense rounded out by the addition of guard Desmond Bane.

“I love their roster,” said Griffin, who spent 13 years in the league. “Suggs is really taking a step as far as a facilitator, just handling [the ball] and that role on this team. Their young guys, Anthony Black, [Tristan] da Silva, I love Wagner, Paolo obviously … They have some guys that I really, really love.”

Orlando’s reputation as a young, surging team in the East also has caught the attention of Hall of Famer Dwyane Wade, who spent the majority of his 16-year career in Miami battling the Magic.

Now in a new role as an analyst for NBA on Prime, Wade had the chance to talk with Mosley during a production meeting leading into Saturday’s game.

“Watching Mosley and his coaching staff put their imprint on his team, I was asking, ‘What are your non-negotiables for these guys?’ Because when you have a team that’s trying to build something and make their way up to a place like the Knicks are, you’ve got to have strict goals and you have to be concise,” Wade said. “I can see him building a culture over there there.

“Bringing a guy like Bane in kind of helps that culture immediately because he comes from a place that builds respect from what he did coming from Memphis,” he added.

Wade, of course, remained loyal to his South Florida ties while highlighting what he likes about Orlando, who defeated the Heat in a Cup quarterfinal.

“I really like what he’s doing, really like what he’s building and they’ve got a lot of pieces,” Wade said about Mosley’s Magic. “They’ve got a lot of youth. A lot of depth. And they also have some experience, too. I didn’t like how they beat on the Heat. I really didn’t like that. I wanted the Heat to be here, selfishly. But it’s good to see [the Magic] change a little bit.

“Last year, they were all defense,” he added. “Now they’ve opened up their offensive bag a little bit and they’ve gotten back to their defense. So it’s going to be interesting to see how they do this year.”

That change in offense led to some growing pains to start the season. Aiming to push the pace in transition, the Magic strayed away from their defensive identity, which resulted in a 1-4 start.

Orlando then went 14-6 across their its next 20 games to reach the Cup semifinals for the first time in the three-year history of the league’s in-season tournament.

That sort of turnaround under Mosley wasn’t surprising to Stan Van Gundy, who coached the Magic from 2007-12 and helped the franchise reach the NBA Finals in 2009.

“Jamahl is as even-keel a guy as you’ll find anywhere,” said Van Gundy, now an analyst for Prime. “They [were] 1-4 [and then] 4-6, and I think he knew exactly what was going on. They sat down and I thought made a good decision, but a hard decision for any coach to go away from what you’re familiar with and make a drastic change offensively in how they were going to approach the game.

“It’s only natural that the players went into the season and the focus in their minds — not because of Jamahl — but the focus in their minds was on the offense. Because that’s what you’re changing,” he continued. “So  they got into the season, they played with the pace they wanted, but they got away from their defensive mentality. Jamahl caught that early on, got them back to that defensive mentality and now they’ve got the best of both worlds. They’ve changed their offense, gotten it to where they want in terms of pace, but then they’re back to their defensive identity.”

Van Gundy isn’t wrong.

During the first 10 games of the season, Orlando’s offensive rating (113.9) sat 20th league-wide while its defensive rating (114.3) was 16th, far from second-best rating it ended with last season.

The last 10 games, however, the Magic were ninth in offensive rating (117.8) and second in defensive rating (109.5), according to NBA.com. The team’s plus-8.2 net rating was fourth-best in that stretch.

“I really like this team,” Griffin said. “It’s a team that you wouldn’t be surprised if you saw them in the Eastern Conference Finals.”

Jason Beede can be reached at jbeede@orlandosentinel.com