{"id":230604,"date":"2025-08-14T17:55:53","date_gmt":"2025-08-14T17:55:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/230604\/"},"modified":"2025-08-14T17:55:53","modified_gmt":"2025-08-14T17:55:53","slug":"orlando-magic-history-notable-players-facts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/230604\/","title":{"rendered":"Orlando Magic | History, Notable Players, & Facts"},"content":{"rendered":"

Orlando Magic, American professional basketball<\/a> team based in Orlando<\/a>, Florida<\/a>, that plays in the Eastern Conference of the NBA<\/a>. The Magic have won two Eastern Conference titles (1995, 2009).<\/p>\n

The franchise, along with the Minnesota Timberwolves<\/a>, joined the NBA as an expansion team in the 1989\u201390 season. During its first three years the Magic\u2019s play was mediocre<\/a> and the team posted losing records, but the Magic began a remarkably quick turnaround when it selected center Shaquille O\u2019Neal<\/a> with the first overall pick of the 1992 NBA draft. Led by O\u2019Neal, the Magic added 20 wins to its previous year\u2019s total in his first season to finish with a 41\u201341 record and a tie for the last playoff position in the Eastern Conference, which it lost in a tiebreaker with the Indiana Pacers<\/a>. The lost tiebreaker proved fortuitous<\/a>, for it placed the Magic in the 1993 draft lottery, which the Magic won despite having only a 1.5 percent chance of attaining the first overall draft choice. The team traded the player it selected, Chris Webber<\/a>, for the third selection, point guard Anfernee (\u201cPenny\u201d) Hardaway, and future draft picks.<\/p>\n

The young Magic team qualified for its first playoff berth in the 1993\u201394 season, an accomplishment it bettered in 1994\u201395 by advancing to the NBA Finals in its sixth year of existence. The Magic were swept by the Houston Rockets<\/a> in four games, but the team\u2019s future nevertheless seemed bright. At the end of the 1995\u201396 season, however, O\u2019Neal moved to the Los Angeles Lakers<\/a> after signing the largest free-agent contract in NBA history, and Orlando was left without its marquee<\/a> player. The Magic entered into a period of regular-season success followed by losses in the first round of the postseason, during which the franchise traded away the injury-plagued Hardaway in 1999.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\"Serena<\/p>\n

Britannica Quiz<\/p>\n

Great Moments in Sports Quiz<\/p>\n

<\/a> Orlando Magic Results by Season: 2019\u201320 to 2023\u201324 season record playoffs 2019\u201320 33\u201340 lost in first round 2020\u201321 21\u201351 missed playoffs 2021\u201322 22\u201360 missed playoffs 2022\u201323 34\u201348 missed playoffs 2023\u201324 47\u201335 lost in first round <\/p>\n

Orlando sank to the worst record in the league in 2003\u201304, but the team again won the draft lottery at the end of the season. The Magic used its selection to draft high-school center Dwight Howard<\/a>, who provided the low-post dominance the team had lacked since O\u2019Neal\u2019s departure, and the Magic began another turnaround. The Magic added free-agent forwards Hedo Turkoglu and Rashard Lewis<\/a>, and the team reached the second round of the playoffs in 2007\u201308. Behind the exceptional play of the star trio, the Magic once again advanced to the NBA Finals during the 2008\u201309 season, where it lost to the Lakers in five games.<\/p>\n

Turkoglu left the team in the following offseason, but the Magic had another strong campaign in 2009\u201310 before ultimately losing to the Boston Celtics<\/a> in the Eastern Conference<\/a> finals. Howard began to openly agitate for a trade during the 2011\u201312 season, and he was ultimately dealt to the Lakers in August 2012. The rebuilding Magic then posted the worst record in the NBA (20\u201362) in 2012\u201313, which was the first of five consecutive last-place finishes in the divisional standings for the beleaguered franchise. In 2018\u201319 new head coach Steve Clifford guided the Magic to a surprising division title and a first-round postseason loss. The team repeated that playoff result in 2019\u201320, but an injury-riddled 2020\u201321 season saw the team trade away many of its major contributors and finish with the third worst record in the NBA, leading the franchise and Clifford to part ways at season\u2019s end.<\/p>\n

Orlando then began a rebuild under new head coach Jamahl Mosley. That effort began to bear fruit in 2023\u201324 when the team\u2014lead by power forward Paolo Banchero, small forward Franz Wagner, and shooting guard Jalen Suggs\u2014returned to the playoffs. There the Magic lost a seven-game first-round series to the Dallas Mavericks<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Orlando Magic, American professional basketball team based in Orlando, Florida, that plays in the Eastern Conference of the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":230605,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3779],"tags":[1297,7,4922,4921,4920,48,6,47,76,3883],"class_list":{"0":"post-230604","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-orlando-magic","8":"tag-article","9":"tag-basketball","10":"tag-britannica","11":"tag-encyclopeadia","12":"tag-encyclopedia","13":"tag-magic","14":"tag-nba","15":"tag-orlando","16":"tag-orlando-magic","17":"tag-orlandomagic"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nba\/115028412664416273","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/230604","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=230604"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/230604\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/230605"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=230604"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=230604"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=230604"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}