ORLANDO – Ever the humble and understated, team-first player who rarely lets his focus stray from the task at hand, Orlando Magic forward Jonathan Isaac dropped his guard a bit in the down time of the offseason and allowed himself to dream about his future as a basketball player.
Is he a all-star fixture and franchise-level player in the years to come? Is he, at nearly 7-foot tall and now 240 pounds following a rigorous summer of ingesting 5,000 calories a day, the prototype for today’s position-fluid NBA? Is he, as teammate Terrence Ross raved recently after watching Isaac go through offseason drills, "a giraffe moving like a lion?"
Is he ready for the raised expectations sure to come his way from a Magic squad that will increasingly become more his team as his game continues to blossom? Is he ready for that mythical ``next step’’ that he keeps hearing about so often while transitioning from bit player to one expected have a breakout third season as a pro?
Isaac, who will celebrate his 22nd birthday on Thursday, doesn’t have things figured out well enough just yet to answer all of those complex questions. What he does have, however, is the confidence in himself that he’s willing to do whatever it takes to make himself a better player. His progress, he insists, will always be seen in the prism of doing what he can to make the Magic better. But, like most excited about the season ahead for a Magic team that finished last season with a stirring flourish, Isaac can hardly wait to see where his basketball fate will take him.
``Man, it’s in my mind to be the best, it’s in my mind to be great and it’s in my mind to be great on both ends of the floor,’’ said Isaac, whose Magic went through Day 2 of training camp drills on Wednesday at the Amway Center. ``I want to be a contributor night-in and night-out for my team. I want to wreak havoc on the defensive end and the offensive end. I want to do that at a consistent level every single night and I’m going to work toward that.
``I’m going to work toward being great and that’s going to take (working) every single day with these guys and this coaching staff,’’ he continued. ``But I don’t want that more than I want to win. It’s important to balance that – be a team guy and be a guy who cares about the man who plays next to me. As long as I’ll continue to hold those two standards close to me, we’ll be OK.’’
A Magic squad that finished last season 22-9, won 42 games and reached the playoffs for the first time since 2012 figures to be more than just OK this season with 13 players, head coach Steve Clifford and a front office led by President of Basketball Operations Jeff Weltman returning. Collectively, that group has its eyes on bigger and better things in the season ahead, especially after the Magic retained anchor pieces Nikola Vucevic and Terrence Ross in free agency in July. They will again be paired with veterans Evan Fournier, D.J. Augustin and Aaron Gordon to make up the core of what should be another playoff team.
But for the Magic to be the team that they were late last season over an entire 82-game haul and truly compete in the upper echelon of the Eastern Conference, Isaac’s improvement will almost certainly be a deciding factor. As the offseason signings of Vucevic and Ross attest, the Magic are doing what they can to not put too much pressure on Isaac too soon, but the talented forward knows that there will likely be a strong correlation between the strides that himself and fellow young players Markelle Fultz and Mo Bamba make and the ones the Magic can make this season.
``That’s with every guy on the team,’’ Isaac said when asked if his growth can directly impact the Magic morphing into contenders. ``As we get better individually, we can only get better collectively. As I continue to make strides in the right direction, our team is going to make strides in the right direction. Markelle (Fultz), Mo (Bamba), Wes (Iwundu) and (Aaron Gordon) – all these guys, if we continue to grow individually, we’ll grow as a team. I think that’s what has happened this summer.’’
It certainly didn’t happen by accident for Isaac, who once again dedicated himself fully to bettering his body and growing his game over the summer. The motivation to do so was provided by the strides that Isaac made during the 2018 offseason – improvements that allowed him to go from an injury-marred rookie season (2017-18) to one last year (2019-19) in which he averaged an encouraging 9.6 points, 5.5 rebounds, 1.1 assists and 1.31 blocks and drilled a key 3-pointer late in Orlando’s Game 1 playoff defeat of the eventual champion Toronto Raptors.
In those playoffs, Isaac got a good look at a player he could model himself after in Toronto forward Pascal Siakam. The 6-foot-9, 230-pound Siakam, who is built similarly to Isaac and also has a defense-first mentality, won the NBA’s Most Improved Player award last season after going from 7.3 points a game in 2017-18 to 16.9 points a game in 2018-19. While obviously taking a back seat to superstar forward Kawhi Leonard, Siakam was a driving force on a Toronto team that upset the dynastic Golden State Warriors in the NBA Finals to win the franchise’s first title.
Observant beyond his years, Isaac took note of the impact that a vastly improved Siakam had on the Raptors last season.
``Siakam has grown as a player exponentially and I’m happy for him and happy for the season that he’s had because he’s a good dude,’’ Isaac said last April. ``It just speaks to his work ethic and what he’s done. I can definitely take a note out of his book, continue to work hard and work on my body. I think that’s the biggest thing that I take away from his leap – it’s just his body and he can play 48 minutes, he doesn’t get tired, he runs hard, he had a lot of energy and he’s just a bull. That’s something I’m looking to take away from (Siakam) – get in the weight room, get stronger and doing a better job conditioning-wise so that I can play more minutes.’’
Isaac backed up that talk with his actions over the summer, putting in the dedication that allowed him to open training camp at a girthier 230 pounds – up significantly from the 209 pounds he played at last April. In addition to countless hours in the weight room while trying to add strength, Isaac had to exhibit a different kind of dedication when it came to adding body mass.
``It was one breakfast, two lunches, two dinners and two protein shakes as well, so it would kind of round out to be six meals,’’ Isaac said of the diet prescribed to him for the offseason by the Magic’s High Performance and Strength and Conditioning staffs. ``It was tough and I’m still trying to keep that same regiment as much as possible with us in training camp and us travelling around for the season. It got to the point where I didn’t want to eat, and I didn’t look forward to eating.
``I was trying to get upwards of 5,000 (calories) a day,’’ Isaac added. ``But I feel stronger, and every aspect of playing basketball with a stronger body, it’s been good for me.’’
Has it ever? The results of Isaac’s summer dedication already have his Magic teammates glowingly gushing about his play from informal workouts and in early training camp sessions.
``J.I. looks like he’s 20-to-30 pounds heavier, he’s much stronger and with the way that he’s moving – I’ve never seen anybody move like that,’’ Ross raved. ``I don’t know if he’s taller than (7-foot-7 center) Mo (Bamba), but they’re roughly around the same size and the way J.I. moves it’s unreal. He’s like a giraffe moving like a lion. The way he moves is unreal.’’
Weltman, who had the foresight to draft Isaac with the No. 6 pick of the 2017 NBA Draft despite his somewhat pedestrian one season while playing at Florida State, is equally excited about the future that the versatile forward holds. However, he wants the impressionable Isaac to keep his focus on growing his game incrementally instead of feeling the pressure to be a savior this season.
``We didn’t put expectations on what to expect last year and we’ll do the same this year,’’ said Weltman, who has raved for two years about the quality of Isaac’s character to pair with his enormous basketball skills. ``Our expectation is that he will continue to work hard, work to get better and work in a way that helps us win. All of our guys understand that all the work they do, it doesn’t do anything if it doesn’t put us in a better position to win. J.I.’s had a terrific summer and obviously his participation on the USA Select Team was a nice feather in his cap. But he’s had a great summer.’’
Preceding Isaac’s ``great summer,’’ he also had a great winter and spring last season to help spur the Magic to the playoffs. Initially in a role where he was little more than a bit player over the first four months of the season, Isaac’s game took off in February (13.7 points per game on 49.1 percent shooting) and March (10.9 points on 43.3 percent shooting). A big key to his success: He shot 38.2 percent from beyond the 3-point line in his 22 games after the NBA All-Star break compared to connecting on just 28.7 percent of his tries from beyond the arc in the 53 games prior.
Being able to consistently hit that shot not only makes the Magic’s offense more dynamic and diverse, but it potentially opens up more opportunities for Isaac to use his quickness and expansive length while attacking the rim.
``Just being able to score off the dribble will be big for him,’’ Magic guard Evan Fournier said. ``Last year, he was (scoring) off cuts, fast breaks and corner threes. As a (power forward), he’s really tall and it’s no secret he has that great length. But, this year, if off a (defensive) close-out, he can attack the rim and be aggressive off the dribble, that would be huge for him and for us.’’
It was about this time a year ago that Vucevic and Fournier – the two longest-tenured players on the franchise – dubbed Isaac as the ``X-factor’’ of the season. Their thinking went something like this: A dramatic jump in play by Isaac could mean a major jump in success for the Magic. As it turns out, both veteran players were right on the money with the assessment.
At the time early last season, it meant the world to Isaac that veteran teammates looked to him as someone who could potentially spark the team toward success. Isaac said it served as a great source of pride and motivation for him that he was able to deliver improvement last season for a Magic team that finally ended a six-year drought of missing the playoffs.
Now, he’s faced with scaling the proverbial ``next step,’’ and again he can’t help but wonder about the direction that his fate as a star on the rise will head. Is he a future all-star? Can he someday win a Defensive Player of the Year award? Can he be the player who someday in the future blossoms to the point that he gets the Magic back into the NBA Finals.
``Last year, was so fun, and having guys say that (about him being the X-factor) and then being able to have a good season and feel like I impacted this team in a positive way, it was great,’’ Isaac said with a toothy smile splashed across his face. ``Knowing that I did it, I can do it again. As I continue to get better, my mindset is on helping this team and being a positive impactor on both sides of the floor.
``I think about how amazing it would be (to potentially be an all-star or an All-Defensive candidate someday), but I don’t go into this saying this is what I want to do,’’ Isaac added. ``My focus is that I am a great defensive player and I will be a great defensive player. As I continue to keep that mindset of wanting to do it day-in and day-out, all of the things that I want will come.’’
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