Jonathan Isaac’s peers aren’t playing in Las Vegas. Josh Jackson, the no. 4 overall pick in last year’s draft, is the only player taken ahead of Isaac at no. 6 who is on a summer league roster this season. Isaac had an injury-plagued rookie campaign, averaging 5.4 points a game on 37.9 percent shooting while playing in only 27 games for the Magic. The forward is ready for a fresh start, and he has shown over the past week why he is so highly regarded around the league. He has the talent to break Orlando out of the never-ending rebuilding cycle it has been stuck in since trading Dwight Howard in 2012.
“I actually had Isaac as the no. 1 prospect last year,” one Eastern Conference executive told me. “That might end up being wrong given how well [Jayson] Tatum and [Donovan] Mitchell played, but there’s no denying his talent.”
Isaac was far from a finished product on draft night. At 6-foot-11 and 205 pounds with a 7-foot-1 wingspan, he was a raw bundle of limbs with an absurd combination of length, athleticism, and skill. Considering how painfully skinny he was for a frontcourt player in the NBA, it’s not surprising that he wound up getting hurt as a rookie. Only 20 years old, Isaac is still growing into his frame, and he has benefited from spending the offseason in an NBA strength and conditioning program. He told me he weighed 222 pounds before coming to Vegas.
Isaac no longer looks out of place in the paint. He held his own against the 2018 no. 1 overall pick, Deandre Ayton, a supersized center with the body of Adonis, for stretches of the Magic’s 71-53 loss to Phoenix on Monday. While Isaac still wasn’t as big or as strong as Ayton, his work in the weight room kept the margin between the two close enough that his physical advantages could come into play.
“I thought [Isaac] did a really good job at the 5. Deandre is a big body, physical guy. Jonathan used his quickness, used his feet. He got called for a couple cheap fouls, but just the competitive part of it is what we are looking for. He didn’t give him anything easy,” said Magic summer league coach Pat Delany, a longtime assistant who worked under new head coach Steve Clifford with the Hornets and followed him to Orlando. “He’s definitely put some weight on. Obviously our staff has only been with the organization for a few-plus weeks. I think we can see it from seeing him during the season, from being in Charlotte to just seeing him evolve over this last week. Both physically, mentally. His confidence is right there on both ends of the floor. You just see that growth. He’ll get better and better as the summer goes along.”
The most intriguing thing about Isaac is his defensive versatility. Over the course of Monday’s game, he went from banging with Ayton inside to chasing Josh Jackson, an über-athletic small forward, around the perimeter. Isaac can comfortably slide among all three frontcourt positions on defense. He shut down this year’s no. 4 overall pick, Jaren Jackson Jr., in an 86-56 win over Memphis on Sunday; Isaac notched five blocks, most of them against Jackson, who finished with five points on 1-of-9 shooting.
Isaac (2.7 blocks per game) is blocking more shots in Vegas than even Mohamed Bamba (2.3), the impossibly long center the Magic took at no. 6 in this year’s draft. Orlando’s management team of GM John Hammond and president Jeff Weltman, now in their second year running the franchise, have emphasized length and athleticism at every position. It’s easy to see their plan when Bamba and Isaac, their first two lottery picks, are on the floor together. They turn the paint into a no-fly zone, and they are the rare pair of elite shot blockers who can also get out on the 3-point line and keep smaller players in front of them.
“There’s no doubt about it that we can be effective with two bigs,” said Isaac when asked about how a supersized frontcourt could fare in a smaller and faster NBA. “Mo’s not even a big man, and I don’t really like to label myself as a big, either. We move around. We set screens. You saw him knock down an open 3 [against Phoenix]. We can move and switch and guard just about everyone.”
Bamba has improved his 3-point shot over the past few months, but Isaac is the more advanced offensive player. He has all the tools: He can shoot 3s, put the ball on the floor, and make plays on the move. He shot 34.8 percent from 3 in both his one season at Florida State and his first season in Orlando, with a healthy number of attempts in both seasons: 2.8 per game in college and 1.7 in the NBA. Bamba is a traditional big man who is experimenting with playing on the perimeter on offense. Isaac is a wing who happens to be nearly 7 feet tall. He is still figuring out just how good he can be on offense.
It’s a work in progress. A tight handle doesn’t come easy with such long limbs, and there are times when Isaac struggles to create separation against athletic defenders. Jaren Jackson Jr. knocked the ball out of his hands several times when they were matched up against each other Sunday. However, even when a defender is draped all over him, he’s still so long that he can elevate over them and create a clean look at the basket. Isaac has been making pull-up jumpers off the dribble and step-back jumpers out of the post in Vegas. He smiled when I asked him about whether he has been trying to add those shots to his game. “That has been my game since high school,” Isaac said.
He was often matched up with Josh Jackson on the national AAU circuit, and the chance to play against an old rival put an extra bit of energy in each of their steps Monday. Jackson vs. Isaac was a worthy undercard to the headliner of Bamba vs. Ayton, with all four players guarding each other over the course of the game. My favorite subplot was Magic guard Terrence Ross, watching the game from the sidelines, yelling, “He can’t guard you!” whenever Isaac got the ball with Jackson on him.
After using Isaac in a limited offensive role as a rookie, Orlando has put him in greater command this summer. He can hunt for his shot at any point in the possession, and the team runs a lot of sets to get him the ball. He hasn’t been efficient, averaging 14.3 points a game on only 35 percent shooting, but giving a young player the freedom to make mistakes is the whole point of summer league. The results aren’t as important as the flashes.
“This summer league has been full of lessons,” Isaac said. “Coming in and trying new things, being aggressive, and taking what the defense gives me. It’s all a part of the process and keeping the big picture in mind of me being that go-to leader offensively.”
Isaac has less experience as a primary option on offense than most elite prospects. He was part of the supporting cast at Florida State, playing off of Dwayne Bacon, the no. 40 pick in the 2017 draft. Isaac averaged only 12 points a game on 50.8 percent shooting in college, but he occasionally showed glimpses of what he could do when given the opportunity. He’s not just an athlete who relies on raw physical ability. He can read the floor and pass teammates open.
It’s unclear what Isaac’s role will be in the regular season. The frontcourt is crowded after Orlando drafted Bamba and signed Aaron Gordon to a four-year, $76 million contract this offseason. Gordon had a breakout campaign in his third season in the NBA after being moved from the 3 to the 4, Isaac’s natural position. With Bamba entrenched as the Magic’s center of the future (although he may start the season backing up Nikola Vucevic), they have to figure out whether Isaac and Gordon can coexist on the wing.
Floor spacing and playmaking are huge concerns. At this stage in their careers, Gordon, Isaac, and Bamba are all theoretical shooters. They can knock down open 3s, but they aren’t making enough to command that defenses stay attached to them on the perimeter. The Magic also don’t have a proven point guard who can run the offense, command a double-team, and create open shots for his teammates, a consistent problem throughout their six-year rebuild. They brought in Elfrid Payton to be their point guard of the future in 2014, but his poor outside shooting put a ceiling on how good he could be, and they wound up trading him at the deadline last season. There’s a reason so many players, from Victor Oladipo to Tobias Harris, Moe Harkless, Shabazz Napier, and Dewayne Dedmon, have looked better after leaving Orlando.
The Magic were linked to Isaiah Thomas in free agency, but their recent trade for former Bulls guard Jerian Grant may have closed that door. They will likely start the season with a point guard by committee, featuring Grant, D.J. Augustin, and Isaiah Briscoe, a former Kentucky guard who played in Estonia last season after going undrafted in 2017. It’s not a group that inspires much confidence. Orlando could end up selecting a point guard in a future draft, but it’s also possible the team will elect to trade Gordon, a leftover from the previous regime, to bring in a more established veteran.
The Magic don’t appear to be in any rush to make those decisions. They don’t want a repeat of what happened in 2016, when then-GM Rob Hennigan traded Oladipo and the draft rights to Domantas Sabonis for Serge Ibaka in an attempt to accelerate the rebuilding process. Bamba and Isaac are both raw offensive prospects who need to develop physically. No franchise that wanted to immediately contend for the playoffs would have taken them, which is one reason both fell to no. 6 in their respective drafts.
“I don’t think [what we’ve done in Vegas] even scratches the surface, in terms of where Mo is going to be in a year and two years, and where I’m going to be in a year or two years—physically, mentally, game-wise,” Isaac said.
However, for as much potential as the two have together, the most exciting moments for Isaac in summer league came when Bamba was on the bench. Isaac looked like a young Chris Bosh when matched up with Ayton, banging with him inside on defense and taking him out to the perimeter on offense. Bosh, like Isaac, was a 4 in college, and he didn’t move to the 5 full-time until his second season in Miami, when he was 27. Isaac won’t turn 27 until 2024. Orlando may not want to put too much stress on his growing body by playing him in the paint right now, but he could develop into one of the best centers in the NBA by the time he reaches his prime.
Isaac has a long way to go, but his improvement over the past few months is encouraging. He’s willing to put in the work. Everyone around the team raves about his professionalism. The Magic have spent the past six seasons trying to find a franchise player amid a sea of raw teenagers. They may have finally found one in Jonathan Isaac.
