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Orlando Magic Ending Orlando Summer League
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All posts by Basketball InsidersUpdated5 hours ago on April 26, 2024
The Orlando Magic will not hold their annual summer league in Orlando next year and will participate instead in the NBA Summer League in Las Vegas, team officials told the Orlando Sentinel.
The decision is a radical departure for the Magic, who ran and managed their own summer league in Central Florida 14 times since 2002.
“The pendulum is swinging toward teams playing in Vegas,” Magic president of basketball operations Jeff Weltman said.
“It’s a level of competition and a level of exposure when more or less every team in the league is there and you’re playing in front of 20,000 people as opposed to playing in a gym with a few hundred people. So it better prepares you for what NBA life is really about with the crowds, the pressure, the travel — a lot of what you’re going to have to confront. Obviously, it’s not a true test of an NBA season, but it’s a little taste.”
Twenty-four teams participated in the NBA Summer League this past summer. Each team had three preliminary games followed by a tournament with seedings based on the preliminary games’ results. Teams in Las Vegas played a minimum of five games overall.
Meanwhile, eight teams participated in the Orlando Pro Summer League this year and played five games apiece. In addition to the Magic, the other teams were the Charlotte Hornets, Dallas Mavericks, Detroit Pistons, Indiana Pacers, Miami Heat, New York Knicks and Oklahoma City Thunder.
NBA officials prefer to have all 30 teams participate in the Las Vegas event.
