How Paolo Banchero’s outstanding rookie season taught him he could be even better
You may have heard the story.
“Man, everybody loves to ask me about that,” Paolo Banchero told Yahoo Sports. The Magic forward sat at his locker inside Barclays Center last Friday, a back injury lingering underneath a black long-sleeve warmup — the ailment that kept the NBA’s presumptive Rookie of the Year out of Orlando’s final three contests. But with his first professional season coming to a close, any sort of reflection on the campaign that was, it sort of seems necessary to begin at the beginning.
It was just such an unorthodox beginning. Up until 48 hours before last June’s NBA Draft, Banchero wholeheartedly believed he was falling to No. 3, where Houston was waiting for liftoff. All the mock drafts had Jabari Smith Jr. as the top overall pick. Rival executives had Jabari Smith Jr. as the top overall pick. Chet Holmgren was being penciled into Oklahoma City’s second selection, no matter the outcome. It all seemed like a foregone conclusion. “I mean, sh**, about as sure as you could be almost,” Banchero recalled. He’d played with and against Rockets guard Jalen Green, the No. 2 pick in 2021, since middle school, two West Coast phenoms who climbed prospect rankings during the same amateur tournaments. Green and his AAU teammate, Josh Christopher, now another Rockets guard, had been messaging Banchero for weeks. Their friend was coming. He was ready to step in as Houston’s offensive engine that could better help Green get his. “Obviously, it wasn’t, like, set in stone,” Banchero said, “but it definitely was the most likely destination in my head.”
Not until he arrived in New York, two days before for shaking Adam Silver’s hand, did the Magic request a Zoom meeting with Banchero and his agent, Mike Miller. He got a virtual tour of Orlando’s new $70 million practice facility that opened before the season. He learned how the Magic envisioned Banchero and Franz Wagner, the uber-talented sophomore forward from Germany, could make plays on the perimeter akin to Kawhi Leonard and Paul George. It was such a swing of emotion, Banchero and his puffy eyes were lost for words during his first interview with ESPN after stepping down from the stage and posing with the commissioner.
He and Wagner got that early dose of ball-handling duties, and then more than they bargained for. A fractured toe during preseason workouts sent Markelle Fultz to the trainer’s room before the season even began. Second-year guard Jalen Suggs missed five straight games after the team’s first two. When Suggs returned, an oblique muscle injury sidelined Cole Anthony for the month of November. “Our roster was pretty depleted,” Banchero said. “Guys were in and out of the lineup.” And Magic head coach Jamahl Mosley entrusted his star rookie with the reins.
“It’s something I’d never really done before in terms of having to bring the ball up every play and stuff like that. Initiating, as a point guard, was something really different,” Banchero told Yahoo Sports. “But it was something we needed to do. It just builds your confidence up for when your point guards do come back, and you step into that wing role. I got to learn different roles and different positions and places on the floor I’m gonna have the ball.”
He is a natural ball-mover, always eager to skip possession to an open shooter in the corner or search for a back-door cutter. Pounding the ball past the timeline brought Banchero an added vantage point, a preview for end-game situations in a league where premier scorers collect at the top of the key and decide that evening’s fate. “I mean, there are some nights where I try and assert myself early,” Banchero said. “When it’s a bigger game or depending on the matchups or what not, there might be a game where you need to dominate from the tip and just be a beast. And then there’s also games where the whole defense is put together to stop you or make it hard for you, and that’s when you gotta pick ’em apart and try and make reads and get other guys easy shots and get them going.”
The Magic just couldn’t seem to win. The late fall brought a stretch of nine straight losses, despite five of those defeats coming within single digits. Growing pains of a youth movement brought the Magic to 5-20. “We lost some very close games that we feel like we should have won,” Banchero said. Then as Fultz and Anthony returned, Orlando rattled off six straight victories in December, starting with an overtime victory over Leonard and George and ending with back-to-back wins against Boston during a baseball-style, home-and-home against last year’s Finals runner-up. “It just showed us there’s no one we can’t compete with, there’s no one who we can’t beat,” Banchero said. “We just gotta bring that focus.”
Over its last 57 games, Orlando finished 29-28, a winning percentage — at season’s length — that would have placed the Magic eighth in the East and firmly in the play-in tournament ahead of schedule. Banchero found himself playing looser as Orlando found results. He was pressing from the onset, with a mission to be perfect before the world. “I think, I thought, me trying to do everything right, trying to be ahead of everything, knowing what was going to happen … it’s almost impossible to do that in your first year. It is impossible to do,” Banchero said. “I spent a lot of time stressing about little stuff that when I look back on it, whether I stressed about it or not, it wasn’t going to change. So not trying to worry about everything and focusing more on what’s in front of you.”
Adapting to a new city wasn’t as seamless as he’d told himself it should be. Living on his own, without the comforts of college and Coach K’s daily gospel, took Banchero far longer to find a rhythm than he’d expected. Little things became big things between his ears. “I tried my hardest to have everything covered and do everything as well as I could and it stressed me out a lot,” Banchero said. “I’d always tell myself, ‘Don’t even worry about it.’ A lot of stuff is going to happen regardless or you’re never going to be able to be ahead or see everything before it happens.”
Maybe that added to the power behind his shoulder, whenever Banchero saw daylight and barreled his way toward the basket. He was finishing and he was getting fouled. He was getting fouled so often, from the opening tip of his career, Banchero led the league in free throws through the season’s first five games. “It’s just using my size, skill, ability to draw fouls. Put pressure on the defense,” Banchero said. “I think I did a really good job this year.”
He would finish ninth in the NBA in total free throws by year’s end, getting to the line over seven times each night, finishing with season averages of 20 points, 6.9 rebounds and 3.7 assists. “But, I mean, I wasn’t even really trying to sell fouls, or really even draw them,” Banchero said. He just attacked and attacked. He can imagine it, though. Just think how many points he’s leaving on the table, until he studies exactly how to hunt for an arm to tangle, or a defender’s hip that’s just asking to be checked. “Once I gain the experience and learn how to draw fouls and take advantage of that even more, I think it’ll become even more of a skill for me.”
He’s taking a microscope to his jumper this offseason. Banchero learned availability, so the cliche says, is not the best ability. It is steadiness, the capacity to convert each night with the same level of frequency and carry an offense that depends on a routine performance worthy of being selected first overall. “I think I shot it really well at times this year, but I think just making it so it’s consistent through an 82-game season, working on that,” Banchero said. “And I think also just getting in even better shape conditioning-wise. I think I was in good shape this year, but I think if I want to take it to the next level as a player, and get to the level that I’m trying to be at, I think everything that I’m able to do it’s just going to have be taken to a whole ’nother level, and that’s what I’m trying to do.”
