Orlando Magic

The Orlando Magic are a franchise that has been blessed with some of the most exciting talent in NBA history and cursed with the inability to keep it long enough to win a championship. Since entering the league as an expansion team in 1989, the Magic have experienced dizzying highs - two Finals appearances, multiple generational stars, some of the most entertaining basketball the league has ever seen - and crushing lows, as those stars have inevitably departed for bigger markets or better situations. The Magic's history reads like a series of brilliant opening acts that never quite reach the headlining show.

The Shaquille O'Neal and Anfernee "Penny" Hardaway tandem of the mid-1990s was the franchise's first golden era. Shaq, the most physically imposing player in the history of the sport, paired with Penny, the silky-smooth point guard whose game was decades ahead of its time, led the Magic to the 1995 NBA Finals as the most exciting young team in basketball. Their sweep by the Rockets was supposed to be a temporary setback; instead, Shaq left for the Lakers the following summer, and the franchise spent years trying to recover. Dwight Howard's emergence in the mid-2000s brought Orlando back to prominence, and his 2009 Finals run - built on superhuman shot-blocking and an infectious personality - gave the franchise its second Finals appearance. But Howard, too, eventually departed, and the pattern repeated.

The current Magic roster, anchored by Paolo Banchero and Franz Wagner, represents the franchise's most promising young core since the Shaq-and-Penny era. The Kia Center buzzes with a Central Florida fan base that has learned, through painful experience, to enjoy the journey rather than count on the destination. Orlando is a tourism-driven city, and the Magic compete for attention with theme parks and year-round sunshine, but the basketball community that has grown up around the franchise is genuine and deeply invested. The Magic have never won a championship, but their history of spectacular talent - and the what-ifs that accompany every departed star - makes them one of the NBA's most compelling ongoing narratives.