When the Magic open the 2025-26 NBA season Wednesday night against the Miami Heat at Kia Center, only 14 standard roster players will be inside Orlando‘s locker room.

And it’s likely the 15th standard spot on the Magic roster will be open for months, unless the team makes a move to create more financial space.

It’s all a result of the league’s relatively new collective bargaining agreement, and Orlando is far from the only team feeling the impact of the so-called apron era.

“Unfortunately this is a situation a lot of teams find themselves in,” Magic president of basketball operations Jeff Weltman said at media day. “That’s a part of the new landscape we’re all going to have to navigate.”

Let’s back track to get a better understanding of the financial situation facing the Magic.

When Orlando signed veteran guard Tyus Jones over the summer, it used a portion of the non-taxpayer-mid-level-exception, which triggered the first apron hard-cap, a salary constraint set at $195,945,000 by the CBA. By adding newcomers Jones, Desmond Bane, first-round pick Jase Richardson and second-round Noah Penda, Orlando’s total payroll rose to $194,704,322, a number that includes an unlikely bonus to be earned by Bane.

With the Magic only $1,240,678 under the first apron hard-cap, they don’t have enough room to even sign a veteran minimum player until later the season, when a salary can be prorated.

“We’ve talked a lot over the years about the financial compression that’s coming at our team,” Weltman said. “We put our foot on the gas a little bit so we’re up against the first apron.”

So, when exactly can the Magic sign a free agent?

As early as Jan. 9, according to Keith Smith of Spotrac.com (as the Magic roster currently stands). By then, Orlando would be able to fill its 15th standard roster spot with a prorated veteran minimum contract.

While that’s the earliest possible date, there are two other dates the Magic will have to consider when weighing their options.

March 1, known officially as the playoff eligibility waiver deadline, is the final day a player can be waived by one team and remain eligible to play in the postseason for another. For all other free agents, April 12 (the last day of the regular season) is the signing deadline for playoff eligibility.

Although the Magic only have 14 standard players, they’ll have some help further down their roster. That’s where Orlando’s three two-way players — Colin Castleton, Orlando Robinson and Jamal Cain — enter the picture. But even they are impacted by Orlando’s lower standard roster count.

Typically, each two-way player can be active for up to 50 NBA games (totaling 150 between the three of them). Teams with less than 15 standard roster players can carry up to three two-way players, but those teams can only have two-way players active for a maximum of 90 total NBA games (or 30 games each).

When a team is back up to 15 standard players, the total number of games the three two-way players can be active for reverts back to 150 (or 50 games each).

The Magic are one of 16 teams with an open standard roster spot as of Monday and one of six that can’t fill it due to lack of space under an apron hard cap.

Weltman recently addressed Orlando’s approach to filling the team’s 15th standard roster spot.

“We’re not able to add a player at this point,” he said. “Around the middle of the season, when that gets aggregated into kind of the second half of the prorated salary, then we can start to look at minimum players at that level. So really, there’s not much of a choice on our part.

“We’re going to go in with 14, and at some point in the season, we’ll be able to look at adding if that’s what we feel we need, and if that guy’s available.”

Jason Beede can be reached at jbeede@orlandosentinel.com