{"id":417120,"date":"2026-10-02T20:52:08","date_gmt":"2026-10-02T20:52:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/417120\/"},"modified":"2026-10-02T20:52:08","modified_gmt":"2026-10-02T20:52:08","slug":"competition-increases-at-orlando-magic-training-camp","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/417120\/","title":{"rendered":"Competition increases at Orlando Magic training camp"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Magic<\/a> continued to ramp up their work in training camp with a fourth consecutive day of practice Friday morning at the AdventHealth Training Center.<\/p>\n

Orlando<\/a> coach Sean Sweeney<\/a> said the team focused primarily defense and offense in the post \u2014 close to the basket \u2014 as well as defense and offense in isolation situations.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was a big competition day,\u201d Sweeney said. \u201cA lot of player-on-player, and just really trying to emphasize some of those details in live action. Oftentimes you\u2019re teaching and learning, or you\u2019re competing, and so we wanted to try to marry the two (Friday).\u201d<\/p>\n

It was also the first day this week the team was scheduled to hold only one practice session after three consecutive days of practicing twice \u2014 once in the morning and a second time in the evening, with only one contact session per day.<\/p>\n

The first-time NBA<\/a> head coach shared insight into what he\u2019s learned so far about his team.<\/p>\n

\u201cI learned that we\u2019ve got talented players,\u201d Sweeney said. \u201cI certainly had a feel that we had that, but I learned that we\u2019ve got that in-person. I really like the communication level that we\u2019ve had and I learned that about our players.<\/p>\n

\u201cJust in general, I thought there would be more (of) trying to get them to do things and really pushing them, but they\u2019ve been pushing themselves, which is a great sign,\u201d he added. \u201cThe way they communicate with each other is strong.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Magic are off Saturday before they return to the practice court Sunday. Orlando is inching closer toward its first preseason game, Wednesday at Memphis.<\/p>\n

Injury updates<\/p>\n

Sweeney provided an update on fourth-year guard Anthony Black<\/a>, who suffered a minor ankle sprain during the team\u2019s voluntary workouts leading into training camp.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe\u2019s definitely made progress,\u201d Sweeney said. \u201c(He) feels good. Pretty much everything non-contact he\u2019s done at a high, full-speed level as of (Friday), so we feel pretty good about where\u2019s at.\u201d<\/p>\n

The same goes for second-year forward Noah Penda<\/a>, who recently tweaked his hamstring.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey\u2019re both pretty close to being back and ready to go,\u201d Sweeney said about the pair of players.<\/p>\n

Praise for da Silva<\/p>\n

On the second day of training camp earlier this week, Sweeney highlighted Tristan da Silva<\/a> as one player who\u2019s done a good job of being in the right spot when discussing offensive spacing on the floor.<\/p>\n

The German forward saw a slight uptick in scoring during his sophomore campaign compared to his rookie season (9.9 points per game vs. 7.2) when he shot an improve 37.4% from 3-point range, which was up from 33.5% from distance his first year.<\/p>\n

Entering his third season in the league, da Silva talked about what\u2019s key to proper spacing to help his teammates and searching for his own opportunities to strike.<\/p>\n

\u201cFor me personally, it\u2019s really shooting the shots that I can get,\u201d he said Friday. \u201cYou know, no really passing up any open shots. Actually hunting them. That\u2019s a big thing because it allows to space the floor for others players to attack.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThe main focus is spacing and knowing where to be (and) where not to be so we\u2019re not in each other\u2019s ways,\u201d da Silva added. \u201cWe have a lot of people that can create advantages on their own. And then obviously through two-men game, three-men game, we can create advantages. Capitalizing off of that, you have to be in the right space.\u201d<\/p>\n

Special guest<\/p>\n

The Magic were joined by Chris Algieri, a former light welterweight champion in boxing, during practice Friday.<\/p>\n

Outside of his love for basketball, Sweeney is a big fan of boxing, something he watched often while growing up because he was drawn to the intense competitiveness of the sport.<\/p>\n

\u201cChris is a world champion, and a great guy,\u201d Sweeney said. \u201cHe talked to the team a lot about who he is and what it takes to train for a championship-level fight. \u2026 There\u2019s a lot about who he is and his story that anyone can take from, from what he had to say.\u201d<\/p>\n

Jason Beede can be reached at jbeede@orlandosentinel.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Magic continued to ramp up their work in training camp with a fourth consecutive day of practice…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":417121,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[114,2295,139,141,1239,140,109,76046,110],"class_list":["post-417120","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-orlando","tag-latest-headlines","tag-nba","tag-orlando","tag-orlando-headlines","tag-orlando-magic","tag-orlando-news","tag-social","tag-social-sports","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/417120","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=417120"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/417120\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/417121"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=417120"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=417120"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=417120"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}