Why Is Paolo Banchero So Polarizing in Today’s NBA Discourse?
- Feb 22
- 7 min read
Daniel Waddleton
Feb 22, 2026
A little over a week before the NBA trade deadline, I was having a basketball conversation with one of my buddies over a cup of Kool-Aid. The very disappointing 2025-26 Orlando Magic came up, and I casually floated an idea I’d been chewing on:
"Honestly dude if Orlando were four or five wins better, I might be pitching this Michael Porter Jr. plus smaller stuff for Paolo Banchero trade on the website."
He looked at me like I’d just suggested prying Victor Wembanyama out of San Antonio.
“You’d trade a 23-year-old with that kind of trade value for a frequently injured 28-year-old on the heels of one really good year?”
Maybe I was jumping the gun. Maybe Paolo could command more. But in a version of reality where Orlando was firmly in the East race and could count on Jalen Suggs and Franz Wagner being healthy, it didn’t feel insane to at least entertain whether that kind of move might raise the team’s championship equity over the next few seasons.
The Kool-Aid blurred some details of that night, but one line stuck with me the next morning:
“A player that young, with that kind of trade value.”
That’s when it hit me.
This is really how a portion of the basketball world views Paolo, huh? As a near-untouchable franchise cornerstone?
Bill Simmons had Paolo eighth on his trade value rankings. Tim Legler said on Zach Lowe’s podcast earlier this season that “Paolo is clearly the best player on the team,” and Lowe didn’t push back. This wasn’t just Twitter noise anymore, there's a real disconnect about this player living in informed basketball territory.
Over a year ago, I wrote a “get over yourself, nerd” piece arguing that Franz Wagner is quietly Orlando’s best player. That piece focused more on Franz, discussing his impact and long-term equity that Orlando should be prioritizing.
This piece is focused on Paolo, and will read harsher. Not because I hate him -- the only athlete I hate is Chase Utley -- but because what’s happening around him reveals something bigger about how the basketball world evaluates players.
How can the perception of one player be so drastically different depending on who’s watching? One side sees an offensive engine and future superstar. The other sees efficiency concerns, decision-making questions, and impact metrics that don’t quite match the aura.
I'll tell you how.
The Two Sides of the Same Player
The pro-Paolo case is obvious. A former No. 1 overall pick out of Duke, this 6’10”, 250-pound ball handler was billed as the next premier offensive engine. Three-level scoring. Physical mismatches. Solid playmaking feel. Rare fluidity for that size.
Early on, from a raw production standpoint, it looked like the projection was materializing. By his third NBA season (2024-25), Paolo was averaging 25.6 points, 7.5 rebounds, and 4.8 assists. If you were box-score watching -- or caught his 38-point playoff game in Cleveland at just 22 years old -- it was easy to believe you were witnessing the early stages of a future top-10 player.
Typically, when a young player posts gaudy numbers and flashes playoff success, we assume continued ascension is inevitable. But in this case, some people -- or as Magic fans like to call them, “nerds” -- started looking under the hood of everybody's new favorite sports car.
In 2023-24 -- the same season as his 38-point playoff explosion while averaging 22.6 PPG across 80 games -- the Magic were intriguingly 9.1 points worse per 100 possessions with him on the floor. Their offense in his minutes ran at a 112.3 rating, near the bottom of the league.
Then, it happened again. And again.
2023-24 (2798 min): -9.1 on/off
2024-25 (1580 min): -2.7 on/off
2025-26 (1481 min): -3.7 on/off
Across four NBA seasons, Orlando has never been better with him on the floor over a full year. They’ve never even outscored opponents in his minutes despite two playoff appearances in that span.
There are only five active players with at least four seasons played who have never once posted a positive on-court net rating or positive on/off swing:
Shaedon Sharpe.
Max Christie.
Cam Thomas.
Ayo Dosunmu.
Paolo Banchero.
That's not star company.
On/off isn’t perfect, even misleading in some cases. However, when the signal repeats across thousands of possessions, multiple seasons, and different roster constructions, it stops looking like noise and starts raising structural questions.
The common thread is usage without efficiency.
Paolo has lived in the 27-33% usage range his entire career, top-20 territory league-wide and consistently first on his team. High usage isn’t inherently bad, but when one player has the controller that often, the return has to justify bending the ecosystem around him.
Long story short, it hasn't.
Since the start of 2023-24, 52 players have appeared in at least 100 games with usage above 25%. Banchero ranks 52nd of 52 in effective field goal percentage. He’s also never posted a relative true shooting mark above league average.
Nearly 63% of his jumpers come off the dribble, yet generates just 0.61 points per shot on those attempts -- 9th percentile. He’s 14th in the league in isolation possessions per game, yet his isolation efficiency (0.873 PPP) sits below average per Synergy. Basketball Index’s one-on-one shot-making metric places him in the 2nd percentile among active players. Even at the rim, despite his size and strength, he’s roughly league average.
A significant share of Orlando’s offense is built around self-created shots for their primary offensive player that simply aren’t efficient enough. Add inconsistent defense, and all of the sudden you’re looking at a very complicated basketball player.
The advanced catch-all metrics reflect it. Dunks & Threes’ EPM hovers around neutral. LEBRON sees him as solid, not star-level. VORP keeps him well outside the upper tier. None of those models are gospel, but when the same signal keeps flashing, it’s worth listening.
And the film matches the numbers: defenders sagging off threes he’s hitting at barely 30 percent, possessions stalling into contested pull-ups, ball dominance that doesn’t consistently bend defenses into efficient team offense.
A common counter is supporting cast. Orlando hasn’t surrounded him with elite floor spacing. He’s played in lineup combinations that likely overtax him on-ball. Some argue the ecosystem itself isn’t built to produce elite offense no matter who has the keys.
Then teammate Franz Wagner complicates that argument.
The WOWY data shows the Magic are at their worst when neither plays, debunking the idea that Paolo provides no value. However, when Franz plays without Paolo, Orlando’s offense jumps above league average and the net rating spikes. In the Paolo-without-Franz minutes, the team improves only marginally.
Here’s why I think that is:
Franz is the more polished primary option -- the cleaner decision-maker, more comfortable getting to his scoring spots, ect. He's also the superior defender and better at the "little things", which help the team in areas outside of offensive efficiency.
When they share the floor, the returns flatten because neither adds much off-ball offensive value. So if Franz is the better initiator and superior two-way player, it creates an uncomfortable outcome: Magic lineups may function cleaner without Paolo and his playstyle.
If you already have your engine, you want players who enhance it -- floor spacers, elite defenders -- not another high-usage scorer without scalable skills next to a similar archetype.
This becomes even more relevant as the Magic add players like Desmond Bane and Tyus Jones, or as Suggs and Anthony Black continue to grow offensively. On paper, this roster should at least be above league average on offense. Yet when one player dominates that much of the possession pie, everyone else’s impact compresses.
That’s acceptable when the engine is Shai Gilgeous-Alexander. It’s a problem when the output doesn’t justify the orbit, especially when someone on your own team might be the better sun for the planets.
The natural counter is simple: he’s 23. Not every offensive star started like Luka Dončić. With age, shot selection improves. Efficiency can catch up to volume. Playmaking reads sharpen. Paolo’s physical tools people fell in love with pre-draft aren’t gone, they just haven’t been refined.
All valid points.
However, Paolo’s case is tricky because we don’t have much precedent for players with this specific profile -- high usage, below-average efficiency, neutral or negative team impact across multiple seasons -- suddenly becoming elite offensive engines.
Historically, that archetype leans closer to early over-projection cases like Michael Carter-Williams or Jahlil Okafor rather than late superstar leaps like what’s happened in Detroit with Cade Cunningham.
At this point, Paolo has become more than a player debate. He’s becoming a litmus test among fans and analysts.
Both sides are reacting to the same information but processing it differently. When a player with this profile appears, are you seeing an engine or a problem? Do you bet on archetype and scoring volume, trusting efficiency and impact will follow? Or do you pump the brakes when scalable skills and lineup impact aren’t materializing year over year?
Where I stand is simple.
When a talented 20-something-year-old gets the keys for a mediocre-to-bad team, he’ll put up numbers. As the old saying goes: every team has a leading scorer. Then box-score and highlight bias can be very powerful in a social media world. But if efficiency never meets usage, and year after year the team impact remains neutral or negative, projecting superstardom becomes very difficult. If anything, it’s a sign that maybe you need to change your game to become a winning basketball player.
This leads to the final point, and maybe the most important one.
Just because Paolo might not be built to be a 1A offensive option doesn’t mean he can’t become a top player. It may require a different version of him.
There’s real untapped value if he leans more into screening, short-roll playmaking, cutting, and offensive rebounding. The on-ball creation can still be a weapon, it just can’t be the entire ecosystem.
If Franz is the cleaner initiator, Paolo’s value has to expand in ways that prevent diminishing returns when they share the floor, even if it costs him some raw numbers.
Defensively, there’s low-hanging fruit as well. It’s easier to overlook average defense from a 6’10 forward than from a small guard, but Paolo hasn’t been a plus on this end. He’s a step slow laterally at times, inconsistent off-ball, and hasn’t emerged as a reliable weak-side rim protector. With more consistent effort and attentiveness, I think he could be 15% better on that end almost overnight.
For now, until the efficiency and impact catch up to the aura -- or he substantially changes his game -- I’ll continue to float a trade and keep him outside the upper echelon of NBA players.
Not because he’s a lost cause, but because if you’re commanding that usage and that slice of the cap -- five years, $280 million is no joke -- either the offense in your minutes must become dominant, or your game must elevate the ecosystem without monopolizing it.
If things continue as they are, their won't be an accension, there will be this continued plateau we are already seeing.
And that’s how you end up, 20 years from now, with a YouTube video titled: “What happened to future superstar Paolo Banchero?”
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