Orlando Magic star Paolo Banchero hasn’t had the greatest of starts to this 2025-26 season, and NBA analyst Kirk Goldsberry is getting a little bit worried about him. Goldsberry appeared on the latest episode of The Zach Lowe Show, where he compared Banchero to former NBA player Josh Smith.
“I’m going to raise the Kirk Goldsberry Red Flag over Paolo Banchero Island here,” Goldsberry said. “This is such a key moment for him, and I hesitate to admit this… It reminds me of Josh Smith sometimes… He’s made just five of his 27 jump shots this year, and again, I’m not cherry-picking.
“I love Paolo,” Goldsberry continued. “He’s an important person and the future of American basketball for crying out loud. But last season, among the 62 most active jump shooters in the NBA, he ranked 60th in efficiency. He has a jump-shooting problem, and he’s the most active scorer on the team, and sort of that’s their issue.
“Some of the more advanced stuff with him is not trending in the right direction at this key stage of his career,” Goldsberry added. “And this start to this season has just sort of certified or sort of cemented in my head the idea that he might not be getting better at this key phase of his career.”
Smith is not a player you’d want your franchise’s cornerstone to be compared to. He was extremely talented but almost never too efficient, and that was largely thanks to his shot selection, which proved to be quite controversial during his 13-year NBA career.
Smith took a lot of threes (for his era) despite not being a great outside shooter (28.5% for his career), and attempted a fair few of those long two-pointers that analytics would frown upon. He was out of the NBA in 2017 at the age of 31, and that should have never been the case for a player as talented as he was.
Now, that’s not a fate that you’d imagine awaits Banchero. He is a better player now than Smith, who averaged 14.5 points, 7.4 rebounds, 3.1 assists, 1.2 steals, and 1.9 blocks per game for his career, ever was.
Banchero, the first pick of the 2022 NBA Draft, won Rookie of the Year in 2023 and was named an All-Star in 2024. The 22-year-old might have made it in 2025 as well, if not for the injury bug limiting him to just 40 games in the season.
Banchero’s missing half the season led to the Magic finishing with a 41-41 record in 2024-25. They lost in the first round to the Boston Celtics, and the campaign certainly didn’t go according to plan.
The Magic saw their stock rise a lot in the months that followed, though. The likes of Jayson Tatum and Tyrese Haliburton tearing their Achilles in the playoffs meant some of the heavyweights in the Eastern Conference were likely to be non-factors in 2025-26.
The Magic also acquired Desmond Bane from the Memphis Grizzlies in June, and they were all of a sudden being talked about as one of the contenders to win the East in 2026. Expectations were very high coming into this season, but they have gotten off to a very underwhelming start.
Following a win over the Miami Heat in their opener, the Magic have lost three in a row to drop to 1-3. Banchero’s struggles have played a part in that, as he is averaging 22.8 points, 8.5 rebounds, 2.0 assists, 0.5 steals, and 1.5 blocks per game while shooting 39.4% from the field and 18.8% from beyond the arc.
Mind you, it’s this bad despite Banchero putting up 32 points on 10-18 (55.6%) shooting from the field in his last outing against the Philadelphia 76ers. He had put up 19.7 points on 34.0% shooting from the field over his opening three games, and it was after that third game against the Chicago Bulls that Goldsberry made these comments.
You would like to see better shot selection and, in turn, better efficiency from Banchero, who has never shot even 46% from the field for a season. That jump shot ultimately needs to improve, though, if he is to take that next step and become a superstar. You’d like to believe that will happen in the coming years.
Banchero and the Magic are in action next against the Detroit Pistons at Little Caesars Arena on Wednesday at 7 PM ET.
