Paolo Banchero
Paolo Banchero is 23 years old, 6’10”, 250 pounds, and moves like a guard. He’s been the centerpiece of the Orlando Magic since the night commissioner Adam Silver called his name first in the 2022 NBA Draft, an outcome that surprised most of the mock-draft industry. By 23 he’d already won Rookie of the Year, made an All-Star Game, and averaged 26.1 points per game in the 2025-26 season. What makes him unusual isn’t just the scoring. It’s that he can score from the post, off the dribble, and from range, at an age when most players with that profile are still figuring out one of the three.
A basketball family from Seattle
Born November 12, 2002 in Seattle, Washington, Paolo Andrea Banchero grew up with basketball on both sides of the family tree. His father, Mario Banchero, played college ball at the University of Washington. His mother, Rhonda (née Smith), was a Pac-10 Player of the Year at Washington in 1996, one of the best players in program history. When Paolo was figuring out footwork in middle school, he wasn’t absorbing it from YouTube; he was absorbing it from two former college athletes who understood the game at a level most households don’t.
The family also holds Italian citizenship through heritage. That detail would become relevant in the summer of 2024.
O’Dea High School
He attended O’Dea High School in Seattle, one of the stronger basketball programs in the state of Washington. By his junior year he was the most heavily recruited player in the 2021 class, and it wasn’t a debate. He had the size of a center, the footwork of a forward, and the handle of a wing. Recruiters called him a “positionless” prospect, which is a phrase that gets overused for teenagers who are simply big and athletic. In Banchero’s case it was accurate. He committed to Duke.
One season at Duke
He played one year under head coach Jon Scheyer, who was coaching his first season at Duke after Mike Krzyzewski retired. Banchero averaged 17.2 points, 7.8 rebounds, and 3.2 assists in the 2021-22 season. Duke went 32-7 and lost to Arkansas in the Elite Eight. He was the ACC Freshman of the Year and, in most draft evaluations, the consensus best prospect in his class. He declared in April 2022.
The 2022 draft and the controversy
The conventional mock-draft wisdom heading into the June 23, 2022 draft was that Orlando would take Jabari Smith Jr. or Chet Holmgren with the first pick. Smith had the shooting profile that matches modern franchise-building logic. Holmgren was the most distinctive prospect in the class from a shape-and-size standpoint. Banchero was the third name in almost every published projection.
Orlando took Banchero.
The choice was called a reach by several prominent analysts in real time. That criticism didn’t age well. Within twelve months, Banchero had won the Rookie of the Year award and Smith and Holmgren were still developing. It’s worth noting that Holmgren missed his entire rookie season with a foot injury and Smith’s shooting, though promising, took time to translate into consistent NBA production. Orlando’s front office, it turned out, knew what it was doing.
Rookie of the Year, 2023
In 2022-23 he averaged 20.0 points, 6.9 rebounds, and 3.7 assists per game. He became the first Orlando Magic player to win Rookie of the Year since Shaquille O’Neal took the award in 1993. The last Magic player before that had been Anfernee Hardaway in 1994, though Hardaway actually won in 1994, placing him after O’Neal chronologically. Either way, it’s a short list. Orlando as a franchise has produced exactly two Rookies of the Year across three decades: one of them is O’Neal, and the other is Banchero.
The award wasn’t a formality. His closest competition that year was Bennedict Mathurin of Indiana and Keegan Murray of Sacramento. Both had strong cases. Banchero won it on volume, efficiency, and the combination of scoring methods. He wasn’t a one-trick scorer. He posted up, he shot pull-up mid-range jumpers, he got to the line. In 71 games his field-goal percentage was .464 and he shot 33.2% from three on reasonable volume.
Seasons two and three: building the case
In 2023-24 Banchero averaged 22.6 points and 6.9 rebounds. He added assertiveness on the ball and showed more comfort as a playmaker, finishing at 5.4 assists per game. The most significant development that year wasn’t personal. The Orlando Magic made the playoffs for the first time since 2019, going 47-35 under head coach Jamahl Mosley. They lost in the first round to the Cleveland Cavaliers, a team that had won 48 games. It was a five-game series that wasn’t as close as the score suggests, but the fact of the playoff appearance mattered. The franchise had been irrelevant for five years. Banchero had changed that.
The 2024-25 season brought his first All-Star selection. He was 22. The All-Star appearance is where the conversation around him shifted from “good young player” to “legitimate building block for a contender.” He averaged 24.4 points that season, continued to develop his three-point shooting, and cemented himself as one of the top eight or nine offensive players in the Eastern Conference.
26.1 points in 2025-26
In 2025-26 Banchero averaged 26.1 points per game. The Magic finished 42-40 and just missed the playoffs on tiebreaker. That record, given what Orlando’s roster looked like before the Banchero era, is a reasonable development story. It’s not enough. He knows it. The franchise’s stated goal is a deep playoff run, and 42 wins doesn’t get you there. But the scoring production at 23 puts him on a trajectory most of his 2022 draft classmates haven’t matched.
The 2024 Paris Olympics and the Italy storyline
One of the stranger subplots of Banchero’s early career: he played for the Italian national team at the 2024 Paris Olympics. He was born and raised in Seattle. He holds Italian citizenship through his family’s heritage. The eligibility was real and the commitment was genuine.
He was 21 years old when he suited up for Italy at Paris, competing in the same Olympic tournament as the United States team he could theoretically have been on. Italy was eliminated in the group stage. Banchero averaged 16.5 points and 5.5 rebounds in three Olympic games, putting the Italian federation on notice that they had a long-term anchor if they wanted him.
The U.S.-or-Italy question is likely to resurface at the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics.
Style of play: what makes him different
The Elgin Baylor comparison gets thrown around a lot, and it’s not wrong. Baylor was 6’5” in an era when the NBA had almost no players with his combination of physicality and finesse; Banchero is 6’10” in an era that has plenty of big scorers, but few who do what he does with footwork and touch in the low post. He’s not the Baylor of 1962, but the archetype, a power forward who can create off the bounce, post up smaller defenders, and hit pull-up jumpers at the elbow, is where the comparison lives.
What separates him from most 6’10” forwards is his passing. At 5.4 assists per game in 2023-24, he’s the kind of player who makes the Magic’s offense harder to game-plan against even when he isn’t the one scoring. His post-entry passing has improved each year. He can catch in the high post, turn, and hit a cutter or a shooter in rhythm.
He also gets to the line. In his first four NBA seasons he’s attempted at least 7 free throws per game, which tells you that his attacks on the rim are real, not aesthetically aggressive but easy to contest. Defenders who go under screens on him get punished by the pull-up. Defenders who go over screens get punished in the post. He doesn’t have a clean counter to elite perimeter switching yet, but that’s a 23-year-old problem, not a career-ceiling problem.
Gear
Shop official Paolo Banchero and Orlando Magic gear on Fanatics, or grab a card blaster. His 2022-23 Rookie of the Year cards are still accessible at reasonable prices.
Panini NBA card blaster on Amazon →
Sources
Basketball-Reference is the primary statistical source for career averages, game logs, and season splits. The family basketball background (Mario Banchero at Washington, Rhonda Smith as Pac-10 Player of the Year 1996) is documented in multiple pre-draft profiles including ESPN and The Athletic’s 2022 draft coverage. The 2022 draft pick controversy is drawn from real-time commentary archived at ESPN and The Ringer. Rookie of the Year award history for the Orlando Magic franchise is from Basketball-Reference’s awards database. The 2024 Paris Olympics participation and statistics are from Basketball-Reference’s international records. Italian national team eligibility is documented through the Italian basketball federation (FIP).
Shop on Amazon
As an Amazon Associate, we earn from qualifying purchases.