The Orlando Magic are in London for part two of the Global Game Series in Europe. Upon arriving in the UK, Desmond Bane cracked up teammates during a team media setting by joking that a bulldog looked like Wendell Carter Jr.
Desmond Bane about a bulldog 💀
“He look like Wendell”
(Via @OrlandoMagic)
pic.twitter.com/OyApviGwdX— Fullcourtpass (@Fullcourtpass) January 17, 2026
Bane’s presence in that room is, in itself, part of the new NBA reality. He isn’t a visiting friend; he’s a foundational piece of Orlando’s present and future after the Magic acquired him from Memphis in a blockbuster deal in June 2025. And when a new cornerstone joins a young roster, the first question isn’t only how he fits on the floor. It’s whether his voice fits in the room, whether the relationships are forced or natural, whether the connection is real or purely contractual.
That’s why a throwaway joke can matter. Because humor is usually the first proof of comfort.
The setting, according to the Magic’s own published “practice sound” content from the week, included Bane, Carter, and other Orlando regulars addressing media during the team’s international stretch. Somewhere in that environment, amid the routine questions and the staged photo-day energy, a bulldog entered the scene and Bane pounced on the easiest punchline in sports: finding a teammate’s look-alike in the wild. Carter became the target, the room broke, and a perfectly ordinary inside joke became a shareable piece of NBA personality.
It’s silly. It’s harmless. It’s also telling.
Because Orlando’s current team identity has been built on seriousness: defense, size, physicality, the daily grind of becoming a consistent winner. Even when the Magic were in Berlin for the NBA’s first regular-season game in Germany, the night wasn’t framed as a vacation. Orlando played from 20 down, locked in defensively, and won a real game that counted. Their broader organizational messaging over the past year has been the language of growth and accountability, not vibes.
And yet, every team that actually survives a season needs a human release valve. The best locker rooms aren’t nonstop intensity; they’re intensity with air pockets. A running joke. A roast session that doesn’t cross the line. A moment where a player laughs hard enough to remember he’s a person before he’s a product.
Bane’s bulldog crack landed because it was the kind of line teammates only accept from someone who’s already in. It wasn’t a reporter trying to be funny. It was a teammate making the room laugh at the exact time in the year when bodies hurt, travel stacks up, and the NBA calendar starts to feel like a long hallway with no windows.
