Orlando Magic's potential for growth limited by all-too-often stagnant offense
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Monday 16 December 2019 04:54, UK
The Orlando Magic boast a defensive foundation good enough to propel them to the playoffs but their stagnant offense is stopping them from going any further, writes Sky Sports NBA analyst Mark Deeks.
All teams are streaky, but so far this season, the Orlando Magic have been streakier than most.
Finally making it back to the playoffs last season after six years away, the Magic would have hoped to continue that relatively prosperous streak, especially after having spent a lot of money over the summer retaining the players behind the improvement.
They had the least amount of roster turnover in the league, even less than the Denver Nuggets; when taking the team that ended last season, adding Al-Farouq Aminu, returning Markelle Fultz from injury and anticipating significant improvement from third-year on-trend big Jonathan Isaac, there was plenty of reason to be optimistic.
Instead, though, Orlando lost six of their first eight games. It was certainly a difficult opening stretch, but the only wins came over the Cleveland Cavaliers and New York Knicks, two of the very worst teams in the league. In the highest-scoring NBA era since your grandad's generation, it took them until their eighth game to score more than 100 points. Even then, they still lost to the Dallas Mavericks.
There followed a hot streak, a period in which they won four of their five games, including a very impressive win over the Philadelphia 76ers. Then came the direct reversal of that, dropping four out of five, with only another win over the Cavaliers among that group of losses. Then came a four-game winning streak to get back to .500, with yet another victory over Cleveland in amongst that. And now has come a three-game losing streak.
That three-game losing streak came against the Milwaukee Bucks, Los Angeles Lakers and Houston Rockets, three of the best teams in the NBA. It is understandable the Magic would lose these games. It does, however, mean the Magic are now merely 11-14 on the season; were it not for the gift of the Cavaliers, they would be only 8-14. And those eight have not been against good opponents; the only provisional playoff teams they have beaten this season are the 76ers and the Phoenix Suns.
Where once improvement was hoped for and anticipated, then, the Magic have instead plateaued and gone backwards.
The absence of Nikola Vucevic has been a factor in why. The breakout player from last season and first-time All-Star has appeared in only 15 contests this year; considering that he is the lynchpin of the offense, it is an absence keenly felt on a team that otherwise lacks for balance and spacing.
It is also of note that even without Vucevic, the defense has been quite good. Orlando are ranked 10th overall in the league in this category, and, with the league's fourth-slowest pace, they give up the third-fewest points per game of any team.
The emergence of Isaac as a defensive whirlwind, plus the addition of Aminu and the resurgence on that end of Aaron Gordon (who did not live up to his phenomenal defensive potential in his first few seasons in the NBA, instead prioritising expanding his offensive game, but who reconnected on that end last season) give the Magic a mighty fine set of frontcourt defenders. Especially so if they can ever get anything from Mo Bamba. Even third-string center Khem Birch is a mighty fine defender who would likely receive a bigger role on other teams.
However, the lack of consistent offense has undercut that defensive foundation. And it might also be about to get worse. Tonight's game over the New Orleans Pelicans will be a relatively easy contest compared to the three brutal games before it; however, in the six games after it, they will have to play both the 76ers and Bucks again, as well as the Denver Nuggets and Utah Jazz, both on the road. The remainder of December is going to be a very, very difficult stretch.
Orlando still likely have a grip on a playoff spot in the East, but only because of the weakness of the competition around them. The Chicago Bulls have massively disappointed, the Detroit Pistons have as well, and while the Charlotte Hornets are having quite a pleasant season with genuine hope in it for the future, they have not the horses in the stable to be good enough in the short term.
There is also plenty of internal growth still within Orlando's grasp. Fultz is still essentially beginning his career, Vucevic will return, and the 29 per cent shooting of Aminu cannot last forever, so long as he too can get healthy.
That said, there are valid reasons to be sceptical about whether the roster Orlando have constructed will never have enough offensive talent, spacing and instincts to start moving up from the low playoff seeds and compete for the conference title.
Even when relatively healthy last season, Orlando still ranked only 22nd in offense. Scapegoating the big minutes given to marginal offensive players such as Jonathan Simmons, Jerian Grant, Wesley Iwundu and Bamba was a way of seeking solace, but even with two of them now gone and Iwundu's role reduced, this is just not a team predisposed to moving the ball. Ranked only 25th in offense thus far this season, things are worse, not better.
In theory, all the frontcourt length and defense wins possessions. The Magic are a good rebounding team and the ability of Isaac, in particular, to play all across the frontcourt, matching up with everybody from Giannis Antetokounmpo to Al Horford, can stifle opponents and secure possessions that the athletic Fultz can then run back the other way. When pushing the ball, getting into the lane and either finishing at the rim or pulling up from the mid-range, Fultz has been good. But when he is not able to do so, the lack of natural scorers and playmakers starts to bite.
The Magic are currently fifth-last in the league in passes per game at 270.4. Five of the six teams around them - the Portland Trail Blazers, Houston Rockets, Brooklyn Nets, LA Clippers and Milwaukee Bucks - feature elite scoring talents who can get their own shots at will, thus offsetting that lack of ball movement to varying degrees. The other team, the Atlanta Hawks, are trying to make Trae Young into one such type of player. Conversely, Orlando just does not have the personnel.
Although his shooting has turned the outcome of many a game over the last year-and-a-half, Terrence Ross barely looks to pass the ball and shows no great incisiveness when he does so. Ahead of him in a similar role, Evan Fournier makes bad decisions with the ball and gets blinkered, willing to share the ball with Vucevic and run a two-man game with him but otherwise tending to overdribble and not pass.
Despite his growth, Isaac has never shown much in the way of passing affinity. Although his ball movement and spacing has been hugely useful during his back-to-back career-best campaigns as a starter over the past couple of years, DJ Augustin has been the most egregious overdribbler of them all.
A direct by-product of this, and also something that is caused by it, is poor overall outside shooting. The Magic are currently third-last in the NBA in three-point percentage at 33.0 per cent, and this is not a team with many weakside threats beyond the pairing of Ross and Fournier, whom it is difficult to play together. Augustin should get his shot back in time, but Isaac has yet to be a shooter for more than short stretches, Gordon has never been consistent, Aminu only ever took open ones, and Fultz famously lost the ability to do it.
It stands to reason that, giving their poor spacing and shot creation (particularly without Vucevic, whose passing ability and own scoring is vital in opening up the floor), the Magic would look to cut more. It is true that the impact of cutting is negated somewhat by poor spacing. But good cutting also opens up good spacing. The Magic are all too often stagnant, despite having good athletes who should be able to get to the rim off the ball in a genuinely threatening way. They also should be able to run the court more than they do, especially with an athlete like Fultz at the point of attack.
The growth of Fultz is therefore key to the projection of the Magic both this season and in the future. While he is still clearly quite raw in terms of what is required to manage an NBA half-court offense full-time, he is growing increasingly comfortable on the court overall, not only just in his abilities to get to the basket but also in passing off of that threat and controlling the game. He is currently somewhere in the chasm of difference between Dante Exum and John Wall, but closer to the Wall end of things, and still with plenty of room to grow.
However, much as it is sweet relief Orlando finally has a ball-handling guard who can consistently get beyond the first life of the defense, split double-teams and create space off the dribble, it does mean on the offensive end, Fultz jars with the construction of the roster around him. A player like that needs shooters to find, and so too does Vucevic.
If the aim is for the two to be able to regularly run a two-man game akin to what Nikola Jokic and Jamal Murray run in Denver, then both will need to improve away from the basket. For all the defense they provide, the underdeveloped ball skills and shooting of Isaac alongside the less-than-instinctive and overly ambitious offensive intent of Gordon means not having the right personnel to take advantage of the newly acquired half-court weapon.
In acquiring Fultz for so little, the Orlando Magic scored a major talent infusion at one of the shortest positional rotations in the entire league, and took a slight gamble undeniably worth taking. His size, speed, length and decent defensive enthusiasm chime well with how the team is constructed on defense.
Their defense keeps them in any game. But their lack of offense will often cost them the victory.
