Orlando Magic find the weaknesses of their new offense
The Orlando Magic saw squarely what the potential weaknesses of a fast-break offense can be as the Memphis Grizzlies slowed the game down to a crawl.
106. 211. 96. 38. Final
The Memphis Grizzlies expose you. Every bit of you.
Their rough and tumble defense pokes and prods you. It annoys and flusters. It makes you lose yourself in it and makes you scratch and claw against it. Few teams can handle this kind of defense for 48 minutes. Eventually the grit and grind breaks you. Memphis just hopes it can score enough points on the other end most nights.
This was a true challenge for the Magic as they faced a team determined to slow them down. Sacrificing fouls and and any sense of basketball style (OK, that is unfair, the Grizzlies play a beautiful brand of basketball even if it is not aesthetically pleasing) to throw you off. Their rhythm comes from throwing other teams out of rhythm.
The Grizzlies found a way to knock the Magic out of rhythm. It might have taken a while, showing just how much the Magic’s new fast-breaking identity has taken hold, but it did eventually happen. Memphis gritted and grinded.
So maybe Orlando learned a little something on the way to its 106-96 loss.
“We tried to impose our will,” Jacque Vaughn said. “Whether it was getting up and down, I thought we were pretty aggressive defensively. I think we battled tonight.
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“I don’t think we lost the battle of the will. Overall, though, a lot of their sets take up the majority of the shot clock. I thought overall we got them late into shot clock situations where we still contested different shots from those guys. They are very deliberate, we tried to push the pace a little bit but they’ve got two big boys down that middle that make it pretty tough.”
The competitive spirit Rob Hennigan spoke about in his various media junkets this week was certainly present, even as the Magic got more and more bogged down in the foul-ridden game and stuck in the half-court offense. Orlando tried to pick up the pace, that desire never left the team, but the execution was lacking.
So the Magic ran their fast break offense for the first half. They pushed the pace and scored in transition and secondary transition. They got into their sets quickly. They took the pace and held on.
The Grizzlies ground them down at a certain point. The ball got caught in the half court as Memphis was able to get rebounds with just Zach Randolph hanging in the paint and everyone else getting back to stop the break. Orlando’s familiar half-court problems returned.
The team never collapsed though. The game just came down to execution.
“Obviously we want to get it up ahead so we can get an easy shot,” Elfrid Payton said. “But when it comes down to execute, we’ve got to execute. Guys got to hit shots, guys got to get in the paint and make a play for others. It’s still something we’re working on, but I think we’re making progress.”
Yes, the Magic’s train of positivity and entertainment was going to end at some point. No offense is perfect, and this team is not going to win games all the time. They still have that “young” label tagged to them and the offense is still a work in progress with players figuring out how to run against a set defense. Pace can only be forced so much.
The Grizzlies did a good job trapping and making the Magic rush through sets or get taken out of rhythm. Memphis forced seven second-quarter turnovers and helped get the Magic out of rhythm and lose some of that get-up speed they had. Doubt creeps in and the ball does not swing quite so crisply.
It was clear, as Elfrid Payton said, the team was still learning a bit how to play at this speed.
“You are battling the whole perspective of conditioning and running up and down and not get anything out of it so that part of it is going to test us because when you play faster, there are more possessions and more opportunities to turn it over,” Vaughn said. “More opportunities to have good things also. Hopefully, we can find that balance, but I want to lean on the side of still pushing it.”
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Certainly that is the stereotype of a running team — the turnovers. There were segments of Friday’s game that seemed roughshod and all over the place, like the Magic needed to slow down and take a deep breath before pushing it again.
Of course, that might be the exact problem. The Magic’s half-court offense tends to bog down when they go slow with passes decreasing and player movement stalling.
In other words, this is still a problem the Magic have yet to solve.
So too is the defense. Despite the quickened pace, the Magic have allowed better than a point per possession in each of the last three games. The Grizzlies posted a 104.2 offensive rating for the game.
If Orlando got one half of its equation for its identity from the beginning of the season down, the other half on the defensive end is still coming.
“You’ve just got to stick to what you do,” Nikola Vucevic said. “A lot of it comes to getting stops and being able to run right away and keeping the pace high. We might not be able to keep it the whole 48 minutes, but we just got to try to do it as much as you can.
“Defense is something we can improve on. We have had some ups and downs. We haven’t been consistent with it. But even in the games we scored, I thought our defense was pretty solid. I think we did a pretty good job defending, they just got offensive rebounds.”
The Magic are still working things out in this new running identity. It will be a story everyone follows for a little while now. There is game tape on these guys now and teams, particularly teams like the Grizzlies, will do everything they can to slow this team down.
Whether Orlando finds success like it did in its last two games or struggles for stretches like it did against Memphis, will be on whether it sticks to this identity and finds a way to push through even when the cannot create true transition opportunities.
“We’ve just got to impose our will on teams,” Payton said. “Even when they try to slow it down, we’ve got to find a way to play it at our pace.
“Even though this is how we want to play, we’re still learning it also. With that is going to come mistakes. We’ve just got to keep playing through it and play the right way.”