Competition not enough to grow Orlando Magic
The Orlando Magic came into the season professing their young players would grow through competition. That did not happen, one of the big failures of 2015.
There is a common refrain: a rising tide lifts all boats. Improvement comes in the crucible of competition.
Orlando believed it had that. With a versatile group of players that could interchange positions and a lot of youth, they felt the best way to get them all better was to have them go at each other every day in practice and improve behind closed doors. The product would display itself on the floor.
“I think this season especially we’ll see more competition for minutes and playing time than we have seen in our prior two seasons,” Rob Hennigan said at the beginning of the year. “That’s exciting for us. I think that speaks to how we’re building the team and the way we want to build it. That versatility piece is important for competition internally but then also once we start playing games to show different lineups.”
It, of course, did not quite work like that.
Maurice Harkless never quite found himself this season, appearing in just 45 games for 674 total minutes after appearing in more than 1900 in his first two seasons.
Harkless’ fall off was emblematic of how wrong things went throughout the season for the Magic. Harkless and Aaron Gordon, who missed a chunk of time with a fractured foot that it did take all season for the raw rookie to completely overcome, were supposed to push Tobias Harris. Andrew Nicholson was supposed to push for minutes at power forward too behind Channing Frye.
Really the only competitive push that seemed to work well was at point guard where Elfrid Payton forced his way into the starting lineup and beat out all the point guard experimentation with Victor Oladipo.
“We believe in our players,” Hennigan said at the end of the year. “We believe in our young players. We believe in the group we have. We believe in their ability to get better. We’re very young. It’s tough to win in this league when you’re young. We’re aware of that. We need to continue to add to the team in spots. We need to continue to make sure we have that balance of youth and veteran. But yet we believe in thsese guys. We believe in their ability to get better. And we see them being here.”
No one appears to be going anywhere at the moment. The Magic are expecting to bring back many of the same young players they had last year and hope that another round of competition and chances to grow.
That competition was supposed to be part of the growth for the team and development of the team’s identity. It never really came as the team could not piece things together.
The players wanted to push each other and wanted to make each other better. Perhaps they did that individually. It did not come together as a team.
Luke Ridnour said at the beginning of the season that the team needed to take things one month at a time. They needed to look to get better each month. If they did that, the wins would take care of themselves.
Injuries did not help. Channing Frye and Victor Oladipo missed the start of the season. Nikola Vucevic missed some time. Aaron Gordon missed some significant time.
Orlando though gained a rhythm and played well deep into December. Then they progressively got worse until Jacque Vaughn was fired. The team got better under James Borrego before fading some at the end of the season.
Competition it seemed was not enough to push the Magic ahead in 2015. It did not grow the depth they anticipated and did not bring the team and unit growth they needed.
These are among the failures of the 2015 season. The Magic will need a new approach to grow with a new coaching staff in 2016.
And this time hope growth can come through competition and wins.