Rob Hennigan: Something was ‘amiss,’ Orlando Magic needed to shakeup
The Orlando Magic’s season has quickly gone off the rails and become a major disappointment. Something was wrong and they moved to change that Tuesday.
The Orlando Magic entered the season with lofty ambitions.
Their acquisition of Serge Ibaka was a calculated risk to improve the roster and bring in a veteran defender to fill a need they desperately had. The Magic had other plans too in putting together the roster. They went big with their free agency money and hoped defense would lead them into the Playoffs.
As they near the end of the third quarter of the season, the Magic have not seen that risk pay off. The defense never came together — not consistently at least. And the team faltered.
Those Playoff dreams are fading if there is still even a light of it happening. The Magic’s gamble did not pay off.
And, clearly, something needed to happen. The Magic were not about to make a run at 21-36, having not won consecutive games since Christmas.
So the Magic made their trade and shook up the team. The obvious move they had to make with Serge Ibaka’s free agency impending and few results to show for the risks they took.
The Magic traded Ibaka to the Toronto Raptors on Tuesday, acquiring Terrence Ross and a first round pick. And now the Magic are shifting course again, trying to salvage something from this season while keeping an eye on the future.
“I think for us this deal made sense for a few different reasons,” Orlando Magic general manager Rob Hennigan said. “As we watched our team play over the course of the season, something is amiss. We are all frustrated by the way our team has performed to date. We felt like it was necessary to try to shake things up somehow someway.”
The Magic acquire a player in Terrence Ross who is averaging 10.4 points per game and shooting a career-best 44.1 percent from the floor, including 37.5 percent from beyond the arc.
For an Orlando team still hanging onto dimming Playoff hopes — they are *still* just 5.5 games out — Ross fills a desperate need. The Magic are the third-worst 3-point shooting team in the league. Adding Ross’ 3-point shooting has some value. Hennigan said improving the team’s offense may have a positive effect on the team’s defense too.
They give up a player in Serge Ibaka who was having a career year offensively, averaging 15.1 points per game, while maintaining at least much of his defensive numbers from previous years.
Ibaka never made the individual impact the Magic needed or envisioned for him. And the team never meshed together. The record speaks for itself that Orlando needed to do something.
Ibaka played well this season. But the parts were not becoming a stronger whole.
“I think team performance is exactly that — it’s team performance,” Hennigan said. “It involves the collective and it involves the five guys on the court that are trying to play together. I think that you can never isolate one person or one skill set and say that’s the reason it’s not working. Our defense is not playing at the level that we hoped or quite frankly expected. I think there are a few things that need to be rectified. I wouldn’t put it on Serge.”
Add in questions about Serge Ibaka’s impending free agency and the deal seemed like it had to be made.
The Magic had to make a decision whether to risk losing Ibaka without any compensation and completely sink the cost or try to recoup some value. And then the second decision of what kind of player to bring in.
Orlando saw in Ross a player who still fits their timeline. And can support the team both in the present and the future.
Orlando Magic
Hennigan would not foreclose the Magic’s Playoff dreams for 2017, as much of a long shot as those are. But there was an eye on the future and making the roster fit better in targeting and completing this deal.
“I think this trade was made with two directives,” Hennigan said. “It was let’s try to continue to add to the team to piece this in a way to make a Playoff run and let’s do so in a fashion that allows us to build forward and connect to the future. We feel we’ve accomplished both things. Let’s see how that plays out.”
What that looks like is still a mystery. And whether Orlando can mount a late-season run to get back into the Playoff picture is equally unknown.
The future piece likely means more to the Magic than anything else. The Playoff talk — Hennigan reiterated the goal for the team remains to make the 2017 Playoffs — certainly remains.
Orlando pushed their chips in this year to try to make the Playoffs. They went for a big swing in Serge Ibaka and fell short. The team fell short as constructed.
Now the question is what to do about the future?
Orlando appears to be answering that by reluctantly going small again. By adding a shooter like Ross to spread the floor. By fixing what seemed so amiss with the roster.
Surely, this will not be the only change. Even with what is looking like a high draft pick — and now a second pick in the first round — there is the chance to remake the roster and improve quickly.
Something was wrong with this team. And now the team is getting back to building and a longer-term vision.
“I think we’re still building,” Hennigan said. “We have a core of players that we really believe in. We really believe the majority of players on our team their best basketball is ahead of them. Our challenge is to figure out a way to harness and tap into some of the glimpses that we have seen and some of the performances that we have had this year, which show it is in there somewhere. Our challenge is to make it more consistent.
“We don’t think we’re that far away. We think we’re a few tweaks away. We believe in the young players that we have. We believe they will continue to improve.”
Whether the Magic are able to make that run to the Playoffs may be pure optimism. The Magic found themselves in a tough situation, knowing what they had did not work.
Next: Orlando Magic's trade for Terrence Ross opens up playing time
They came out of it hoping the puzzle pieces fit this time.