The Orlando Magic never quite figured out who they were in the 2015 season. The search for consistency was prevalent throughout the year.
Why do head coaches trust veterans? Why are the San Antonio Spurs so reliable in their trust of Gregg Popovich’s system? Why is it that continuity and familiarity breed success in the NBA?
Consistency.
It is one of the more abstract terms and factors that occur regularly in the NBA.
The teams that win games have an understanding of each other’s roles and a trust and a belief that everyone will accomplish them every night. Even when a team does not have its best, there is a baseline that everyone on the team can rely on.
Young teams and young players do not have that consistency. They do not have that piece to rely on.
It often shows in key moments. It shows in general. The team does not play its best all the time, there is no filling in and stepping up to replace. A good game could be followed with a really bad one — like, say, a Monday road win in Miami followed by a dud the following night at home against Detroit.
Next: Inconsistency a product of Magic's many problems
Inconsistency a product of Magic’s many problems
Orlando’s problems are many, but they all go back to the theme of finding consistency and giving forth the same level of effort and focus game-to-game and play-to-play. It is an issue coaches and veterans see, as Channing Frye told Mary Stevens of Basketball Insiders in December:
"“I don’t think we really nailed down what we are going to do every night and who is going to be producing for us like that at a level that we can win. I think that we have guys that can produce, but I think we only average about 92 points so it’s tough to win games like that.”"
Indeed it is tough to win games like that. It is also tough to win games when you do not quite know what you will get from your players on a consistent basis. That goes from game-to-game and quarter-to-quarter and play-to-play.
This was back in December. And the answer was not reached in April before the season ended. It remained hard to figure what this team will do at any point. And when that is the case, it typically means they will do something bad.
“That’s what basketball is really all about,” Evan Fournier said at exit interviews at the end of the season. “You’ve got to be consistent. You play against good teams and the best players in the world every night. So you cannot be very focused and locked in one game and relaxed the other game. You have to stay focused and stay engaged for 82 games. That’s what good teams do and that’s what we don’t do yet. But we’re going to be a very good team soon and that’s basically where we need to go.”
It was the same refrain then, just as it is now.
Next: Growing pains are part of the process
Growing pains are part of the process
This is part of the process, of course. Players have to learn how to be leaders in the NBA. That sometimes mean they force things and go through the growing pains a young team goes through.
Still the Magic should have had enough experience by the end of the season, many with multiple years in the NBA in semi-featured roles, to be able to put forth a consistent effort and have some kind of reliability. For the Magic, the team’s discipline within their system has peaked and waned at various times. And the poor offense has led to poor defense and frustration.
This is the kind of carry over that cannot happen. And learning this discipline is part of the team learning how to play consistently each night.
It was the story of the season.
“I think we showed glimpses this season where we played very well,” Hennigan said at the end of the season. “And we showed other times where we didn’t play well at all. There were some encouraging aspects of the season, there were some frustrating aspects oft he season. I think the next step for us is learning how to win. We were in a litany of games this season where it was a one, two possession game in the fourth quarter and we couldn’t find a way to win those games. I think the next step for our development is being more consistent and understanding the things we need to do to win games, plain and simple.”
It is discipline and consistency that separate good teams from bad teams. From grown-up teams to the growing ones. With the way the Magic have played of late, they feel like toddler on this long road to the top of the NBA.
Next: How do the Magic create consistency?
Creating consistency
So how to do the Magic fix these symptoms and gain consistency?
First, establishing a system and an offense that the team can have confidence in helps. This has two parts to it. The coaching staff has to put the players in positions where they are likely to succeed and players have to trust that when they run the team’s offense and defense properly, they will find quality shots.
You can certainly argue whether or not the Magic’s coaching staff used their players effectively. A veteran like Channing Frye did not every seem to mesh well and Nikola Vucevic was never put in a position to succeed defensively until James Borrego inserted Dewayne Dedmon into the lineup.
Second, the team struggled to fight against runs when they came. When things went bad, they started to snowball. That is how things went so far south when the team was pressed and prodded.
Third, the team was young. Younger than it had been in the supposed tanking years the previous two seasons. Rob Hennigan entrusted his team to young players, perhaps not yet prepared to take on those rigors fully. The players on the team were put into roles where they were expected to produce at a high level for 30-plus minutes per night. The responsibility would be solely on them. They were not able to rely on Arron Afflalo or Jameer Nelson.
“I think overall you have to handle the responsibility on an everyday basis,” Jacque Vaughn said near the beginning of 2015. “That’s what it boils down to. Our group, we need on an every nigth basis to get productivity. Guys have not been in those positions before. I think they are learning how to play 39 minutes, 38 minutes, 37 minutes and come back two days from now and produce on both ends of the floor.”
This was the lesson every night for the Magic. Consistency eluded them every time.
The darkest days for the Magic came in late December and early January. That is when the Magic lost six of seven home games after that successful road trip. The Magic went out West again in January and the season was all but lost.
When the team lost, they lost in bunches. And that was the only consistent thing all season.
“People got to look inside themselves as individuals and ask how can I come to work and be better for the team,” Frye said in January. “I think we have a lot of guys that are really good on this team and really good individual players. We just need to buy into each other. Unless we do that, you are going to see that on the floor. We have to trust that everybody is doing the best they can to get better. It’s easy basketball, play unselfish and play hard and just let it be, whatever it is.”
And this realization throughout the year was the frustrating thing all year. All of the Magic’s key players either kept their scoring average or improved on it. They, for the most part, became more efficient and improved individually. They just never came together as a team.
That was the story of the 2015 season.
Next: Putting the pieces together
Putting the pieces together
So how do the Magic find consistency in 2016? How do they take that step they were searching for all of this past season?
Gaining experience is a tired refrain, but it will be one way to gain consistency. So too will a new coach with a firmer hand and direction. Jacque Vaughn was certainly about player development his first two years and struggled to put players in a position to succeed and give them clearer guidance to win games.
Putting these pieces together, with the talent on the roster could breed consistency.
“Every day in practice, I was impressed. I think our biggest issue was figuring out our identity.” –Channing Frye
“All of them [impressed me],” Frye said. “Every day in practice, I was impressed. I think our biggest issue was figuring out our identity. Some games we could score 120 and other games we couldn’t score 90. Some games we were playing fast. There’s a medium of where we want to go as a team and finding that line of we’re going to play fast but at the same time we’ve got to play better defensively and be on the same page.”
That is the start. The Magic have to know who they are and what they want to accomplish in general before consistently achieving that goal.
It eluded them all season in 2015. Frustratingly so.
It will take everyone — the new coach and the players on the roster improving themselves — to achieve what the team hopes to accomplish in 2016.