Scott Skiles: We are going to raise the bar for Orlando Magic
Scott Skiles was the clear focus for the Orlando Magic as they searched for a new head coach. The one thing he will do is raise the bar for this young team.
The one constant throughout all the discussion about Scott Skiles was clear:
He coaches hard. He expects a lot from his players. He demands effort. He delivers at least respectability to budding young teams or underachieving veterans.
No one could have that measure of success without a clear vision for what he wanted for his team and the detailed plan to get them there. The fact Skiles has consistently built up teams with a strong work ethic, the ability to grind defense and win some games in three different locations shows Skiles has that.
In that sense, the Magic’s objectives were accomplished.
“We wanted soemone who had incredibly strong leadership qualities. We talked a lot about head coaching experience with [the media] along the way. We were also looking for someone with a strong communications background as well. I think we found the perfect individual to fill all those attributes and more.” –Alex Martins
“When we began our search, our discussions, my discussion with Rob [Hennigan] in particular, centered on finding a coach who was balanced,” Magic CEO Alex Martins said. “We wanted soemone who had incredibly strong leadership qualities. We talked a lot about head coaching experience with [the media] along the way. We were also looking for someone with a strong communications background as well.
“I think we found the perfect individual to fill all those attributes and more.”
And with that, the Magic introduced Scott Skiles as the team’s next head coach at the Amway Center on Friday. Rob Hennigan praised his tactical knowledge of the game and his communication skills. He praised his ability to instill structure and accountability and instill a winning culture.
Skiles did not mince words, he has high expectations for this team. Not just Playoff expectations, winning expectations.
“I think we have to have a longer-term goal, and what I mean by longer term is in the season, at the end of the season and where we want to be,” Skiles said. “But we have to break it down in a bunch of different areas. We need to go from a bottom five defensive team, and I’m going to aim high, to a top-five defensive team. We’re going to raise that bar really high.
“We want to have a winning record. The reason I don’t want to just say the Playoffs is because, and it may not continue this way, you have been able to have a losing record and make the Playoffs in the East. If our goal sitting up here right now is to have a losing record and get the eighth seed every year, that is pretty pitiful.”
Skiles admitted that getting a winning record after 25 wins in 2015 is a major jump. A lot of the reformation, as he said, will have to come on the defensive end. But that is what the Magic need to do. They need to make that jump and move out of the rebuilding phase and into the respectable phase.
The hire has had its detractors, but there is no doubt Skiles has consistently delivered throughout his career. He has a career 443-433 record in 13 seasons as a head coach including seven Playoff appearances. In his three stops — Phoenix, Chicago and Milwaukee — he has led each team to at least one postseason appearance.
The track record is laid bare. The Magic clearly wanted someone who has handled several different coaching situations and succeeded in them. Skiles has done that time and time again.
“I don’t want to get too much credit for turning something around because my ego is not that big,” Skiles said. “You do that when you have good people, people that work hard. Nobody is every going to convince me that in any walk of life, in any profession that you have that you still can’t outwork people. That’s what we have to do, we have to go outwork people.”
This is the short-term view however. The Magic, as they have so repeatedly said, are thinking about winning championships one day. They broke the team down and began building it up with the taste of the 2009 Finals still lingering in their mouth. Eventually they want to get back to that place.
To many, Skiles is not the coach to do that.
What Skiles is the coach to do is to build an identity and get the team back to winning sooner rather than later. He is there to begin to turn the corner. And Skiles will raise the expectation level very clearly.
The statement about outworking other teams is at the very essence of Skiles. It was who he was as a player — the scrappy guard who was not afraid to fight anybody (including reportedly Shaquille O’Neal during a Magic practice) — and who he became as a coach. Even with his record hovering around .500, his teams always seemed to embody that personality.
“I’m pretty simple really in what I try to discuss with the guys. We expect them to be on time, and in the NBA that means early because there is always treatment, there is always a lift, there is always shooting, there is always some film work, whatever that is; play hard all the time and care about winning. I have no reason to believe those three attributes aren’t in a lot of the players. There is going to be youthful things that happen of course, but it’s exciting when you have an opportunity to work with young players because you can truly help them.”
Skiles’ first task is reforming a defense that finished in the bottom five of the league last season. Skiles has rarely seen the bottom half of the league in defensive rating during his coaching tenure.
He sees hope for that immediately. During his introductory press conference, he noted the Magic finished in the top-10 in defensive rebound rate (eighth at 78.0 percent). That means to him the Magic need to be better at getting stops and getting out in transition because, for the most part, they are collecting misses well.
He also foresees Victor Oladipo and Elfrid Payton becoming a top-5 defensive guard tandem in the league with all the quickness and defensive ability they have already.
Already the goals seem to be set high.