Orlando Magic defense emerged in season opener
The Orlando Magic put in a strong defensive performance. One that cemented the team’s hopes and goals. In a loss though, there is still work to do.
Scott Skiles has a reputation to uphold.
For 13 years, Skiles has established himself as something of a defensive guru. Or at least a resurrector of latent defensive tendencies.
The thing Skiles was most expected to do was change the Magic’s defense. The one that ranked 25th in the league in defensive rating. For the Magic to get anywhere and improve in any meaningful way, it would have to start with the defense.
The Magic were OK defensively through the preseason. But that is preseason anyway. Not much a signal of anything.
The first game itself may not be a signal of anything either. It is just one game and things can change — the numbers will get skewed again most likely with the Oklahoma City Thunder coming to town Friday. They should change pretty dramatically.
After one game though, the Magic could have some confidence that their defense can do something. The Wizards, the team with the best offensive rating through the preseason and a ton of offensive weapons, could not find a way to score consistently throughout the entire game.
“Our offense at times wasn’t pretty, but our defense was always there,” Nikola Vucevic said. “We held them to 88 points, and that’s pretty good against a team like that. Especially this year when they are going to try to run and outscore people. I think it was a good defensive effort. We made some big plays and a couple shot clock violations. You saw guys running around trying to help each other. Sometimes it wans’t pretty, we missed some assignemtns. But we made up for them. That’s something we have to keep up.”
The final numbers were stellar. The Magic gave up a 89.8 defensive rating and allowed only a 43.5 percent effective field goal percentage. The Wizards struggled to make 3-pointers and had an 18.4 percent turnover rate. If it were not for the Magic’s own offensive issues — some of it the team not making shots, some of it the team falling back into bad habits of isolation basketball.
One thing was clear though, the Magic were relying solely on their defense and executing in a way they have not done so for much of the past three years. Basketball-Reference calculated the Magic to have a defensive rating of 91.6 in Wednesday’s game. It was just the 15th time in the last four seasons the team has had a defensive rating of less than 92.0.
That is 15 times in 247 games.
And of those 15 games, the Magic recorded an offensive rating of better than 100.0 just four times.
The Magic were doing something right defensively.
“We’re buying in honestly,” Victor Oladipo said. “Coach Skiles is doing a great job with us defensively and we’re applying it to the game. That’s the only reason we had a chance to win. We did a great job defending them. There are certain things we have to fix on offense and on defense, but we have to build on that.”
Tobias Harris said it was good to see the defense hold up the offense for the majority of the game. He lauded the team’s aggressiveness in the scheme the coaches have implemented.
And that defense was incredibly aggressive, swarming the ball and flooding the strong side. There was constant pressure on the ball handler as they often had to face multiple layers of help and then a scrambling rotation behind the initial defender.
The team made mistakes. The left the weak side open too often. They gave up too many offensive rebounds with guards having to box out and cover the weak side of the floor. They had two guys close out or have moments of indecision on where they were supposed to be or who was taking the ball when they went into scramble mode.
It was far from perfect. But even when those occurred, the Magic were still swarming and making plays difficult.
The Magic were a significantly better and more active team defensively from the first quarter on.
“I felt like we had good intentions, especially on the defensive end,” Skiles said. “Overall for a first game, we were really sharp against a team that’s really good. That’s a great sign, but we’re still 0-1.”
And the reason the Magic are 0-1 is partly because of their defense, no matter how good it might have been Wednesday. It was not enough to secure a win — although, perhaps it would be on most nights.
Skiles said after the game the defense was very solid after the first quarter — when Orlando gave up 31 points in a bit of an unsettled start. Once the team settled down, they were sharp on defense, in Skiles’ words.
That does not mean there were a few lapses. Skiles lamented the missed opportunity when the team went up 78-70 with about seven minutes to play in the game. From there, the Wizards went on a 12-0 run in the next four minutes to take a four-point lead. The Magic answered with nine straight points in that hectic final quarter.
“Overall for a first game, we were really sharp against a team that’s really good. That’s a great sign, but we’re still 0-1.” –Scott Skiles
Skiles said he felt the team failed to pressure John Wall and prevent him from initiating the offense easily. In the final seven minutes, the Magic gave up a 114.2 offensive rating, according to NBA.com. During that span, Wall scored seven of the Wizards’ 18 points. Bradley Beal scored seven more.
The Magic were good for most of the night, but struggled yet again when the chips were on the table.
This team is about winning. So no matter how good the signs were throughout the game of what this team can become defensively and the overall strong effort the team put in, it still ended up a loss in the end. Building block or not, that is all that matters and the prevailing mood the day after.
“We’ve just got to be better,” Oladipo said. “It wasn’t good enough to win. We’ve just got to do it and find a way to win.”