Orlando Magic look to prevent pushback on defensive principles
Scott Skiles has noted some slippage in the Orlando Magic’s defense the last three games. A slippage, the coach intends to nip in the bud starting Thursday.
Scott Skiles was not happy following the Orlando Magic’s 101-99 win over the Los Angeles Lakers on Wednesday. He lamented his team’s defensive inconsistency and what he described as “pushback” to the team’s defensive principles.
The players were not necessarily in the right spots. They were challenging and closing out with their hands down — in one instance leading to a shooting foul on a 3-pointer by Lou Williams.
They were doing the things they could not afford to do if they wanted to win games.
Every player seemed to know it after the game. They recognized how their play was simply not good enough. Thursday’s practice was about getting to work solving those problems.
“He made sure that we were aware of that today in practice,” Nikola Vucevic said. “I thought we had a pretty good practice. Pretty intense and a lot of defensive drills. We needed that to make sure we get back to what we do which is defend. We showed that we can do that, we just have to do it consistently.”
The slippage defensively has been noticeable for a while. After the Magic’s strong defensive performance against the Raptors — the Magic recorded a 92.8 defensive rating in that game according to NBA.com — there has been significant slipping defensively.
Orlando had a 98.2 defensive rating after that win against Toronto. In the three games since, the Magic’s defensive rating is 100.7. The team’s overall defensive rating ballooned to 99.0 (although the team climbed from 13th in that category to 11th in the league).
The Magic’s defense is still playing good by all accounts. It is just not up to the standard the team wants.
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“The players are so talented, it is possible to play literally a perfect defensive possession and the other team still scores,” Skiles said. “We’re looking at that. We’ve had some good defensive possessions in the last three games where we’ve gotten a good solid stop and a rebound and a run out. We’ve had some where the other team scored. We’ve just had too many that aren’t up to the standard that we set for ourselves.”
Skiles said the team got to work in practice Thursday re-enforcing their principles and breaking some of the habits that have begun to creep in. He said he believes the team needed to get back into practice to drill some of these points home.
Overall the Magic are playing better defense. But the team’s numbers have slipped some and with the offense struggling and the holes that are popping up are somewhat concerning.
Sloppy fouling and giving up offensive rebounds and second-chance opportunities have plagued this team throughout the season.
The good news is that despite whatever slippage the Magic have seen the last three games, they went 2-1 in those games. They are one game below the .500 mark and still generally trending upward.
Orlando is simply not playing to a standard it needs to play at to keep winning. That is the message Skiles tries to drive home and the players seem to be getting.
“Of course we like to win games,” Evan Fournier said. “It’s just the way we did last night was not great. Of course, a win is a win. We’re happy with that. In order to be a good basketball team, we have to play better than that. For example, tomorrow if we play the same way, we’re going to lose the game. We’ve got to refocus.”
A practice can certainly help re-enforce some of the habits and principles Scott Skiles wants from his team.
Vucevic said some of it is drilling habits in practice. Some of it too is learning to adjust in games. The Magic have had times where they regress within games or fail to make an adjustment on a play — both Washington and Los Angeles seemed to run that high pick and roll over and over again against Orlando with little change or adjustment to the scheme.
The Magic are not doing anything too complex on defense at the end. It is about executing the gameplan.
“Our system is set up so everybody knows what to do,” Skiles said. “Even someone like Devyn [Marble], who hasn’t played very much, there is so much repetition, he could easily go home and explain it to his cousin what we’re trying to do. That’s one thing that’s been disappointing the last three games is we know what we’re supposed to do, we just haven’t done it well the last three.”