Trends or Mirages: Breaking down this year’s Orlando Magic

Mirage: Nikola Vucevic’s Decreased Scoring

The theme for the Orlando Magic’s offense can be aptly summarized with one word: balance.

The Magic lack a dominant scorer this year, but Nikola Vucevic appears ready to resume the role of being Orlando’s primary option. He leads the team in scoring at 15.9 points per game, a figure down from last year’s 19.3 per game.

But in Orlando’s last two games Vucevic has hoisted an average of 21.5 shots per game compared to his season average of just 14.2. The result has been Vucevic scoring 25 against the Portland Trail Blazers and 20 against the Atlanta Hawks.

While the Portland dominance was easy to understand given Portland’s lack of frontcourt talent on its depleted roster, Vucevic’s strong play against Atlanta was a little more impressive. The Hawks feature three strong frontcourt defenders in Paul Millsap, Al Horford and Tiago Splitter.

But Vucevic did his thing against that trio as well, connecting on 10 of 19 shots in the game. He is still shooting 51.4 percent on the season and now that Orlando has developed a rhythm, it can be expected Vucevic continues to see more looks at the basket.

Part of the reason for this has been his emphasis on establishing position on the block, but he has to thank his teammates for making sure he gets the touches once he has battled to get that low position.

Vucevic is nearly unarguably Orlando’s most gifted scorer with the outside touch and inside coordination to consistently get good looks. Scott Skiles typically goes to Vucevic the first play of each half. Provided Vucevic stays aggressive, it can be expected that 15.9 point per game average approaches at least two points higher by the time this season concludes.

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