Scott Skiles has come in and changed the Orlando Magic. All the doubts have been pushed away, this team has proven it belongs in the Playoff conversation.
The Orlando Magic were in the desert after three years of the rebuild. The coach they hired to help the young players grow could not take the next step up and start winning.
After winning only 25 games in 2015, the Magic were in a precarious situation.
The young players could never come together and continue to be a bundle of potential. Or they could take that step forward and begin to realize all that potential.
In either case, the coach they chose to steward the next phase of the development would be critical.
They chose Scott Skiles in a job that he has seemingly done plenty of times before. His reputation was one that input a system and some discipline into young teams, getting them into the Playoffs and beginning to realize that growth.
There were doubts for sure — most of them long term in whether the Magic had found a coach to take them to Step C of their rebuild and ultimate contending or whether he was just a stop gap.
Those doubts have been effectively pushed aside though through 29 games. The Magic are sitting at 17-12 and thinking about banking up home wins before their next big road trip in early January.
This is a team that has found itself very much in the Playoff conversation in the cluttered Eastern Conference. This is a team growing in confidence with every game and every win. The team that won 68 games the past three years, the fewest in the league, appears to be gone.
Instead, there is this team. A disciplined, defensive-minded squad with athletes who become extremely dangerous when given the lanes to drive or out in transition.
A lot of this change can be attributed directly to Skiles and the mentality he brought in. It is no secret what the Magic are trying to do, as Chris Mannix of Sports Illustrated writes, it is simply the Magic are very good at doing it so far:
"Scouts will tell you: There are no tricks to the way a Skiles coached team defends. They shrink the floor, load up in the paint and play aggressively on the ball. They do everything possible to take away the first option in a possession, and Skiles storms the sidelines holding everyone accountable. “It’s nothing revolutionary,” says a scout. “His teams just always play hard.”“We have a defensive system that we teach and work on every day,” Skiles said. “It would be meaningless if guys didn’t buy into it, so they have to understand the importance of it. If they do that, we’ll be fine. If they don’t, we’ll drop. It’s got to be something you do every single day. You have to stay with it. It can be tedious to have to to do the drill work every day and stay with it. So far, the guys have.”"
It was something too Jared Dubin of The Cauldron picked up on:
"For a lot of those young guys on the team, having a more defined set of rules in place has helped simplify things and given them the certainty of knowing right where they should be at all times. The Vaughn-coached Magic would often change up their coverages based on that night’s opponent, but Skiles has them playing things the same way, every single game.“It gives us an identity defensively, which is one thing we didn’t have last year,” [Aaron] Gordon says. “We were trying to do 100 different things according to the team that we were playing. Now teams have to make adjustments to what we’re doing.”Orlando’s big men now drop down toward the free-throw line to guard pick-and-rolls. The wings help aggressively against drives from the perimter and are then counted on to spring back out toward shooters dotting the arc, smartly leveraging the team’s collective bouncy athleticism. “We know exactly what’s expected of us on the defensive end, and now we have the maturity to hold each other accountable for what we need to be doing,” Gordon says. “Those two main things have picked our defense up a whole lot.”"
The numbers make it clear things have been different. The Magic’s defensive rating went from 105.2 points allowed per 100 possessions (25th in the league) to 99.8 points allowed per 100 possessions (10th in the league). Orlando’s defense has been slipping and the team still aspires to have a top-10 defense in the entire league, but the change is undeniable.
This is what Scott Skiles has done throughout his coaching career. But for this to happen so quickly with this Magic team still has been the most astonishing aspect.
So none of this has really been a surprise. The bones for the Magic’s defensive turnaround was all there. This has been one of Skiles’ more miraculous turnaround projects.
The Magic have not accomplished anything, they will be the first to say that. The Playoffs are still a long way away (do not look at the schedule in the weeks leading up to the All-Star Break in February).
Still, there is no denying the work the Magic players put in and the change Skiles has implemented.
The greatest gift the Magic could have gotten this Christmas was the coach they hired in June.
Orlando has hope and confidence again. The team has direction and identity. Everything the team had been lacking the past three years (almost) seems to have washed away.
The expectations now can change. The doubts this team could make the Playoffs should be shed away. The postseason feels like a bare minimum even for the most conservative.
Next: Evan Fournier shows composure, breaking out of slump
Here the Magic sit at Christmas knowing they are among the East’s top teams. Skiles had a direct hand in that and proved to be one of the best gifts the Magic could have received this season.