Orlando Magic Mid-Season Player Grades

Elfrid Payton presents an interesting paradox on improvement: On on side of the coin, there is the fact the Orlando Magic’s overall offense has improved, a result of Payton’s ability to jumpstart his teammates.

On the flip side, Payton’s individual scoring efforts have improved little. His shot is still a work in progress, and he is still typically dared to shoot the ball. Reconciling the two seems to arrive at the middle ground of our ratings.

It can only leave us to wonder just how good Payton would be if he possessed a reliable and accurate jump shot. He is still shooting 41.5 percent from the floor this year and 30.6 percent from 3-point range. Payton shoots an improved 41.9 percent from 10 to 16 feet but from 16 feet to the arc he is worse than ever at 25.7 percent.

Given Payton takes 30 percent of his shots from 10 feet to the arc, this represents an area from which he must be far more effective.

Defensively, Payton can be a duality too.

He is best paired with Victor Oladipo, and Payton’s best contributions come through his forcing turnovers. But individually he has been less impressive, and opposing point guards have been able to get it going against Payton one-on-one.

It is hard to give Payton all the blame when an opposing guard gets it going, but a large bulk of it has to go to the primary defender. Payton earns nearly a ‘college B’ for his defense, but to make the leap into an ‘A’ it would be requisite that he starts playing better on ball defense.

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