Nylon Calculus visualizes the Orlando Magic’s offense

The Orlando Magic offense was statistically a lot better. And using a visualization tool from Nylon Calculus, we can see just how different the offense was.

Scott Skiles is not thought of as an offensive coach. Not in the least. His teams have always struggled putting the ball in the basket as his teams tend to slow down and worry more about their defense.

That is what made the 2016 season such an odd one for the Magic.

Yes, they improved their defense slightly, but not nearly to the top-10 level Skiles envisioned for his team and felt was necessary for the team to make the Playoffs. Not nearly to the level of their talent — Victor Oladipo, Elfrid Payton and Aaron Gordon had reputations as solid defenders even at their young age. The Magic struggled on that end.

If there is a clearer reason why the Magic made their sudden surge in December, their fall in January and their 10-win improvement overall, it was actually the offense that did the work.

The Magic’s offensive rating increased from 99.6 to 102.6 this season, rising from 27th in the league to 24th in the league. It was a modest increase for sure, but not an insignificant one.

When the Magic offense was rolling, it was really rolling. In the final 10 games of the season, the Magic had the top offense in the league at 111.1 points per 100 possessions. In December, the Magic had the seventh best offense at 104.9 points per 100 possessions.

This was the Magic offense at its best. Now we can see exactly what made it different.

The folks over at Nylon Calculus used several different metrics to break down four different aspects of an offense — Pace (measured by possessions per 48 minutes), Player Movement (measured by offensive distance traveled and time of possession), Ball Movement (measured by average touch time for each team) and Shot Selection (measured by expected effective field goal percentage as measured by Nylon Calculus, although it was limited by publicly available data, which was cut off on Jan. 25) — and created a visual tool to look at the offenses of each team in the league.

The graph though shows the Magic had a much different offense:

The offense was clearly much different. When it played with pace and moved the ball, the Magic could be an unstoppable offensive force — even without many shooters. Nikola Vucevic could draw centers out with his jumper, Victor Oladipo could dart into the lane or pull up for mid-range jumpers, Evan Fournier could drain 3-pointers and Elfrid Payton could probe into the lane and create for others.

It is pretty clear — and the data for this part is admittedly by Nylon Calculus a bit scant — the only place the Magic did not have some drastic change is their shot selection (measured by expected effective field goal percentage again). Everywhere else, the Magic offense completely changed.

The team’s pace increased from 93.3 to 95.3. And that was a big part of what Scott Skiles wanted to build. He wanted a team that played with pace — both in the number of possessions and the speed at which the team executed its offense. Seeing that increase is a good sign.

But his biggest impact came with the ball and player movement that came with the Magic this year. Orlando saw its distance traveled on offense go up from 8.84 miles per game to 9.50 miles per game, according to NBA.com player tracking stats. They went from one of the most stagnant teams to one of the most active.

And when the Magic offense was working, they were wracking up assists. The Magic went from 282.2 passes per game to 307.8 per game. Again, moving from one of the teams with the fewest passes per game to one of the most.

It is hard to say these numbers do not suggest something good for the Magic and their offense. These trends suggest the Magic offense improved dramatically in many ways. Or at least in ways a team would suspect is necessary for a thriving offense.

As Ian Levy notes in analyzing the full scale of these offensive charts, that there is no one way to be successful on offense. While the Golden State Warriors are on the edge of every category as the best offensive team in the league, that is no guarantee of offensive success.

Looking specifically at the Magic though, this is a symbol and a signal of their offensive improvement. Continuing better offensive movement is a good sign of their progress and their potential.

They still have pieces to put together. They are not a complete team yet. The numbers show that too. The Magic are not a top offensive team yet. They have to continue improving. But it is also clear they are on the right track.

It will still take some time still for the Magic to become a better offensive team. But they are on the right track if they can execute better and become a better shooting team.

Both visually and aesthetically, the Magic were a better offensive team. But there is still plenty of work to do.