Orlando Magic Season Review 2016

Scott Skiles

The first place to start in reviewing the season was with Orlando Magic head coach Scott Skiles.

He came in with a reputation of being a hard-nosed coach who demanded accountability and drove his teams to a higher level. He had become a master at getting young teams to begin realizing their potential and climbing the ranks into the  Playoffs before he reached his ceiling and his grating style wore out his teams.

The first year under Skiles is usually a time of major growth. And the Magic had the beginnings of that growth. They also had the beginnings of their fall with Skiles.

Brett Roberts wrote in his review of what Skiles did right this year that he made a group of seemingly mismatched parts work and work together. When things worked well, the team was a well-oiled machine — balanced offensively and scrambling and working together defensively:

"The Magic are not the most talented roster in the league. When the team was at its best, it was definitely more than the sum of its parts. The 10-5 December that earned Skiles the Coach of the Month honors in the Eastern Conference more than spoke to how good the Magic really were when the team was clicking. But youth is a tough thing to manage, and in the course of an 82-game season the Magic blew more than enough games to miss the playoffs by a fairly substantial nine games."

There was no doubt there were shortcomings though. Skiles is a no-nonsense guy and seemingly did whatever he had to do to win the game in front of him. Letting a young player go through growing pains and mistakes was not on his agenda. If a player could not help him win in that moment, he sat on the bench.

Trust seemed to be a big issue for Skiles. Gaining it was difficult — especially as a rookie — and losing it seemed a bit inconsistent.

Zach Palmer wrote one of the things that went wrong with Skiles was his inconsistent doling of minutes and how he kept certain players on a short leash. His accountability seemed inconsistent:

"When Skiles was backing up his words with his actions, the results were positive. The Magic were winning games and looked poised to make huge strides on the defensive end. But things soon shifted. In December, Orlando’s defensive effort began to significantly fall off. Most noticeably after a heartbreaking loss to the Los Angeles Clippers where the Magic defense did not show up to play against one of the better teams and the Magic collapsed. Even weeks later, Skiles would point to this game as a turning point. But Skiles however did not pull the plug on his guys as he did before. This led to complacency on the court and the Magic really never rediscovered that defensive form."

There is no doubt Skiles helped the Magic become a better team, but there were also many confusing decisions that came from Skiles that seemed to hold them back.

He is firmly entrenched as the head coach. That is not going to change in the offseason. Undoubtedly there will have to continue being some growth for him as he learns to trust his young team. And maybe he needs his young team to mature themselves.

But ultimately the same issues that have arisen in Skiles’ career began to percolate earlier than expected. Even with a 10-win improvement, even Skiles would say he has to make some adjustments and improvements too.

Next: The turning months