Orlando Magic Player Evaluations: Dewayne Dedmon

The Good and the Bad

Provided by Basketball-Reference.com: View Original Table
Generated 5/8/2016.

Dewayne Dedmon has always been an excellent energy player. This year was no different.

Dedmon averaged 13 points, 11.6 rebounds and 2.3 blocks per 36 minutes. Solid numbers and a sign of his activity level if he was given the minutes.

Dedmon constantly crashes the glass, using his instincts and athleticism to beat others to rebounds. He could become an even better rebounder if he became more technically sound with his box outs. His rebound numbers would also be more inflated if Orlando’s perimeter defense was not so poor that he had to try to contest guys at the rim.

Contesting shots at the rim is another area where Dedmon excelled this year.

Dedmon ranked 12th in the NBA, holding opponents to 46 percent in the paint. This is a huge tick up from Orlando’s other centers who held opponents to 52.4 percent (Jason Smith) and 54 percent (Vucevic) respectively.

While Dedmon is a much better defender than Jason Smith and Nikola Vucevic, he still has room to improve. Dedmon is very impatient on defense and does not have the best fundamentals.

A lot of times, Dedmon will go out there and try to block every shot which sometimes hurt Orlando’s defense by getting everybody out of place. Dedmon also has a tendency to try and play defense with his hands a little too much. This leads to a lot of his foul trouble.

This might be why Skiles had him on the bench for much of the season. Defense takes some discipline for Skiles.

That said, Dedmon made some big strides on defense in terms of verticality this year. He did a much better job of keeping his hands straight up and contesting shots in that regard.

Offensively, Dedmon still is not a world beater. He did improve his jump shot quite a bit this year, it jumped from 35.7 percent to 45.5 percent and his free throw shooting jumped from 53.1 percent to 75 percent.

In the post, Dedmon does not have a very effective game. He normally relies on the same hook shot and the results are varied. His footwork is not overly impressive and he is obviously still raw.

It is hard to say how much he is going to add to his game down there as it is really just not his style of play. Nor the direction the league is heading.

Dedmon also sets the best screens on the team. He makes sure he gets into the chasing defender and cleanly picks them out of the play.

One really underrated aspect of Dedmon this season was his ability to open up the fastbreak game for the Magic this year. Dedmon helped the Magic get a lot more stops than they had been getting with Vucevic and Smith. After these stops, Dedmon runs the floor as well as any big man in the NBA and scored numerous easy points off of being the trail man.

If the Magic want to pick up the pace, Dedmon helps do that with his defensive acumen.

Next: Best Game of 2016