Orlando Magic coach Frank Vogel is coaching the rest of this season with the future in mind. The future of his program and how this team can grow.
Frank Vogel is still pushing his team through their paces during the game Wednesday against the Charlotte Hornets. The team’s record does not matter to him. The Playoffs are still a mathematical possibility, but not at all likely. That is farthest from his mind.
He just wants to make his team better. This team. Not some hypothetical future team with that big-name free agent or that highly touted pick. Those may come, but they are not his concern. His concern is getting his players to improve to support the next step and the next year of his “program.”
What he is coaching and what he is coaching against is something further down the road. He is hoping to build the Orlando Magic into something. Something they have not been in five years.
For fans, it has been five years of heartache and frustration. For Vogel, it is just one year. He is likely to be here for year two and he is treating everyone on his team like they will be here too — particularly the young players the Magic are building their future around (for now).
The season has been frustrating to no end. But Vogel, ever the optimist, sees this year as a growing pain for a young team coming together. And the way the Magic have played since the All-Star Break is at least some positive sign.
"“Our system is in Year One,” Vogel told Orlando Magic Daily after practice Thursday. “Us being together as a group is in Year One in terms of our style of play offensively, our offensive system, our defensive schemes. All that stuff takes time to develop. We didn’t put it together enough this year to make a Playoff run. But we’re going to be together and we’re going to be moving forward. All these practice days and games are opportunities to improve and opportunities to build winning habits. We have to practice every practice like it’s our last and every game like it’s our last.”"
Vogel, and really no one on the Magic, are going to run away from the preseason expectations and failures. The team’s gambit to go big with Serge Ibaka failed. The Magic’s dream defensive pairing of Serge Ibaka and Bismack Biyombo fell flat on its face.
Whatever way the Magic wanted things to come together this year, it just did not happen. That disappointment and failure of the season are not so easily brushed aside.
But Vogel is looking at the long term. The team is still relatively young — the Magic’s starting lineup has an average age of 24.0 years old. There is still time for several players to grow if put in the right roles and surrounded by the right veterans.
Undoubtedly the Magic need to improve their talent base, but they still have growth that needs to happen internally to get where they want to go.
Vogel is not a coach to go into a shell. When the Hornets made a run or something frustrated him in Wednesday’s game, he called timeout and got into his team. He is still coaching like the Magic are playing for something (which technically they still are).
And he is trying to get the players like they are playing for something too — even if fans have their eyes on more ping pong balls in the Lottery. For the players and the coaches, this end to the season is step one for a long-term program they want to build together.
It is for that reason the fourth quarter Wednesday stung so much. The Magic did everything well to win that game, except to go out and take it.
"“To establish a winning culture, that’s when you have to be at your best on the defensive end is in the fourth quarter,” Vogel told Orlando Magic Daily. “We weren’t. What I’m happy with is it felt like our guys hurt. It hurt our guys to lose that game four times to that team. I thought we were fully engaged and really competing and really caring about getting that W. The fact that it hurt our guys is a good thing.”"
Albeit this will come from very humble beginnings.
The Magic since the All-Star Break are playing a distinctly different style. The team though has still settled into the bottom 10 in both offensive and defensive rating in that time. The Magic clearly have to improve their roster this offseason.
The Draft will help, but it cannot cure everything. Not everyone on this roster will return it is clear. But for those who do, this final stretch of the seaosn lays the foundation for what the Magic eventually want to do.
This is what Vogel is fighting for.
Orlando Magic
Vogel is trying to teach the Magic to make the extra plays it takes to win a game. So that next year when they are in the same situation, they will know how to react.
"“Learning how to win is about making those plays,” Vogel told Orlando Magic Daily. “Making the defensive stop. Whatever it takes, find a way to get a stop. Sometimes it is not within a scheme. Sometimes it is making a hustle or a will or determination play. Sometimes offensively it is putting the brakes on and creating something out of nothing.”"
This is where the Magic are. Trying to learn these skills. Maybe it is something experience can teach, maybe it is something innate this team has lacked — not just this year, but perhaps for several years.
Vogel right now appears to be Sysyphus trying to push the boulder up the hill. In all likelihood, his team is not going to play consistently enough to record too many wins the rest of this season.
Everyone is anticipating some change after the team fell off from last year’s 35-win pace and will likely miss the Playoffs for a franchise-long fifth year. It would be impossible not to think this entire roster will return intact.
But what is a coach to do? These guys are hardwired to keep pushing and teaching and trying to win every game. No franchise would want a guy who does not act like that.
This season may be over, but Vogel is looking at the big picture now for the players he is in charge of now. Vogel is trying to lay the foundation for the style the team want sto play next year and beyond.
Next: Energy is the basis for the Orlando Magic's culture
If he can get a head start on teaching that and give clues to who fits and who does not, then that is what he must do with these final 10 games.