The Orlando Magic were a below-average team with few reasons for optimism, despite some recent good trends. Nylon Calculus explains why.
The Orlando Magic’s season will end tonight at Amway Center against the Detroit Pistons.
It has been a season of ups and a lot of downs. The Magic started out seemingly strong, especially on defense, only to collapse and quickly find themselves at the bottom of the standings. A team with a strong defense was suddenly giving up 100-plus points every game starting in December and then could not string together consecutive wins from Christmas until March.
The Magic never put everything together. Their season of so much promise failed to deliver at all. The team’s identity never took hold. No identity took hold at all.
Orlando has tried to change things up. Recognizing the Serge Ibaka experiment failed, the team went smaller after acquiring Terrence Ross. Aaron Gordon moved from small forward to power forward full time. He saw his scoring average increase. Elfrid Payton found the space to create more off the dribble and had a run of triple-doubles to end the season.
It was an impressive run of play from him, but still ultimately a sign of what could have been and never was for the Magic.
Orlando fell in the standings and never got their footing. It was apparent early the Magic were going to struggle. And despite some hope, the Magic were never able to right the ship.
That is clearly seen in three charts from Nylon Calculus.
With the help of Positive Residual, Nylon Calculus mapped out each team’s performance in 10-game intervals in this helpful chart to show how teams ebbed and flowed throughout the season. The Magic, as you can see, started off poorly and continued to play poorly throughout the season.
As you can see, the Magic started below average with their net rating and progressively got worse. It seemed like they were fighting to stay above water early in the season and then eventually succumbed to defeat. They bottomed out around game 60.
But the line graph is trending up, generally. The trade has improved the Magic’s net rating and some of their prospects for the future. It clearly looks like the Magic have something working, albeit still with a negative net rating.
But that paints a much rosier picture than perhaps is the reality.
Orlando’s offensive and defensive charts are much bleaker.
Especially the defense, the area coach Frank Vogel was supposed to contribute the most. It started off well and then fell off a cliff.
Remember, a bigger number is a bad thing in these charts and so teams want to be below the line.
In the first quarter of the season, the Magic had one of the best defenses in the league. And that is clearly shown with that big dip in the chart. It had a lot of people believing Orlando could carve out that identity and still scratch and claw their way into the Playoff race.
But it was short-lived. In December, the defense stopped playing at such a high level and then spent the rest of the year above the league average, struggling to find its footing once again.
It never did reach even a better-than-average defensive rating the rest of the year.
The offense was another story. The Magic never were going to be a strong offensive team. That proved itself time and again throughout the season.
And the chart reflects how bad the team was on offense.
Orlando started off as a well-below-average offensive team. And they have stayed there virtually all year, minus a spike around Game 30. That was when the Magic were scoring at an incredible clip after that initial defensive push.
The team, though, settled and hit a groove below the league average. They have seen some modest improvements to end the season. But they are still a struggling team.
The positives the Magic have seen to end the season are good to see. But they still feel a bit hollow. Orlando is still below average in all three categories.
Next: What's left for Orlando Magic in season's final week
That is perhaps the best way to explain this season. The team is simply inadequate even when they are playing well. And the few moments the team played well were short lived.