2016-17 Orlando Magic Player Evaluations

The Orlando Magic season was a bitter disappointment for all involved. Here we recap our player evaluations and put a bow on the 2017 season.

The Orlando Magic season started off with promise. So much promise.

The team believed it could build a strong defense with the pieces it had collected via trade and free agency. With coach Frank Vogel in tow, the Magic believed they could build a defensive juggernaut by walling off the paint and protecting the rim.

The players and culture the team tried to build never took. Not really. Even after a strong first quarter of the season playing some of the best defense in the league, things quickly fell apart.

It seemed the weaknesses the Magic had from the beginning of the season — the poor shooting, the lack of spacing and lack of offensive creativity — were too much to overcome. As talented as some of the Magic’s defenders were, the culture of defense was not ingrained enough to overcome the team’s complete lack of offense.

At a certain point, the team invested so much in propping up its offense that it let go of the rope defensively. The rest, as they say, is history. The Magic never got the defense back around again.

Through the entire 82-game schedule, Orlando searched for an identity. By the time the team dealt Serge Ibaka, the season had long been lost. The identity on defense never took hold.

And so the Magic shifted midstream. They changed from a slowed-down team relying on two bigs for scoring and screening — not to mention rim protection — into a fast-breaking team, trying to create space through dribble penetration.

The ball went from centered in the post players to residing with Elfrid Payton. Aaron Gordon went from anchored on the perimeter, struggling to find his way, to playing closer to the basket where his athleticism flourished.

Orlando Magic

This was largely the theme of the year.

Orlando had an imperfect roster. Its pieces seemed to clash and prevent each other from playing well. Nikola Vucevic‘s penchant for fading to the jumper in pick and rolls got in Serge Ibaka’s way. The two bigs prevented Elfrid Payton and Evan Fournier from attacking the basket. Aaron Gordon did not have the spacing and shooting around him to give him an athleticism advantage.

And the list goes on. The Magic’s roster was poorly constructed — in ways no one could even see before the season — and it cost Rob Hennigan his job as general manager. The team’s record was abysmal. Orlando is now looking forward anxiously to the NBA Draft Lottery on Tuesday.

It was that kind of year.

When looking at how players played individually, it was a mix of so many factors that went into the evaluation. Several players had career years statistically and pushed their game to a new level. But, they also proved they were not quite good enough to take on the larger roles the Magic asked of them.

It is not that the Magic have bad players. They simply have players who are not good enough to be “the guy” every night or can lift each other up. This lack of a defining star only accentuated the Magic’s problem. It was as if the team was full of guys who would play better as second or third options on a winning team.

Another reason why the Magic’s record ended up what it was.

So very few players in this disastrous season had bad individual years. But it turned out to be a case of parts not making the whole much better.