The Orlando Magic are entering the 2018 season with some cautious optimism. There are still some major questions and some statistics of concern from 2017.
The Orlando Magic will open training camp next week and start the season with a clean slate. It is one the team has needed fairly desperately. Anything to put last year’s 29-win season behind them.
Of course, the team cannot put that season completely behind it. That season will hover over the team a bit longer until they prove it wrong and put it completely to rest. That is a part of their legacy and a part of the work they have to bury to move on.
The franchise is spending the season evaluating itself and finding a new way forward with new management. President of basketball operations Jeff Weltman has not quite placed his imprint on the Magic’s roster. He worked mostly on the margins improving the team’s bench and depth, setting the team up perhaps for future moves.
Stability was something the Magic lacked in recent years as the rebuild went south and so the Magic maintained a bit of the same.
As an organization, Orlando is hoping that stability means the team takes a step forward. The team hopes so. It has been a franchise-long five years since their last Playoff berth and there is a fair amount of restlessness among the fan base. At the very least, the Magic need to show they are taking some step forward.
There is at least a fair amount of cautious optimism in the Magic community. The team finished the season well after the All-Star Break. They looked like a better team.
And the Eastern Conference got worse. It seems like there is a Playoff spot there for the taking — or at least the opportunity to play meaningful games later into the season. That would be growth, right?
Orlando Magic
Ask the national media though, and the Magic probably still do not make much of a blip. After all, enough people jumped on the Frank Vogel/Serge Ibaka bandwagon to put their faith in them last year despite the obvious offensive deficiencies. They all got burned. Most of all Vogel.
The Magic did not make any major changes to their starting lineup. By most estimations, they do not even have a top-75 player in the league. This is a team that still has a long road ahead of it to make the progress it needs.
If there is a bit of pessimism for the 2018 season, it is warranted. This team has to prove itself under fire.
Those pessimists have plenty of information armed with them to doubt the 2018 Magic. And no one can ignore them because things really could go wrong.
If the Magic are going to overcome the expectations, they will have to answer these concerning statistics.
Pythagorean Wins: 24
The Orlando Magic were a bit of a statistical anomaly last year. Their statistical profile did not meet that of a team that should have won 29 games.
Yes, the analytics would suggest Orlando was even worse than it actually played last year. That is not a good sign, of course, for the Magic. They did not make a ton of changes to the roster.
Orlando’s five-win differential between their Pythagorean wins and their actual wins was the most in the NBA last season. It shows that there are plenty of ways for a season to be variable and a statistical profile is not enough to determine a record.
It is likely, the Magic’s all-too-frequent 30-point losses may have skewed the statistics against the Magic. Or maybe it is that Orlando was better in close games than might otherwise be expected. The players and coaches will not care what the Pythagorean wins say, what matters is getting actual wins.
But critics of the Magic are armed with this information that Orlando outperformed their statistics. To them, maybe this is a reason to say the Magic are improved but that they will not improve their win total. A 29-win season in their eyes would be an improvement over last season.
This would suggest the Magic have to do double duty to make up ground to compete for the Playoffs.
Then again, the Magic were a completely different team after the All-Star Break, so it would seem you have to cut the Magic season in two.
Even there, there are signs of concern.
Orlando went only 8-16 in the 24 games after the All-Star Break and the Serge Ibaka trade. Observers would largely say they played better in that stretch. But a .333 win percentage equals only 27.3 wins in an 82-game season. Again, Orlando has its work cut out for it.
That includes that supposedly optimistic post-All-Star Break run. The Magic’s play after the break gave them only 7.2 Pythagorean wins, according to Basketball-Reference’s formula. So the Magic’s record was a pretty fair reflection of their play after the All-Star Break.
Is improving their bench enough to get the job done? That is one of the big questions facing the Magic this season.
Defensive Rating: 109.9 (post All-Star)
Coach Frank Vogel built his reputation as a head coach on defense. In his career with the Indiana Pacers, his teams never ranked out of the top 10. It seemed like last year’s Orlando Magic team was built for him and his style. He often referenced what his teams did successfully in pitching the Serge Ibaka/Bismack Biyombo combination.
That obviously did not turn out well. Despite a hot start to the season defensively, the Magic never recovered defensively. They went from a top-five defensive team in the first quarter of the season to one of the worst defensive teams in the league the rest of the season.
The Magic opted to trade Ibaka and they had to completely remake their defense once again. and that brought its own defensive issues.
Defensive issues the Magic never fully solved.
After the All-Star Break, the Magic had a 109.9 defensive rating. That was good for 25th in the league. The focus after the All-Star Break was rightly on the Magic’s anemic offense. The team improved on that end, but they left the defense behind.
Even the team’s much-celebrated starting lineup that had a positive net rating, struggled defensively. The starting lineup with Nikola Vucevic had a 110.6 defensive rating. With Bismack Biyombo that group had a 111.1 defensive rating.
That would mean the Magic’s terrible bench was a better unit defensively than the starters — albeit their offense much, much worse.
Going from giving up 110 points per 100 possessions to a more reasonable number — even 105 points per 100 possession — is quite a huge leap. That would require some significant improvement. And it would all come from the same starting five as last year.
That is plenty of reason for caution.
Perhaps Vogel can recapture his defensive coaching chops. In the midst of the season, there is little opportunity to drill defense. And the Magic changed their style of play so much, they were adjusting on both ends of the floor. It is easy to let the defense slip.
For sure, much of training camp is going to get spent hammering out the team’s defensive schemes and rules to ensure this number does not repeat. If Orlando is giving up nearly 100 points per 100 possessions, it will be almost impossible to have a successful season.
Bench Net Efficiency: -19.8
The Orlando Magic had one of the worst benches in the league last year. There is no other way to cut it. And it was a key to the Magic’s struggles throughout the season, and especially after the All-Star Break.
According to HoopsStats, the Magic had a -8.4 net efficiency rating off the bench overall last year. That was good for 27th in the league. But things got worse after the All-Star Break.
After the All-Star Beak, the Magic had a -19.8 net efficiency rating off the bench. That was the worst mark in the league by more than six points per 100 possessions (the Cleveland Cavaliers were the second worst team).
It is easy to see why the team opted to focus on changing its bench this year. The second unit last year of D.J. Augustin, C.J. Watson, Mario Hezonja, Jeff Green and Bismack Biyombo just did not get the job done. And often Frank Vogel stuck to his 10-man rotation, instead of tightening the rotation to keep a starter in. The results were expected.
And all this came as the Magic’s starting lineup was thriving. According to HoopsStats, the Magic starters had the 10th best net efficiency after the All-Star Break.
That is quite a stark difference. And probably the reason the Magic struggled so much where it mattered after the All-Star Break. Orlando was constantly fighting out of a hole, and even a solid starting group could not overcome it.
So the hope for the Magic is remaking the bench will push the team to a higher level. Adding in Shelvin Mack, Jonathon Simmons, Arron Afflalo and Jonathan Isaac creates a lot more defense and length than the previous unit had. But it is an unproven group too.
Orlando’s whole season does not rest on its bench. As Cory Hutson of Orlando Pinstriped Post likes to put it, the team just has to have a halfway decent bench and the team should improve dramatically.
That is the hope at least. But the bench group is still unproven. The Magic will not know how good they are until they see them play.
Terrence Ross‘ shooting: 34.1%
Acquiring Terrence Ross changed the Orlando Magic’s style and approach completely. Shifting Aaron Gordon up to power forward helped unlock him and the Magic offense in a way that it had not earlier in the season. Orlando was suddenly alive.
Still, the Magic’s offense overall after the All-Star Break was not fantastic. The team had a 102.9 offensive rating, which was still 26th in the league. The bench, as noted above, had a little bit to do with that. Orlando’s starting lineup of Elfrid Payton, Evan Fournier, Terrence Ross, Aaron Gordon and Nikola Vucevic posted a 112 offensive rating and the lineup with Bismack Biyombo instead also had a similar offensive surge.
The concerns for the Magic’s offense this year still remain. There is plenty of doubt about how the team will generate points. The Magic still lack a go-to offensive scorer (or at least a readily identifiable and consistent one preseason). And they still lack that one skill that seems ever more important in the NBA — shooting.
The Magic’s current starting lineup has at least two players who are perceived as quality shooters in Terrence Ross and Evan Fournier. But teams will still largely ignore Elfrid Payton when he is outside the paint and Aaron Gordon did not raise his 3-point percentage much last year either (even after the break).
That puts more pressure on Ross and Fournier to carry that floor spacing role. And they are occasionally going to be on the ball leaving just one shooter to spread the floor for drivers.
Fournier saw an expected decrease in his shooting percentage, but he largely rebounded after the All-Star Break. Ross, though? Ross struggled.
After shooting 37.5 percent from beyond the arc with the Toronto Raptors, Ross shot 34.1 percent from beyond the arc for the Magic. He is a career 37.4 percent shooter. To be sure, Orlando did not reap the benefits of Ross’ shooting after the break.
And it stands to reason that Ross could progress to his mean this year. Especially with a full summer to properly gameplan and free him up for shots.
Hurting his efficiency was also the volume he shot at — 5.6 3-point attempts per game. Orlando will rely heavily on Ross’ 3-point shooting again this year. They will need him to get going from beyond the arc to give the Magic the spacing they need to succeed overall.
Nikola Vucevic’s free-throw percentage: 66.9%
One of the more inexplicable statistics facing the Orlando Magic this year was the sudden drop in Nikola Vucevic’s free throw shooting last season. After all, Vucevic is a great shooter in his own right and free-throw shooting does not change from the time a player is in high school.
Vucevic, a career 71.9 percent free throw shooter, made just 66.9 percent of his free throws last year. That would be the lowest mark since his rookie year.
It was that kind of year for Vucevic. He seemingly hit career-low marks for him at least in his time in Orlando. But this one seemed to go beyond explanation. This was not something we can analyze or say Vucevic is doing anything different. This is just about mental focus.
Maybe, maybe, Vucevic was dealing with a hand injury that might have affected his free-throw stroke. He started wearing that wrap around his hand at some point in the season. But that seems like a stretch.
Vucevic is a good free throw shooter. There is no reason the Magic should not rely on him when he gets to the line. And it would be easy to expect him to bounce back and shoot better than 70 percent. Hopefully for him and the Magic, this was a momentary dip for him.
Still, it is hard to ignore a dip like this or come up with a good explanation.
And that goes double considering Vucevic’s poor free throw rate. He averaged only 2.1 free throw attempts per game and has never shot more than 3.0 free throw attempts per game. Vucevic gets to the line maybe for one trip per game. That probably speaks to his penchant for popping out for jumpers or failing to initiate contact to get to the line.
Next: 2018 Orlando Magic Player Outlook: Nikola Vucevic
If the Magic want the best Vucevic, they will want to see him increase his free throw attempts. And that means he has to make the shots he gets.