Orlando Magic Playbook: Length is the word for the Orlando Magic

The Orlando Magic put a focus on length in the NBA Draft. And those physical attributes already can make a clear impact for reshaping the team.

Another busy NBA Draft night brought a brief moment of relaxation. The work for free agency was still ahead, but the draft was the centerpiece of the Orlando Magic’s offseason preparations. Orlando needed to begin re-establishing its base of talent through these draft classes.

And with the sixth pick, president of basketball operations Jeff Weltman had the chance to add another foundational piece to their group that included Jonathan Isaac.

A moment of levity after the pressure-packed day was warranted.

As Weltman went up to the podium to recap the night’s work, he joked with the media, “Long night, long players.” It drew a chuckle especially considering the players the Magic drafted that evening.

Orlando used its first-round pick on 7-foot center Mohamed Bamba. He measured in with the longest recorded wingspan at the NBA Draft Combine at 7-foot-10.

But the team was not done going down the list of long wingspans at the NBA Draft Combine. Second-round pick Melvin Frazier had the longest wingspan among guards with a 7-foot-1.75 wingspan to go with his 6-foot-6 height. And the Magic’s other second-round pick was not too far behind him. Justin Jackson measured at 7-foot-3 wingspan at 6-foot-6.

The raw athletic talent certainly tantalizes. Length has become a joke among Magic fans. Any time the Magic acquire a player, the joke goes to ask about the player’s wingspan.

By the way, Jerian Grant measured in at a 6-foot-7.5 inch wingspan to go with his listed 6-foot-4 height. Really only Jarell Martin did not fit this profile with a 6-foot-9 wingspan to match his 6-foot-9 height. Everyone else has the length to fit the profile of a specific style.

Even some of the players on the roster might fit this style too as the Magic try to build a hard-nosed defensive team. Aaron Gordon measured at 6-foot-11.75 wingspan at the NBA Draft Combine. The team is trying to put together switching players who will smother teams.

That length has value. It is not merely a physical trait to seek out and develop.

"“There are so many things that you need to be successful in the league,” Weltman said on draft night. “Length is a huge element of just floor coverage and it has to go along with all the other ingredients that you need. It’s not the only thing you need. If you can have it and maintain skill levels and all the other intangibles that you would list, you’d always rather have it. When you start adding it up with a lot of the players it kind of becomes a force multiplier.”"

Quite simply, wingspan is something no one can teach. Players can and always improve their basketball skills but there is no way a player can increase his wingspan. These are natural gifts a player enters the league with.

There are plenty of NBA stories of coaches and GMs falling in love with a player’s athletic profile and physical attributes, only to see that player struggle on the basketball court. Physical attributes alone will not make a NBA player. They still have to grow those basketball skills and fit in on the court.

That is the next trick for the team. But length has a clear effect.

It was most obvious in Summer League when the Magic unleashed their cavalcade of long players on the Memphis Grizzlies over and over again.

The Jonathan Isaac and Mohamed Bamba double block gets a lot of the attention and was an impressive highlight. And Isaac tallied five blocks in that game. His length allows him to recover from mistakes.

But the Magic’s length bothered the Grizzlies in that game in several ways. Go back and watch the Isaac and Bamba double block again:

The play actually starts with Isaiah Briscoe deflecting a pass out to Jaren Jackson Jr., forcing him to catch the ball near the mid-court circle. The defense is a bit scrambled as Isaac switched over to guard the roll man and Isaiah Briscoe went out for the steal.

But here length becomes devastating because Bamba can slide over and Isaac has the speed and ability to recover and make a play before Jackson can get his shot up.

Teams will have to rush to beat this recovering defense if the Magic are truly able to switch and cover that much ground.

What Briscoe did in forcing the play out to midcourt was something that happened repeatedly throughout the game against the Grizzlies and in Summer League. Because the Magic were able to close down passing lanes just from their physical statures, the Grizzlies often had to start further out on the perimeter. Catches did not come cleanly and that disrupted the offense’s flow.

In the modern NBA, that is really what all these switching schemes are trying to do. The offense tries to create a pick and roll to create a moment of uncertainty between the two defending players. By switching, that moment of uncertainty goes away if the switch is clean and the offense loses its advantage — possibly forcing the offense to devolve into isolation.

Orlando Magic

This is something the Houston Rockets did extremely well against the Golden State Warriors in their series, forcing Kevin Durant into isolation plays and disrupting the Warriors’ normally smooth offense.

The Magic clearly have their eyes on a similar defensive strategy. By building up versatile players who can guard multiple positions and make up for their mistakes with their physical length, they expect to be able to close down passing lanes and make it harder for an offense to operate.

This is the real value of the length the Magic are pursuing and finding. You can go through the highlights from that game against the Grizzlies and see it time and time again. Isaac is a menace in the paint. The team is able to switch or at least threaten drivers with their physical presence.

Whether that will translate to the regular season is another question of course. Summer League is not the regular season. And these are still raw players.

Isaac has a long way to go to build up his offensive game — he was impressive, but still shot only 35 percent from the floor perhaps under orders to overshoot. Melvin Frazier and Wesley Iwundu are both still struggling shooters with great defensive potential. And Bamba is still working on developing more of his offensive game.

The Magic and their lengthy players are going to work on raw athleticism. Coach Steve Clifford has a history of turning that into a solid defensive output. At some point, the Magic will need to see players develop skills beyond their physicality.

Weltman has a vision for his team and the kind of players he wants to put on his team. That much is clear. He certainly has an easily predictable type.

The Magic will have to develop them now and put all that physical length to good use.