Orlando Magic note deflections a key to defensive activity

The Orlando Magic are trying to build themselves up as a defensive-minded team. A key to that is their defensive activity and physicality.

The Orlando Magic are a defensive team. Or at least they look like one.

In this, still, early stage of the rebuild, president of basketball operations Jeff Weltman has focused his drafting on collecting players with long limbs and a defensive mentality, hoping to use that to lock down the high-powered offenses around the league.

The team is still developing and searching for better ways to score. Despite the team’s competitiveness in the Playoff race this year, this is still a team in progress and still in need of a lot of work. At the very least this year, the Magic want to begin establishing a defensive identity.

Boosting the defense is certainly one of the reasons the team chose to hire Steve Clifford to lead the way. His teams with the Charlotte Hornets were notorious for their disciplined defensive approach. That kept them in games even with a less-inspired offense.

Orlando can say the same through 40-plus games of the team’s first season with him. Although, the results have been far from consistent as they were with the Hornets (even initially).

The Magic rank 14th in the league in defensive rating, giving up 108.7 points per 100 possessions. If Orlando holds that position, it will make the highest finish in that statistic since the rebuild began. And, if anything, that mark is increasing.

Not that the team has been overly impressive on that end. Orlando has been, at best, average defensively. And that is enough to keep a team in Playoff contention, just not enough to help them surge up the standings.

At this point in the season, the Magic know their defense is going to be what is the difference between winning and losing. And they are still working to find consistency on that end.

A big part of that equation, according to Clifford is measuring their activity through deflections. Indeed, this is a sign of just how good the Magic are playing defensively.

"“The thing that has gone down that hurt us the other night was our deflections,” Clifford said. “Some of our opportunities to run come off our deflections. That was our worst deflection game of the year the other night. Tonight they have you spread out, they are very skilled. We need to do a better job being into the ball, controlling the ball. Hopefully, we can get some deflections that will lead to easy baskets.”"

It was a game where the Magic struggled a ton to get stops after building a nice early lead.

Until the fourth quarter against the Detroit Pistons on Wednesday, the Orlando Magic’s defense was certainly lax. Despite one of the best offensive efforts this season, Orlando’s defense struggled, giving up 120.0 points per 100 possessions.

Clifford said the team had 24 deflections against the Pistons and the team is looking for 38 or more. He said they reached 39 and 37 against the Boston Celtics and Houston Rockets.

According to NBA.com’s statistics, the Magic had 13 deflections in Wednesday’s loss. For the season the team averages 11.4 deflections per game, the second fewest in the league. At least by this measure, the team outperformed its activity level on defense Wednesday night.

But each coach will measure this their own way. And Orlando did not grade out well in Clifford’s estimation.

Clifford said this is a matter of putting the right ball pressure on opponents. Deflections here is a simple measurement for the team’s physicality and intensity on defense.

That was an element that is missing in many of the team’s losses compared to their impressive wins.

"“I thought the intensity was OK, but it wasn’t good enough,” Evan Fournier said. It wasn’t a playoff game. The intensity against Houston and Boston was really high. The detail on everything, the blow-up mentality on every screen and downs wasn’t the same. We weren’t soft at all. But we weren’t super hard.”"

When Orlando is too passive and unable to impede its opponents, scoring can come very easily. This is where players like Nikola Vucevic get left on an island and the bad habits of the past years of this rebuild pop out.

But when the Magic are into their opponents and make life difficult with solid physical play and fundamentals, then the team can disrupt offenses and be very good.

This is part of the overall vision for the team.

Remember back in Summer Leauge when the Magic were flying to the ball and disrupting passes and angles with their length? That is ultimately what Orlando is going to try to be defensively. And then they will use those deflections to get turnovers and try to initiate offense earlier.

How the team is playing now shows elements of that. But it is not quite all the way there.

These are two sides of the same coin and a big reason why the Magic’s defense has settled into the middle of the league and their record has largely done the same.

For sure, the Magic’s defense is central to their success. Clifford said this is not a team that is going to be able to score a ton of points or play at some break-neck pace. The Magic have to be deliberate with their offense and use their defense to charge their offense.

To be sure, the Magic’s defense has to play with more intensity and physicality. That much is clear for this team to be successful.

It is obviously a lot easier said than done. But a more active defense for the Magic is vital to have a chance.