Orlando Magic 2019 Season Review: What Went Wrong — Jerian Grant and adjusting rotations

Jerian Grant got a last chance with the Orlando Magic. He struggled to man the backup point guard spot and revealed how slow the team was to adjust.

The chance to play in the NBA is a slim one. Even for the most talented players, there are only so many doors that swing open. The wrong situation can ruin or make a career. More talented players get more leeway and more opportunities.

For many players, their fates in the league are sealed by the end of their rookie contracts. Players with first-round contracts get a little more leeway and typically a few more opportunities.

When the Orlando Magic acquired Jerian Grant, this was a last-chance opportunity for the young point guard. He had bounced around the league from the New York Knicks to the Chicago Bulls showing flashes that his size and patience could bring. He was developing as a shooter. But no player was more of a tweener than him — not quite good enough off the ball to be a shooting guard but not much of a playmaker to be a point guard.

Jerian Grant had enough skills to keep getting chances at the very least. But his rookie contract was running out.

For the Magic, he was a flyer worth taking in some ways. The added bonus for unloading Bismack Biyombo‘s contract for Timofey Mozgov‘s contract. They are roughly the same amount for the same length of time. At least the Magic got a potential young player out of the deal.

Grant fit the Magic’s bill in many ways. He was big for his position, versatile and able to defend multiple positions. He was a calming, consistent influence who could stay out of the way.

It was natural to give the veteran Grant the first crack at the backup point guard spot. He seemed capable of handling the role.

The trade that acquired him, even at the cost of two second-round picks, seemed worth it for a player of his talents. He was a risk worth taking for a team that did not seem to have a lot of realistic playoff hopes.

Still, they could not imagine he would play this poorly.

That initial decision to use Grant as the backup point guard proved to be a disastrous one. Grant simply failed to deliver in one of the biggest rotation miscalculations of the season.

He finished the season averaging 4.2 points per game and 2.6 assists per game and shooting a 50.9 percent effective field goal percentage. At least he had the best shooting season of his career. But his minutes decreased and so did his role. He was simply not effective.

The Magic had a -7.6 net rating with Grant on the floor. The team was only worse with Mohamed Bamba on the floor. The offense cratered without much shooting or penetration to create for others and the defense was even worse.

Grant has just failed to live up to his expectations or his first-round draft pick promise.

For the first half of the season, the Magic had to battle through with Grant as their backup point guard. Isaiah Briscoe was not ready to rise to a rotation-level player. He needed that time. But coach Steve Clifford certainly could have changed his rotation earlier.

The biggest frustration from Clifford this season was quite simply that. Decisions he ultimately made in the back half of the season were pretty clear. It took him a little time to make those decisions.

In fairness to him, he did not want to throw out lineups that had not worked together. He is a deliberate coach and that kind of deliberation and patience is what helped the team establish consistency.

But he was prone to some odd rotation decisions. And, being a deliberate coach, he sometimes stuck with them too long.

Take the lineups he paired with Mohamed Bamba.

Early in the season, he was willing to try a twin towers lineup with Nikola Vucevic. It was a ploy to get Mohamed Bamba minutes while still playing Nikola Vucevic minutes. It was a have your cake and eat it too decision.

It did not work.

The Magic had a -37.5 net rating with Bamba and Vucevic on the floor together. That was the worst combination Bamba was involved in that played more than 20 minutes the entire season. The two played 36 minutes across 23 games.

Give Clifford credit for abandoning the idea but it still took more than a quarter of the season. The Magic’s numbers with that lineup were not getting any better.

The Grant rotation decision also took a long time to come, even if the idea was obvious. That was probably as much about Isaiah Briscoe’s development and establishing trust with him than anything else.

It took a long time for Clifford to settle on and find a rotation that worked for both starting and bench units. According to HoopsStats, the Magic had the 23rd-best bench by net efficiency before the All-Star Break. That jumped to 12th by net efficiency after the All-Star Break.

The Magic eventually figured it all out. The decision to take Aaron Gordon out early and have him finish first quarters and play with the second unit in the second quarter was a bold initial step. Taking Evan Fournier and putting him on the second unit with Aaron Gordon and Terrence Ross helped bolster the team’s lineup in a bigger way.

That was as much a turning point in the season as anything else. That trio, along with Vucevic, made up the team’s successful closing lineup.

This was all fine. Now that Clifford has a feel for his players and his roster after his first year, that trust is already established and he should be able to hit the ground running in his second year.

Those rotation decisions though also played out in the playoffs too.

Clifford trusted lineups that got him to the playoffs. That was all well and good. But it was clear that left the Magic at a matchup disadvantage.

He matched Aaron Gordon’s minutes with Kawhi Leonard for the most part. But he failed to match Jonathan Isaac‘s minutes to Pascal Siakam. At the end of Game 3, that cost the team as Pascal Siakam scored two key buckets over smaller defenders in Terrence Ross and Evan Fournier.

Those rotation decisions rung louder in the playoffs. That is where matchups are supposed to matter. And Clifford’s reliance on his set rotations hurt the team at various points.

Clifford approached this season with a long-term eye. He was not going to abandon a rotation idea until he saw it out and he was not going to go to a new rotation or lineup without some study or proof of concept in practice.

The deliberate approach is something that helped the Magic. No one would suggest Clifford throw random lineups out there haphazardly. Study and consideration are good.

But the case of Grant proved how much reliance on pre-conceived notions can hurt. Grant was struggling. It was almost from the start of the season. When he got a second opportunity after Briscoe’s injury, things did not get much better.

Orlando needed a good foundation this year. Clifford gave them that. The next step will be to adjust and change in real time to the team’s needs now that trust is established.