Orlando Magic Playbook: Aaron Gordon’s defense on Kawhi Leonard wasn’t enough

Kawhi Leonard and the Toronto Raptors beat the Orlando Magic in the first round of the 2019 NBA Playoffs, showing where Aaron Gordon still has to improve.

Despite the 4-1 series loss to the eventual-NBA champion Toronto Raptors in the first round of the NBA Playoffs this year, the word on the street was that Aaron Gordon had a showing-out party of sorts. He received recognition for his defensive showing against Kawhi Leonard and might very well have been the best player on the team that series.

Aaron Gordon finished the five-game series averaging 15.2 points per game and shooting a healthy 53.2 percent effective field goal percentage. If anything, the Orlando Magic needed to turn to Gordon more offensively to try to relieve some pressure and simply could not.

His defensive matchup with Leonard was a key matchup for the series. If Gordon could somehow manage to shut or slow Leonard down, the thinking went, the Magic may have a fighting chance.

Instead, Leonard and the Raptors’ play resembled the basketball equivalent of a freight train after Game 1.

Leonard, who went on to be named the NBA Finals MVP, averaged 27.8 points per game and shot 55.6 percent from the floor. The Magic tried at various times throwing multiple defenders at Leonard, slowing him down in Game 3 although coach Nick Nurse said that was more because of an illness, but Leonard kept coming.

He did that to everyone, of course. Leonard averaged 30.5 points per game on a 54.5 percent effective field goal percentage for the playoffs. He turned in one of the best individual postseason performances in league history.

So, were we all right to applaud Gordon for his defensive prowess against one of the NBA’s elite players? Or did our eyes deceive us?

As the Magic prepare for the 2020 season, the team will again rely on its defense to anchor the team. Orlando finished eighth overall in defensive rating last year. To make the playoffs again, the Magic must continue to be one of the best defenses in the league.

And Gordon will have to lead them as the team’s best perimeter defender. There will have to be some key lessons taken from the team’s playoff performance.

Aaron Gordon’s Defensive Numbers

Aaron Gordon has worked to build a reputation as a superior defender in the NBA.

In the 2019 regular season, he forced opponents to shoot 1.7 percent worse than their season average. He showed even greater defensive potential as the season wore down, setting that figure at 2.9 percent worse in January, 6.3 percent worse in February, and 6.7 percent worse in April.

According to NBA.com, Gordon was 18th in the league in defensive win shares for players who played more than 50 games. The Magic had a decent defensive rating with Gordon on the floor at 105.9 points allowed per 100 possessions. And he held opponents to 44.2 percent shooting.

According to Basketball-Reference, he was in the top quarter of the league in Defensive Box Plus Minus and defensive win shares.

Overall, for the season, Gordon fit the profile of a productive, solid, and improving defender.

Then he got matched up with Kawhi Leonard. And those numbers changed.

The Leonard train coming

The short version: Kawhi Leonard wrecked the Orlando Magic.

For the season, Leonard put up 26.6 points per game on 49.6 percent shooting, 37.1 percent 3-point shooting and 85.4 percent free throw shooting. He was a complete player too, adding 7.3 rebounds, 3.3 assists, 1.8 steals, 0.4 blocks and 2.0 turnovers per game.

Against Orlando in the first round, he elevated his scoring efficiency: 27.8 points on 55.6 percent shooting, 53.8 percent 3-point shooting and 89.3 percent shooting from the foul line. He added 6.6 rebounds, 3.0 assists, 1.2 steals, 0.4 blocks and 2.8 turnovers per game too.

And it did not matter what kind of defense Aaron Gordon or the Magic played on him.

This Game 5 clip shows Gordon ably sticking with Leonard on a pull-up from a baseline iso play. It’s likely easier, though, to contest here than it is to keep track of the array of moves Leonard deploys when going all the way to the cup, though. Still, you can’t fault Gordon – he played good D here.

This troubling trend held when considering the advanced numbers too.

According to NBA.com, the Toronto Raptors’ offensive rating with Leonard on the floor improved from 115.6 points per 100 possessions in the regular season to 122.6 points per 100 possessions against the Orlando Magic in the first round. His true shooting percentage went from 60.6 percent to 67.9 percent and his team’s net rating with him on the floor jumped from 7.9 to a whopping 28.0.

Plain and simple, Orlando’s starters struggled throughout that series and Leonard was a big reason why they were able to feast on Orlando’s once-vaunted defense.

Closing his space

As a team, the Orlando Magic did little to close up Leonard’s space on offense, as defender distance was roughly the same for Kawhi Leonard in the regular season as it was against Orlando in the first round.

Leonard also took a larger portion of his shots closer to the basket (36 percent vs. 45.6 percent). In other words, the Magic did little to make Leonard uncomfortable or consistently force him into offensive situations with which he was uncomfortable.

Aaron Gordon admitted this was something he would have to work on after Leonard got going in Game 1. He said he needed to do a better job being more physical with Leonard to push him off his spot.

This proved to be key time and time again as Leonard used that little bit of separation to get his shot off. He had an incredible series, but Orlando at least opened the door.

Here is a simple baseline isolation play from Game 1, Leonard versus Gordon. Leonard quite easily gets to his spot in the lane and draws an and-one. The help did not come and Gordon was left on Board Man’s Island.

In this play from Game 2, Gordon does a good job of initially denying Leonard’s first shot choice. But Leonard gets the ball back, does a little shimmy move, and gets enough space to connect from about 17 feet out.

Gordon is good but a move like that cannot create that much space for the Magic to slow a player like Leonard down.

This clip from Game 2 shows a problem that kept coming up for Gordon: the inability to fight through or around screens.

Here, Marc Gasol sets the (what is likely moving) screen and Aaron Gordon is simply left behind the play. By the time he can recover, Leonard is practically already at the basket.

Orlando ended up using a strategy of having Nikola Vucevic shadow Kawhi Leonard coming off screens. That worked to some extent to get Leonard moving the ball, but he could still beat that defense with his pull up jumper and sometimes he would just bull his way through.

And with the Magic’s high turnover rate in the series — 16.3 percent in the Playoffs compared to 13.3 percent (sixth in the league) in the regular season — helped get Leonard and the Raptors plenty of points before the Magic could set up their defense.

It is worth noting that on average, Leonard completed his decimation of Orlando quickly, too.

He averaged only 6.1 4th quarter minutes against the Orlando Magic, his lowest in the Playoffs since the 2014 NBA Finals, where the San Antonio Spurs’ average margin of victory in the five-game series against the Big Three Miami Heat was 18 points, and the first round in 2012, Leonard’s rookie year and very first Playoff series.

Leonard vs. Gordon

While those numbers track how Kawhi Leonard did against the Orlando Magic as a team, he faced off against Aaron Gordon, according to NBA.com, an average of 42.8 possessions per game.

This is by far the most of any Magic player (the next closest was Jonathan Isaac with 9.2 per game). In those bouts, Leonard went 31 for 58 (53.4 percent), including 10/15 (66.7 percent) from 3.

The NBA’s “Hustle” stats show Gordon contested 5.8 shots per game during the Toronto series, fifth-most on the team, despite playing the second-most minutes per game on the team.

Overall, Gordon’s performance earned his team a defensive rating of 119.1 points allowed per 100 possessions with Gordon on the floor, well above the season average of 105.9 points allowed per 100 possessions.

Thus, the numbers show not only did Leonard rip the Magic’s team defense apart as a whole, he consistently succeeded against Gordon in particular.

Even though Gordon cannot take all of the blame for Leonard’s offensive success in Round 1, he should at least shoulder some. His defense was not nearly effective enough.

This is where Gordon will have to learn and grow the most moving forward into next season.

Leonard is Gonna Leonard

During the regular season, Kawhi Leonard took 48.8 percent of his shots under “Very Tight” defensive coverage (defined as having the closest defender 0-2 feet away) or “Tight” defense (2-4 feet).

Under “Very Tight” coverage, he had an effective field goal percentage of 49.2 percent. With “Tight” coverage, under which he took 38 percent of his shots, he went 53.0 percent from the floor with an effective field goal percentage of 55 percent.

All in all, really impressive — they imply that during the regular season, Leonard excelled despite having defenders basically breathing down his neck.

This bears out when you look at how the players we all generally accept as elite fared under similar circumstances:

In the First Round, Leonard was actually better at making well-defended shots than he was in the regular season. Not shown in the table above is that in addition to his prowess when well-defended, he made 91.7 percent of his “Wide Open” shots against Orlando.

Ultimately, when searching for an explanation as to why Gordon’s defensive impact dipped in the first round, you really need to look no further than the fact Leonard was simply a buzzsaw.

He got the shots he wanted and was just better than usual.

To be sure, a disgruntled Orlando Magic fan could look to the Golden State Warriors’ defensive success in the NBA Finals against Leonard as more reason to criticize Gordon.

Against the Warriors, Leonard had to put up 15 percent of his shots under “Very Tight” coverage and 48.7 percent in “Tight” coverage, causing a big drop his shooting percentages.

Matchup-wise, against each of Andre Iguodala, Klay Thompson and Draymond Green, Kawhi Leonard’s efficiency dropped, especially so against Iguodala. Their defense clearly made him uncomfortable and he was not able to do what he normally does on offense.

Context is important, though.

Leonard was hobbled by quad and knee injuries throughout the later rounds of the Playoffs, noticeably limping at different points in the Eastern Conference Finals and NBA Finals.

After they secured the Larry O’Brien Trophy, Kawhi Leonard told Kyle Lowry he was just “limping around” during their euphoric pre-interview with Rachel Nichols:

Thus, maybe Golden State got a bit of the Diet Kawhi defensive assignment, whereas Orlando got World Crusher Kawhi. It seemed that everyone this postseason got Kawhi playing at a supernatural level.

What’s Next?

Aaron Gordon clearly has some room to develop as a defensive player going against the best of the best. And, to be fair, Leonard is, historically, a singular postseason player.

It may have looked good in stretches during the first round, but the numbers and film tell the true tale.

Still, Gordon and the Magic struggled against him defensively, and Gordon is partially to blame for Leonard’s surge, as is Leonard’s own brilliance.

This was one of the big lessons Gordon and the team certainly got from experiencing playoff basketball for the first time.

Gordon is a big part of the Magic’s future and has shown consistent improvement during his tenure in the NBA. He shows the potential of being a very good two-way player.

With the Magic’s 2019 free agency plans at least partially complete, the team will seek internal improvement. Gordon will be called upon to defend the opposition’s premier wing players better as his career advances.

Gordon certainly should be hungry to prove himself once again in the playoffs.

His base numbers and performance showed he is more than capable of fulfilling that role.

But if the team wants to improve its station and Gordon wants to elevate his status in the league, he and the Magic have to do a better job of slowing down the Kawhi Leonards of the world.