Orlando Magic Playbook: Aaron Gordon’s passing helped unlock his game, Orlando Magic’s game

Trouble for Gordon

Throughout the 2019 season, Aaron Gordon displayed just how far his game has come. He has become a much better all-around player.

He was one of the team’s best and most trusted defenders last year. Gordon was a reliable 3-point shooter, although still needing to improve in that area. And even his scoring seemed far more consistent, even without those big games.

It was a big season for Gordon. But there were always little bits that creeped in throughout the year. Little bits of bad habits. When Gordon did try to assert himself, he would overdribble and get himself stuck.

It is worth noting that during the game where Gordon recorded his career-high 10 assists, he also committed eight turnovers. Gordon had four games of six turnovers or more.

That is obviously not sustainable for him.

Gordon will still struggle to pass against length off the dribble. Plays like this one against the Boston Celtics are fairly commonplace among Gordon’s turnovers (as is his penchant for offensive fouls).

Here he gets the ball on the run and attacks immediately in a mini-pick and roll. He tries to loft a pass overhead over two defenders to Nikola Vucevic and has the ball stolen. It is a tough pass and one that requires a quick read. It is not an easy play to make.

Gordon has the confidence to make it. But sometimes he relies too much on his size. And when players have length, they can disrupt some of his more formulaic reads.

These turnovers, especially a few of the ones he had in the playoffs against the Toronto Raptors, speak less to Gordon’s passing ability and more to his dribbling ability. Gordon still has to improve dribbling in traffic.

In isolation, he will sometimes stop the offense to get into his dribble moves. When he is on the attack, he will sometimes make the predictable read because his dribbling is not strong enough to keep the defense truly off balance.

Not to mention another common turnover for Gordon was simply lazy entry passes. Many of his turnovers were just him trying to make simple passes that got intercepted or were otherwise easy to defend.

The entry pass and the high-low pass are somewhat lost arts in the NBA. The lack of post games in the NBA has caused that skill to fall by the wayside throughout the league. But passes like these from Gordon are more common than they should be.

Part of Gordon’s evolution and maturation will be about valuing these simple passes as much as the difficult ones.

There were the obvious turnovers too where Gordon passed to an open space that a teammate did not anticipate him seeing. As teamamtes trust Gordon’s vision and ability to make difficult passes, that will add to his playmaking too.

Like everything else, this was all part of the growing process for Gordon as he tries to add this element to his game. Gordon made plenty of mistakes as he tried to add this part to his game.

Where in 2018 he was still a bit inconsistent and inefficient with his shot and shot selection, he improved that in 2019.

In 2019, he was improved as a passer and showed plenty of promise with that part of his game. But he still made his mistakes, averaging a career-high 2.1 turnovers per game and his worst turnover rate since his rookie year at 12.3 percent.

That is part of his growing process. It is more important that he continues to make progress in these areas.