The Orlando Magic are struggling on offense and are the worst scoring team in the league by far. They must trust their passing to get them back.
Before the season began, there was a notion the Orlando Magic would have some struggles offensively. The team would have to play a style focused on ball movement.
Now, the biggest takeaway from the young NBA season for the Magic is that these struggles are true. And perhaps even a bit worse.
Following a heartbreaking 107-106 loss to the Dallas Mavericks, it is clear the Orlando Magic need ball and player movement to have any chance of being successful this season.
That is not happening as the Magic rank last in the league in offensive rating at 96.6 points per 100 possessions, nearly 4.0 points per 100 possessions worse than the next team (the New York Knicks at 100.1). They are 25th in assists per game (21.0 per game) and 17th in the league in assist rate (58.9 percent).
Through the first eight games, there have been offensive struggles, to say the least.
And those struggles seem to come quickly and without warning.
To start games, the Magic have been playing the right way and have been building leads. But then they quickly get complacent with their offense and start to fall into bad habits of isolation basketball.
These are plays where Evan Fournier takes a contested step-back jumper or Aaron Gordon over dribbles. Orlando settling for jumpers hurts the team’s overall flow and rhythm.
Overall, the Magic are getting looks they like but have not been able to make shots. The team is only shooting 40.7 percent from the field and 26.6 percent from three, which are the worst shooting splits in the league.
Terrence Ross has especially been in a slump, shooting 27.3 percent from the field and an even worse 19.1 percent from three. This is not anywhere good enough for a team that desperately needs shooting. It is a far cry from the 38.3 percent he shot last year.
This bad shooting leads to stretches of players deviating from ball movement and trying to single-handedly get the team out of the slump.
The Magic are 18th in the league in drives — defined by Second Spectrum as when a player goes from 20 feet from the basket to at least 10 feet from the basket — with 43.8 per game. But they are producing only 44.6 percent of their scoring on these plays, the third-worst ratio in the league. Their 8.0 assist rate off drives is the 11th-worst in the league.
That is hardly a death knell. But when combined with the team’s poor shooting, it makes the team that much worse.
It is especially frustrating considering the Magic are second in the league in paint touches, per Second Spectrum, with 26.3 per game. Albeit that comes with a 50.4 percent field goal percentage (the worst in the league) and 2.9 assist rate. The Magic are getting into the lane but not producing much offense when they get into the paint.
When Orlando finally starts to attack the basket to get back into games, their bad habits kick in again and ball movement stops. This is not the right way to create offense when a team is struggling and, as a result, has cost them in many close games to start the year.
Instances, where Evan Fournier tries to take over a game and takes contested shots or Markelle Fultz tries too hard to create and ends up turning the ball over late in the fourth quarter are examples where Orlando gets away from what got them back into the game and end up losing close games.
The ball is sticking and not moving. The team is getting drawn into mistakes and settling for mid-range jumpers. The only way out of this is for the Magic to move the ball better. That is something the coaching staff has stressed this year.
To be successful this year, Orlando has to trust the ball movement that was proven to be successful for them last season, and trust the offense that coach Steve Clifford has set in place, or they will continue to lose games as they did against Dallas.