Focus heightens on Orlando Magic coach Steve Clifford’s rotations

With injuries ravaging the Orlando Magic roster, coach Steve Clifford has to be willing to experiment and adjust his rotations quicker than normal.

Orlando Magic coach Steve Clifford likes to tell the media when they ask about injuries or preparing for games that as a coach all he can do is work with the players he has available to him. When he gets in for the day, the medical staff hands him the list of players who are available and unavailable and he works with the group he has.

That is all he can worry about as he narrows his focus to the things the team needs to get done for the day.

For the next few games at least, Aaron Gordon will be unavailable to him. And for likely the next 3-4 weeks, Nikola Vucevic will be unavailable to him. That is two key starters — the two players most likely to be All-Stars on this team — out of the lineup for the foreseeable future. And, of course, Nikola Vucevic will be out for much longer.

The team will have to scramble and work together to make up for this loss.

The team has not yet announced who will start at center for Vucevic. With Roy Parry of the Orlando Sentinel reporting that Mohamed Bamba is on a 15-minute restriction, it is safe to assume Khem Birch will get the starting nod. Khem Birch certainly provides more consistent defensive presence than Mohamed Bamba does at this point.

Further adding evidence that Khem Birch will get the starting nod is Steve Clifford’s decision to start Wesley Iwundu at small forward over Al-Farouq Aminu, hoping not to disrupt the rotations the team already has in place.

That might be part of the problem.

The biggest complaint Clifford himself has had after games was how the energy, execution and efficiency drop once he breaks the lineup. Every player that currently comes off the Magic’s bench has a negative on-court net rating. Aaron Gordon, who plays at least part of his minutes with that bench unit, is the only starter with a negative net rating (-0.2 points per 100 possessions).

Everything for the team feels a bit in flux and Clifford, already searching for the right combinations when his roster is fully healthy, will have to find the right combinations to maximize his team with a depleted roster for a few weeks.

If there is one criticism of Clifford’s tenure with the Magic to this point it is this search for a rotation that keeps the Magic competitive and balanced throughout the entire game. It is something that took him nearly 50 games to get right and it is something he has struggled to perfect so far this year.

Last year, Clifford clearly had decisions that had to be made. And he took a long time to get there.

He stuck with Jerian Grant as the backup point guard for too long. If Bamba’s injury had not occurred, he may have never made the switch to Birch. Both those decisions proved critical to the Magic’s playoff push. Just as deciding to sign Michael Carter-Williams (also still out for the foreseeable future) rather than going back to Jerian Grant was essential to the team’s progress.

Once Clifford found that right rotation and right groupings last year, he maximized it to perfection. It just took him a long time to get there.

The playoffs last year and the struggles the second unit had to score convinced Clifford he needed to start from scratch this year. And that has been part of the problem for the Magic overall.

The minutes restrictions put in place for two rotation players in Markelle Fultz and Mohamed Bamba has limited what Steve Clifford can do and how he can shape his rotations. It will continue to do so even if there is some flexibility to play them more with the team’s injuries elsewhere.

But the focus is firmly on Clifford and how he crafts working groups for 48 minutes. The focus is firmly on how he finds combinations that can succeed.

Steve Clifford said he will experiment some with Jonathan Isaac at center to fill in some of those center minutes Mohamed Bamba cannot fill. He said he is going to try Amile Jefferson in that role too. It might be matchup dependent or whether his initial ideas work out.

Clifford’s current rotation when everyone was healthy has been rough, to say the least.

Clifford has opted to go with only Gordon among the starters to start the second quarter. That has not helped those groups play efficiently. Last year, Aaron Gordon would join the second unit in the first quarter with Evan Fournier adding more support to start the second.

Clifford has gone with a full five-man second unit to start the fourth quarter. That has broken about even to this part of the season.

Obviously that full complement is no longer available to him. The margin for error is much smaller. And while he has to figure out a way to deploy his starters most effectively and has fewer of them to spend on bench lineups, he still has to work to find the best combinations for this situation.

That means Clifford might have to break some of his longstanding rules and adapt quicker when an idea does not work.

Orlando Magic

He has to be willing to experiment with lineup combinations, something he is already willing to do. But when something is not working, he has to be willing to abandon it and try the next thing. Sticking with a lineup idea that is clearly not working will lead to long-term doom for this team.

With fewer players available and fewer options and combinations to sort through, Clifford has to be willing to cycle through them all until he finds the one that at least keeps the team stable. At least until the workable lineups he does find (the starters, most likely) can cycle back through.

There will be a period of instability as the Magic try to find the right way they need to play. Until they find that footing, Clifford has to be willing to try anything and abandon what clearly is not working in a shorter time period.

The Magic have to rediscover their identity on both ends of the court even without Vucevic and Gordon in the lineup. And the focus is even sharper on Clifford to implement that.

The team has struggled to find a workable lineup for a full 48 minutes night to night this season. The Magic have not been able to repeat last year’s success rotation wise as Clifford has sought combinations. If there is a criticism to make about him it is that he has not done enough to find the right combinations in the early season and stuck to his original plan too long.

In fairness to him, his move to put Markelle Fultz in the starting lineup over D.J. Augustin helped boost the starters a ton. Even if the bench has continued to struggle with D.J. Augustin at the helm.

And ultimately too, some of these struggling players coming off the bench like Mohamed Bamba, Al-Farouq Aminu and D.J. Augustin have to play better.

But now the focus will be even more intense on Clifford’s decisions and how he splits the lineup. And how he changes and adjusts on the fly.

To this point with the Magic, this has not been his strength. But everyone is going to get taken out of their comfort zone to scramble to replace Vucevic now.