3 Orlando Magic preseason stats to believe, 2 to disregard
The preseason is over. And for a lot of players and fans, it is good riddance.
It is great to have basketball back and everyone is looking forward to the beginning of the season. But preseason basketball hits differently.
Not that players are not playing hard, but everyone knows that the preseason features a lot of mirages and is not exactly what everyone will see when the NBA season officially tips off on Tuesday—with the Orlando Magic playing Wednesday in Miami.
There is a lot to get excited about and learn from public displays of the team. But everyone always gets the sense it is not the complete picture.
Coaches will inevitably call the preseason games an extension of practice. So some of it has to be real. But not all of it is real. There are things fans can dismiss as just noise from the preseason.
The Magic are still a young team and probably still need some time on the court together in game settings. But there was a pervasive feeling throughout the preseason that this team understood how to prepare itself now that they have been to the playoffs. They know what it takes to get to the Playoffs now. They came to the preseason with the measured approach of a veteran team.
There was still a lot of work to do. And the short nature of the Magic's preseason especially brings a lot of mystery to the upcoming season. Orlando had only three preseason games to get ready for the season. A lot of their preparations happened behind the closed doors of practice.
Everyone will just have to wait for Wednesday to get a better sense of where this team is at.
Still, the preseason gives us some data. It gives us some idea of how the team will play and what they will look like when the games count this week.
So what is real and what should we disregard? That is at least worth some discussion.
Believe: Magic's defense carries over
The Orlando Magic know what their identity is this season. As Kentavious Caldwell-Pope said, this is the first team he has been on where everyone wants to defend. The Los Angeles Lakers and Denver Nuggets might take some offense to that, but it speaks to how committed this team already is on defense.
That was on full display throughout the preseason. The Magic finished their three games with a 101.0 defensive rating for the whole game (sixth in the NBA) and a 104.6 defensive rating in the first half when most teams play their starters. That was ninth in the NBA.
It is preseason and there are always more turnovers and missed shots than normal. The Magic probably will settle in with a defensive rating of around 110.0 points per 100 possessions. And that will be among the elite in the league.
But it is encouraging to see the Magic settle at the top of the rankings in defensive rating if this will remain the team's identity. At least in terms of the preseason, the Magic remained one of the best defensive teams in the league.
That feels like it checks out.
More important than the numbers is how that defense came together.
After giving up 35 points in the second quarter of their preseason win over the Philadelphia 76ers on Friday, coach Jamahl Mosley said he and the team challenged itself to come out firing on defense in the second half. They gave up just 15 points in the third quarter to put the game away.
That was a major statement of what this team is capable of defensively and the fact that they had an extra gear on that end that they were not tapping into through the first two preseason games. That bodes well for the team rebuilding its elite defense once the regular season begins.