There’s A ‘D’ In Orlando
Scott Skiles is working his usual defensive magic, which means there’s ample reason to believe in the Magic.
More than almost anything else, the Orlando Magic of the first few years of the post-Dwight Howard era lacked an identity. The most split-personality team in the NBA, the Magic couldn’t decide if they wanted to push the pace or slow it down (just look at their month-by-month pace for the 2014–15 season, and try not to get dizzy), play loose and free in the open court or lock teams down in the half court, dial up pressure on opposing pick-and-rolls or sit back and bait teams into inefficient mid-range jumpers.
Under former head coach Jacque Vaughn, these things all seemed to change with different segments of the season, or even on a game-to-game basis depending on that night’s opponent. For a chameleon-esque, veteran team, this can work extremely well — if you can play every style, you can beat any team at their own game on any given night. For a young, rudderless team like the Magic, it can mean three consecutive seasons of 25 wins or less and the worst combined record in the NBA over that span of time —yes, worse than even the Philadelphia 76ers, who openly tanked the last two seasons.
To create a clear-cut identity and establish a definitive style of play, the Magic went out and hired a head coach with one of the most well-defined identities in the league: Scott Skiles. In his previous stops, Skiles-coached teams improved their defensive efficiency ranking by an average of 12 spots in his first year as head coach. Getting young teams to buy in and work hard defensively is what he does. On a Skiles-coached squad, if you don’t defend, you don’t play. And he always gets his results — at least early in his tenure, before his shtick tends to wear on his players.
For a young team looking to establish a defensive identity for the first time, he’s the perfect guy to bring in and drill the mentality into them. And it’s worked like gangbusters for Orlando so far. This year, the Magic have exceeded even that 12-spot average, leaping from 25th in the NBA in defense all the way up to ninth as of Tuesday afternoon.
On a per-100-possessions basis, Orlando’s defense has improved 5.8 points over last season. That’s somehow only the third-largest jump in the NBA this year (the Timberwolves and the ageless Spurs are ahead of them), but it’s still a rate of improvement that’s been matched or exceeded only 15 times this millennium. It’s also a leap that has helped the Magic run out to a 16–12 record a third of the way through the season — good enough to be tied for seventh place in the wildly improved Eastern Conference.
Skiles hasn’t been especially impressed with the consistency of his team’s defense, though, noting that they’ve slipped of late and haven’t played a full game of good defense since before they played the Clippers back in early December. The players know that, too. “Every night’s not going to be perfect,” Channing Frye says. “Some nights, you’re just going to get barbecued. It’s going to happen. But I think it’s about the effort.” And, on balance, their effort has been quite impressive on the defensive end.
More than the “what,” though, the operative issue here is the “how.” Just how has the NBA’s second-youngest team (by minutes-weighted age) taken such a massive step forward on the less glamorous side of the floor?
“We have a defensive system that we’re teaching and we work on, every day,” Skiles says. “But it would be meaningless if the guys didn’t buy into it. They have to buy into it and understand the importance of it. If they do that, we’ll be fine. If they don’t, we’ll drop.
“It’s got to be something that you do every single day. You have to stay with it. I’ve mentioned it several times, but it can be tedious to have to do the drill work every day and stay with it. So far, for the most part, the guys have. You can’t expect to make that kind of leap and then make another leap and go right to No. 1 and stay there the whole season. We have a very young group that’s trying to learn the importance of it. We’re just hoping and trying not to take any steps back.”
The Magic roster is stocked with young, versatile athletes that can pressure the ball and hound passing lanes, especially on the perimeter. Victor Oladipo, drafted by the Magic with the No. 2 overall pick in 2013, came out of Indiana with defense and athleticism as his two primary selling points. Aaron Gordon, tapped with the No. 4 pick out of Arizona in 2014, had the same appeal. Elfrid Payton, acquired in a draft-day trade with the Sixers six picks after Gordon was selected, was a highly-touted defender at Louisianna-Lafayette, as well. That’s three straight picks, all with defense as a significant — if not their main — draw.
So it’s not all that surprising that Skiles saw the bones of a potentially good defensive unit in Orlando before he took the job, even while the Magic were languishing in the bottom-third of the league on that end of the floor. “You never know,” he says. “You could see a guy like Victor, and look at some [other] guys and how they move laterally and things like that, but there are good individual defenders on teams that are bad defensive teams, and the other way around. People that struggle individually that are on good defensive teams. You never know ’til you get in.”
For a lot of those young guys on the team, having a more defined set of rules in place has helped simplify things and given them the certainty of knowing right where they should be at all times. The Vaughn-coached Magic would often change up their coverages based on that night’s opponent, but Skiles has them playing things the same way, every single game.
“It gives us an identity defensively, which is one thing we didn’t have last year,” Gordon says. “We were trying to do 100 different things according to the team that we were playing. Now teams have to make adjustments to what we’re doing.”
Orlando’s big men now drop down toward the free-throw line to guard pick-and-rolls. The wings help aggressively against drives from the perimter and are then counted on to spring back out toward shooters dotting the arc, smartly leveraging the team’s collective bouncy athleticism. “We know exactly what’s expected of us on the defensive end, and now we have the maturity to hold each other accountable for what we need to be doing,” Gordon says. “Those two main things have picked our defense up a whole lot.”
Gordon has gotten especially good at that dance of helping near the paint and then leaping out to block or contest a shot, or even shoot into the passing lane, snag a steal and take off to the other end. He just comes out of nowhere sometimes, catching whoever’s taking the shot or throwing the pass completely off guard. “It’s just my athleticism coming out,” he says. “It’s playing two positions defensively. Making sure that my guy doesn’t score and then also helping the rest of my team out there.”
Knowing where to be and what to do when they get there has the Magic moving together on a string a whole lot more this season, the surest sign of a good defense. The Magic do have a few lockdown individual defenders, but the most encouraging thing about their improvement is that the whole has been greater than the sum of its parts. Everybody helps, and then the next guy in line helps the helper (for the most part; they do get caught with the occasional back cut or — to Skiles’, Gordon’s, and Oladipo’s chagrin — a face cut). For evidence of that, one need look no further than the team’s defensive performance with its new starting frontcourt — Nikola Vucevic and Channing Frye.
Last season, the Vucevic-Frye pairing was an outright disaster on D. They got lit up to the tune of 110.5 points per 100 possessions in over 1,000 minutes of playing time, a pace-adjusted scoring rate allowed that was worse than even the league-worst Timberwolves’ defense. Among the NBA’s 250 most-used two-man combinations in 2014–15, Vucevic and Frye ranked 244th in on-court defensive efficiency. This year, though, has been a much different story.
The 97.5 points per 100 possessions the Magic have allowed with Vucevic and Frye sharing the court this season would rank second to only the Spurs as the best defense in the NBA.
For his part, Frye credits Skiles for implementing a defensive system that allows the Magic to count on each other, rather than just defend on an island. “Skiles puts a lot of emphasis on a team defense. I think last year, it was a lot of individual defense,” he says. “And I’ll be honest, I think there’s only three or four individually really good defenders in this league. Most good defenses do it as a team. And this year, we’re doing it as a team.”
Vucevic, while making sure to mention that he feels his individual defense was overly criticized last season, credits the improved communication fostered by Skiles’ help-heavy system. “I think the vocal part is really what’s helped us a lot,” Vucevic says. “It just makes you more comfortable. You trust your teammate when he tells you, ‘I’m here.’ And then you can go and help. And then when you tell him you’re here and he can go help. Sometimes in the past, we didn’t communicate as much, and guys would go help and the other guy wouldn’t know, and he wouldn’t be able to help the helper.”
Frye knows that he and Vucevic are not exactly shot-blocking extraordinaires, and that’s why he’s quick to also pay homage to the perimeter defense in front of them. There’s so much talk about protecting the rim when it comes to defense, and it all focuses on the guys who are actually at the rim. But perimeter players keeping drivers away from the rim in the first place can be just as effective a way of defending the basket, and Frye greatly appreciates the job being done by Payton, Oladipo, Gordon, Tobias Harris, Evan Fournier, Shabazz Napier, and Mario Hezonja.
“It’s a guard-dominated league. If a guard gets into the lane, now they’re shooting, now they’re passing it out for threes. It’s not a good formula. Or you get those little dump-off passes for dunks,” Frye says. “You look at Chris Paul — gets into the paint, he’s getting it for lobs to DeAndre or he’s kicking out for threes to J.J. Redick. Or you look at Golden State — Draymond and those three-point shooters. So it helps a lot to have guys that can just stay in front and protect the paint.”
Oladipo, specifically, has bounced back defensively this season, to the point that Skiles has repeatedly touted him for a first-team all-defense spot.
“He’s good on the ball. He’s very good on the ball. And he’s also good off the ball,” Skiles said. “There are guys that are very good one-on-one, on the ball defenders, but then they turn their head and fall asleep and get back cut on the weak side. Things like that, they’re not good team defenders. He’s both. And then he also rebounds his position at a high level. Those three things add up to an elite defender.”
Oladipo freely admits that he was too much of a gambler during his rookie and sophomore seasons, and volunteers that having a better-defined system in place has helped him lock in on his responsibilities more consistently. Still, he knows he has things to work on before he can be considered an elite defender.
“I think guarding shooters. Being able to come off pin-downs, having my body right so I don’t get screened easy. Stuff like that, little things that I can correct,” Oladipo said. “On the ball, off the ball, either way. Guarding people like [Kyle Korver] is something that I need to get better at. I’m just gonna keep going. I’m only in my third season, so I’ve got a lot of room to grow.”
Everything Oladipo talks about in relation to his game is framed through the prism of growth, of building on top of his skill set, of conquering another challenge in his development — especially when it comes to finding his place in the Magic offense. Oladipo played mostly point guard as a rookie, then moved off the ball after the Magic drafted Payton last year. This season, he’s shuffled back and forth a bit more, as needed.
He started off the year next to Payton in the backcourt, but 14 games ago Skiles began bringing Oladipo off the bench to provide more balance on both ends. For Oladipo, it’s allowed him to operate in a bit more space by sharing the court with Payton less often (down from 21.6 minutes per game to 14.3). Doing so has put the ball in his hands more than it was at the beginning of the season, and he’s been taking advantage by getting much cleaner finishes around the rim. Since the switch, Oladipo’s field goal percentage in the restricted area has jumped 9.6 percent.
Finding the right balance of looking for his own shot and setting up his teammates has still eluded him, though, to the point where he brings it up in conversation — unprompted — as something he needs to improve upon. “That’s tough. I’m still working on it,” he says. “That’s the one thing I’m working on, being able to know when to attack and when not to, when to set my teammates up. Especially when I play a little bit of the 1. It’s something I’ve got to work on, another challenge in my career.”
He’s been watching a lot of film of similar guards to get a feel for how they navigate that particular balance, but won’t volunteer any names. Here’s to hoping his attempts to master this balance go the way of, say, Eric Bledsoe, rather than Lance Stephenson. At least for the Magic’s sake.
Of course, Oladipo’s move to the bench hasn’t just been about him. Frye took his place there, and the presence of an elite shooting big has aided the floor balance of the starting unit a great deal. That group (Payton — Fournier — Harris — Frye — Vucevic) has scored a scorching 107.6 points per 100 possessions in the 14 games he’s started, the equivalent of the third-best offense in the NBA. For a team that ranks 20th in overall offensive efficiency on the year, that’s been a big boost. Plugging Frye in has helped clear out space for Harris’ mid-post isolations, Fournier’s jumpers and drives, and, especially, for Vucevic’s opportunities both on the block and near the elbows.
“He spreads the floor so much that it’s hard for his guy to help as much,” Vucevic says. “When you have a stretch 4 like that, it spreads the floor so much for me in the post and for the guards to be able to drive.”
Frye knows that his gravity — even more so than his actual shooting — might be his greatest weapon, and so he’s always moving around. A lot of that motion isn’t even necessarily designed to get himself his own shot, but rather to move a defender this way or that so somebody else has a sliver more space with which to drive or put up a shot.
“It’s just designed to get the best shot we can on individual plays. The three-point shot is crazy. You can go 3-for-3 and another guy can go 3-for-3, but if you hit three threes, you’re up three. It’s a big discrepancy. Some team shoots 30 threes a game and makes 15, and another team only makes 10 and you’re up 15,” Frye says. “The league has turned into a very guard-heavy league. Almost college-style, not a lot of isos anymore. That’s the way the league is run. So now, when you have big guys that can shoot the ball, that just creates opportunities for guys that can drive to the lane.”
Payton, Oladipo, Harris, and Fournier aren’t driving to the basket quite as much as they did last season — they’re combining for 20.5 drives per game this season, as opposed to 28.0 a night last year, per the SportVU player tracking data on NBA.com. A lot of that, though, is simply because Vucevic has been so good both on the block and from mid-range that it’s temping to let him be the hub of almost every offensive possession.
There are few players in the league that combine Vucevic’s volume and efficiency in the post along with deep range on their jumper. Only seven players have finished more possessions with post-up shots, turnovers, or fouls drawn this season than Vucevic, per Synergy Sports, and among the 14 players with at least 100 such possessions, only three (Kevin Love, Dirk Nowitzki, and Carmelo Anthony) have been more efficient. Vucevic has a hook shot that he can drop through the net with either hand, over either shoulder — a wonderfully beneficial skill for which he says credit should go to his father and youth coaches.
“When I was little, every coach that I had really made me work with both hands,” he says. “My dad, he was a basketball player. He did a lot of individual work with me and he always told me, ‘You have to go both ways. It’s only going to help you.’”
One of the NBA’s better jump-shooting bigs, Vucevic has also nailed shots at a 45.9 percent clip from outside the paint and inside the arc. On deep twos between 16 and 23 feet away, he’s at 44.5 percent, which raises the question of why he hasn’t yet taken a step back behind the line. He’s taken only two threes all year. “Everyone asks me about it,” Vucevic says. “I think I could. I think right now, I’m an OK shooter from three. I’m not a straight knockdown shooter. I feel so comfortable in the post and from mid-range, so I don’t want to start extending too much that it might take away from what else I’m good at.”
He’s hopeful that another opportunity might come up sometime soon, though. “Maybe after a timeout or something, get a play where I come down and shoot a three. Maybe Skiles reads this article and he lets me do it.”
Threes or no threes; Vooch is balling, putting up 16.5 points, 8.8 rebounds, and 2.5 assists in just over 30 minutes a night. His 22.5 PER is the best since he’s entered the league, and he’s on track for career-highs in other advanced measures like Win Shares, Box Score Plus-Minus, and Value Over Replacement Player, too.
Despite his protestations, he still has things to work on defensively, but he’s getting there — as are the Magic. With better, smarter perimeter defenders, a streamlining of the defensive system, and clearer responsibilities for everyone, this looks like sustainable improvement for Orlando. Now the hope is the offense catches up soon, lest everyone get too sick of Skiles’ drills.
