It has been three seasons since the Orlando Magic have had to change their franchise’s future and goals by trading Dwight Howard. Three seasons since GM Rob Hennigan was installed and broke everything down, sold off everything that was not bolted down and committed to a long rebuilding process centered on the draft and sustainability.
And so here the Magic sit, three years after that fateful decision. And with what?
The Magic professed that 2015 would be the season the team showed significant improvement. They changed the orders given to coach Jacque Vaughn to move from development and to results. They entrusted their young core to develop and grow enough to step forward.
And none of that happened.
Orlando won 25 games last season. After a strong start, the team settled in for a long December home stand and fell apart. By January, it was clear that the coach needed to change and the Magic finally acquiesced in early February, axing Vaughn for good.
That did not absolve everyone remaining on the roster. They needed to take that step up as well and move on from the development phase. The Magic began investing in the young assets they had acquired since the Dwight Howard trade. Before last season, Nikola Vucevic was signed to a four-year, $52 million extension. This summer, Tobias Harris was signed to a four-year, $62 million contract.
So too does the passage of time and the impatience of an ownership wanting to get back to relevance. The Magic’s 2015-16 season feels the pressure that a team feels when it needs to move from young team to competitive team.
The Magic have made it clear they will no longer be tanking or accept losing as an ancillary product of their rebuild. This is a team looking to turn the corner in a major way.
The question is, with a roster that is largely the same as last season’s 25-win failure, can they?
Here are five things to watch with the Magic this season.
1. Victor Oladipo’s maturation
The Magic’s rebuild was pegged largely to their draft position. The only time Orlando effectively “won” in the lottery was in 2013, when they fell from best odds at winning to the second pick in a relatively weak draft and took Victor Oladipo.
Oladipo is not a natural offensive player. He uses his athleticism and speed to get to the basket and score. He still kind of struggles running a half-court offense and hitting jumpers, although he has improved greatly in that area.
How much? Oladipo was playing at a near All-Star level after last year’s All-Star break, averaging 20.3 points, 4.3 rebounds and 4.5 assists with a 46.7 percent effective field-goal percentage. He had two 30-point games and really started to blossom. If there is any player ready to take a leap from promising young player to All-Star in this league, Oladipo seems pegged to make that jump.
Oladipo was impressive at USA Basketball’s showcase and throughout the week of practice. He said both he and Tobias Harris talked constantly about what they needed to do together as leaders. They both came away from that week knowing they were the only players there from a losing team and more determined than ever to change that.
Oladipo gets the special focus, though, because of his potential as a two-way player. The Magic’s experiment to run him at the point guard position should pay dividends as he can be a distributor in a way Harris has not shown and Vucevic simply cannot. The team’s success may turn on how Oladipo matures and continues to improve. How far a leap he makes might determine how far the Magic go.
2. Scott Skiles’ mentality takes over
The Magic will have a learning curve, though. They will have a new coach who will demand a lot more than Jacque Vaughn did.
Vaughn was more of a caretaker, keeping the young players’ confidence up as they struggled and sometimes failed. Skiles will kick some of those players’ butts if they fail. Accountability is the name of the game now for this squad; they will have to perform.
Throughout his career, Skiles has taken groups of young players in his first year and turned them into a solid team. He has made the playoffs in all three of his stops on the coaching carousel. Usually around year three, his teams start to wear down and tire of his hard-pressing ways and he is gone.
That is more or less what the Magic need. They needed so desperately to turn the corner in 2015 and failed, so hiring Skiles is almost an insurance policy that it will happen. Skiles has consistently delivered that in his previous stops.
His philosophy is pretty consistent, too. His teams play hard-nosed defense, first and foremost – almost to a fault. With the athletes and versatility on this roster, the Magic should be able to play defense, although they did not last season, ranking 25th in defensive rating.
Skiles has his work cut out for him to change the culture – or really set it. This team is very much a blank slate. He will have to create working habits early in training camp to get the team confident and moving forward.
3. Tobias Harris and Nikola Vucevic get paid
The Magic began investing in their young players last summer with the extension to Nikola Vucevic and furthered that investment in Tobias Harris this summer. The two will be part of the Magic’s core for the next four years. Orlando is preparing to turn the corner and has clearly found at least two of its cornerstone pieces.
Vucevic has turned into a consistent numbers producer. He is a double-double machine with a versatile offensive game – a solid post repertoire and the ability to step out and hit mid-range jumpers.
Where Vucevic has some concerns is on defense. He is not a rim protector at all, allowing opponents to shoot 53.7 percent at the rim. Defenders cannot hardly rely at all on Vucevic shifting behind them to protect them.
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Harris will also have to shed some of the narrative written about him. He is one of the few players in the league who averaged 17 points and six rebounds last season and did that at 22 years old. It would have been hard for the Magic to let go of someone with that kind of raw production at such a young age for free.
But Harris is not an elite scorer, nor is he particularly efficient. And the bigger question when it comes to Harris is, what else does he provide?
He is not a great defender, nor a great playmaker. As he continues to improve his 3-point shooting, his value will increase. But now as the highest-paid player on the team, the Magic and their fans will be expecting Harris to be more consistent and provide more.
4. Can the Magic compete for a playoff spot?
The Magic have had a slow progression from the bottom over the last three years. The team won 20 games in the first season of the rebuild, improved to 23, then reached 25 last season. The two-game rise was a disappointment. But everyone suspects this young team will continue to improve, albeit incrementally.
The only problem is the franchise is talking as if the playoffs are an achievable and required goal, or at least more competitiveness to the point that they are in the postseason conversation.
Getting a more focused and better coach is going to help the team grow. But to see a team with very little changes to its central core climb from 25 wins to around .500 and make the playoffs? That seems like a leap, even in the Eastern Conference.
The big losses this offseason were young guys in Kyle O’Quinn and Maurice Harkless. For various reasons (and no reason at all), both struggled to get off the bench. So the Magic did not lose too much.
Aside from their coach, the Magic’s major offseason acquisitions were C.J. Watson in free agency, Jason Smith in a trade and Mario Hezonja in the draft. All figure to come off the bench, and none move the needle a ton for a 25-win team. Orlando is banking on its young players stepping into leadership roles and improving internally to get the team to that competitive level it so desperately seeks.
Sure, young players tend to naturally improve. But this team needs perhaps a little bit more of a kick to get to that playoff level. It is going to take Vucevic and Oladipo and maybe even Harris taking a major leap in consistency and skill to make the Magic much more serious contenders for a playoff spot.
5. Who will lead?
Last season, the Magic dropped veteran stalwarts Jameer Nelson and Arron Afflalo and brought in Ben Gordon and Channing Frye. Gordon was turned loose in free agency this summer. Frye will be on the second year of his four-year deal, but his first year was hardly a success. The Magic’s defense suffered while he was on the floor and were left without any key veterans in their final starting lineup.
This season, the Magic added Watson as a veteran backup point guard. But this is largely a young team running itself. There are no major veteran contributors who have been on winning teams. Orlando is going to rely heavily on Watson and Frye to provide veteran leadership and support, but both are projected to come off the bench.
For the Magic to find success in this season, they will have to have young guys such as Oladipo, Vucevic and Harris take the leadership reins. Are they ready to do that? Considering how little success this group has had, that is a serious question.
The support from Watson and Frye will be critical both in the locker room and on the court. Frye has to bounce back on the defensive end to be a plus contributor. For a team with such little shooting, his 3-point stroke is too invaluable to leave on the bench.
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Philip Rossman-Reich is co-editor of Orlando Magic Daily, FanSided’s blog covering the Orlando Magic. You can follow Philip on Twitter @OMagicDaily.