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No. 13: Orlando Magic
Last Season: 25-57
13th place in East; missed playoffs
Beneath the rampant hand-wringing about the Philadelphia 76ers' losing and the schadenfreude laughter at the expense of the Los Angeles Lakers and New York Knicks franchises, there lies the sorry Orlando Magic, losing more than all of them. Over the last three seasons, the Magic have piled up a ghastly 68-178 record, giving them more defeats than every team in the NBA since the curtains closed on the Stan Van Gundy-Dwight Howard era.
So, what now? Orlando prays Super Mario comes to the rescue. That would be Mario Hezonja, the team's 2015 No. 5 overall pick from Croatia. The 20-year-old joins a squad bubbling with young talent, but no rudder. Scott Skiles hopes to change that, taking over the head-coaching duties after Jacque Vaughn failed to sufficiently incubate the promising youngsters. The gritty Skiles, who is notorious for having a short leash on rookies, inherits a team long on potential and short on results. And so Year 4 of the post-Howard rebuild begins.
The rebuild wasn't going to happen overnight. But it also wasn't supposed to take this long. With lottery rookies Elfrid Payton and Aaron Gordon joining an already green roster, expectations weren't high for Orlando last season, but the Magic somehow disappointed yet again. The team finished 13 games behind the eighth-seeded Brooklyn Nets, a squad that finished six games under .500. Three-year head coach Jacque Vaughn was shown the door before the All-Star break, leaving assistant coach James Borrego to call the shots.
Even though Gordon missed two months with a broken foot, the season wasn't a total disaster. The organization did see Tobias Harris and Nikola Vucevic develop into go-to scorers on the block. At just 22 years of age, Harris finished fourth in scoring at the small forward position while Vucevic was one of four players to average 19 points and 10 rebounds per game last season, joining some guys named Anthony Davis, DeMarcus Cousins and LaMarcus Aldridge.
One problem: The Magic still couldn't play a lick of defense. It's true that side of the ball did see slight improvement under Borrego's leadership, but Orlando still hemorrhaged 105.2 points per 100 possessions to their opponents, the sixth-worst rate in the league. The big signing of Harris' cousin, Channing Frye, fell flat on its face; he fell out of the rotation by season's end, notching career lows in rebounding rate and field goal percentage. Ultimately, the diaper-dandy squad was as soft as a newborn baby's bum. With Payton and Victor Oladipo running the backcourt, the team finished with the lowest free throw/field goal ratio in the NBA and the fifth-lowest of the 3-point era.
The Magic front office noticed the team's lack of tenacity. Enter Skiles.
The Magic started the offseason quickly by hiring Skiles during the conference finals. Indeed, the former Magic point guard helped turn the Baby Bulls into a 47-win outfit in 2004-05 on his first full year on the job, but that was a decade ago and the NBA looks nothing like it did then. The book on Skiles is that each stop in his coaching career follows a mountain curve: steep improvement followed by a sharp cliff. Orlando hopes the hangover never comes. The Magic also drafted Hezonja with the fifth overall pick and chased the tough-minded Paul Millsap with their load of cap space, handing him a reported four-year deal worth $80 million. Once Millsap turned it down to return to Atlanta, GM Rob Hennigan pivoted to reel in restricted free agent Harris on a smaller four-year, $64 million deal.
In a bizarre move, Hennigan then dumped the talented Kyle O'Quinn on the Knicks for essentially nothing and signed former Knicks big man Jason Smith to a one-year deal in his place. Hennigan redeemed himself by buying low on Shabazz Napier's stock and scooping up reliable backup C.J. Watson to bolster the young backcourt. With no big outside signings, the message is clear: The Magic are going to try to build from within. Again.
When Skiles recently accepted the task to lead the Magic out of a grueling rebuilding process, he quickly and drastically raised standards during his introductory news conference.
"The starting backcourt, in my opinion, should be a top-five defensive (tandem)," Skiles said. "We have to be even tougher. We'll have to go out and outwork people."
Oladipo and Payton, one of the NBA's youngest backcourts, accepted that challenge and went directly to summer school. They joined Harris in Las Vegas for Team USA's training camp to practice with some of the NBA's top stars. They got a crash course on elite work ethic.
After 20, 23 and 25 wins in three seasons since Howard's departure, the franchise believes a foundation is now in place to support a strong playoff push in the East. The age range of the Magic's playing rotation will be similar to their win total in recent seasons -- an average in the low 20s. But youth is no longer an acceptable excuse among Vucevic (24), Gordon (19), Evan Fournier (22), Hezonja (20), Harris (23), Oladipo (23) and Payton (21).
"We've been together for a couple of years now and we're tired of using the 'We're too young' excuse," Oladipo told the team's website. "It's just time to win. It's been a long two years and we're ready for things to turn around." -- Michael Wallace
Projected Real Plus-Minus for starters
Elfrid Payton, PG: +1.2
Victor Oladipo, SG: -0.2
Tobias Harris, SF: -1.7
Channing Frye, PF: +1.9
Nikola Vucevic, C: -0.7
Scouting reports on every player on the Magic
Using shot data from 2014-15 and projected starters, Grantland's Kirk Goldsberry ranks each team's offensive efficiency based on square footage.
With brick-layers in the backcourt -- Oladipo and Payton are projected to shoot 33.1 percent from 3 -- the Magic need their paint points. Good thing they ranked fifth from inside last season, led by Oladipo, who was third in attempts from five feet and in.
Vucevic, the league's sixth-best rebounder, takes the third-most shots per game from 15-19 feet and hits an elite 47 percent from 3-point range.
All about the space: 17th (416 square feet of above-average offense)
To identify players who stretch offenses the most, ESPN Stats & Information created the Kyle Korver Effect -- a metric on a 1-100 scale, factoring in 3PT%, 3-point attempt rate (percentage of total shots that come from 3-point range) and influence on teammate FG%.
Korver Effect: Frye (90) projects to shoot 52.2 percent of his shots from 3 (sixth-highest among PFs), and hit 37.2 percent (second-highest).
Skiles' track record says Orlando's defense should be better. The hard-nosed coach has overhauled his teams' systems and turned them into top-three defensive outfits within two years on the job. If you're looking for a defensive makeover, he's the guy for the job.
As such, our SCHOENE projection has the Magic improving to a 17th-ranked defense, which is roughly the same trajectory that his Bucks teams experienced with Andrew Bogut manning the middle. That's the good news.
The bad news is Orlando's offense should still be stuck in the mud. Without any reliable shooting in the backcourt, the Magic will still struggle to generate enough 3s and freebies to stay afloat on that end. This offense is going to struggle to get out of the bottom five -- that is, unless Hezonja and Gordon make the leap. But don't bet on that happening. Skiles has typically glued youngsters to the bench, preferring reliable veteran savvy over precocious upside. It will be fascinating to see how Skiles handles the fourth-youngest squad in the NBA. The long-awaited Magic revival probably won't happen this season, but Skiles' body of work suggests there are brighter days ahead. Magic fans have to be tired of the "wait 'til next year" prognosis by now, but this is the bed that Hennigan made.
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