The Orlando Magic are on the stationary bike of insufficiency
By Jared Dubin
The one place pretty much everyone seems to agree that an NBA team never wants to be is on the treadmill of mediocrity. You know what it is: your team is nowhere near good enough to make the playoffs but also not quite bad enough to pick at or near the top of the draft. It’s NBA purgatory, basically.
The Orlando Magic are not on the treadmill of mediocrity. Orlando has won just 131 games since trading Dwight Howard back in 2012, fewer than every team in the NBA save for the Sixers. Their 26.2-win average over these last five seasons it the lowest of any five-season span in the franchise’s 28-year history. As such, they’ve picked near the top of the draft several times over the last few seasons. After trading Howard, the Magic picked second, fourth, and fifth in the following three drafts. They also traded for an additional top-10 selection in 2014.
They approached last summer as if they were finally ready to make a big leap toward a playoff spot, but their plan crashed and burned and they’ll likely win seven fewer games this season than they did last year. The Magic’s plan appeared haphazard as we watched it play out last summer — with Nikola Vucevic and Aaron Gordon already on the roster, they traded for Serge Ibaka and then paid Bismack Biyombo $72 million, virtually ensuring that their most promising young player (Gordon) would almost never play his proper position; and then they paid Jeff Green as well — and it’s not all that surprising that things didn’t work out as planned.
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As a result of their wheeling and dealing and losing, it’s clear that the team has not really progressed in any meaningful way over the last five seasons, and actually does not appear to have a clear path forward to whatever the next step is, either. This, actually, might be an even worse place to be than the treadmill of mediocrity. You’ve already been bad for several years and there is almost no reason to believe you’ll be good again anytime soon. You’re set to pick near the top of the draft once again, but the track record of your front office suggests it is capable of hitting singles or doubles with a top pick, but not necessarily a home run — a whiff somehow seems more likely than a smash hit.
The Magic don’t have particularly firm “answers” at any position going forward.
Point guard Elfrid Payton is interesting, but the organization has waffled on him basically since the day he was drafted and, as if he were an avatar for the team as a whole, he’s not progressed in a meaningful way since arriving in Orlando. Next season marks the final year of his rookie contract, and there’s no guarantee he’s on the team beyond that point.
Evan Fournier and Terrence Ross (acquired when the Magic turned around and dealt Ibaka after it became clear things weren’t working out) are basically the embodiment of league-average wings. Both can shoot, but neither can do much else, though Fournier does have a feistier off-the-dribble game and Ross has bouncy athleticism. Neither is workable as a No. 1 offensive option and neither seems likely to ever become one. Neither is a plus-defender and neither seems likely to ever become one.
Nikola Vucevic is basically a walking double-double and has become somewhat underrated, but he’s regressed offensively as he’s had possessions siphoned away from him and it might be impossible to construct an above-average defense with him heavily involved in the proceedings. Biyombo can protect the rim and some areas beyond it as well, but he has not come particularly close this season to recapturing whatever possessed him during last year’s Raptors playoff run.
Mario Hezonja can barely get on the floor, and can’t find a way to positively affect the game when he does. He’s regressed badly in his second season, rarely showing signs of the uber-confident, sweet-shooting, high-level athlete we saw in Spain and during the pre-draft process. He might be the least impactful player getting 15 minutes a night this season.
Gordon is still the most interesting and promising young player of the group, but the Magic robbed him of a half-season of proper development by trying to turn him into their version of Paul George. He’s surged again since the Ibaka trade allowed him to slide back to his natural spot at the four (15-6-2 on 49.5 percent shooting post-trade, compared to 11-4.5-2 on 42.9 percent prior to it), but he’s not quite yet become the all-around force the Magic envisioned when he stormed through the latter part of last season. How much of that blame lies at the feet of the organization is unclear, but “most” seems about right.
And so the Magic prepare to head into their offseason again needing a major overhaul. They need someone that can run an efficient offense and bring the best out of Gordon. They need to figure out a way to start defending, because whatever they’re doing this season isn’t going to work. They need to inject high-level talent not just for next year, but over the long-term, because there doesn’t appear to be much here beyond Gordon.
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Essentially, the Magic are not much further along than they were after they traded Howard, only we know that the front office has tried to take several paths and none of them has really worked. That’s not an encouraging sign, and it’s difficult to find many encouraging to say about the team at all.