The Whiteboard: Victor Wembanyama's big night, Magic swarming defense
By Ian Levy
After Thursday night's win over the Utah Jazz, the Orlando Magic are now 3-2 with the ninth-best point differential in the league. They haven't faced the stiffest competition — their losses came to the Lakers and Clippers, their wins came over the Jazz, Trail Blazers and Rockets. Still, they've been playing phenomenal defense and set the template for what could be a very successful season.
The Magic are allowing just 103.6 points per 100 possessions, the third-best mark in the league and a 10-point improvement over last year. Health and continuity have played a role but they've also ramped up the intensity in a way that plays perfectly to the inherent skills and tools of their roster.
Nothing is easy against the Orlando Magic defense
The Magic are incredibly long. Their starting rotation features two big guards — Jalen Suggs at 6-foot-4 and Markelle Fultz at 6-foot-3 with a 6-foot-9 wingspan. On the wing, they have Franz Wagner, at 6-foot-10. Neither Paolo Banchero nor Wendell Carter Jr. are particularly tall for their positions, both listed at 6-foot-10, but they both have large wingspans — 7-foot-1 for Banchero, 7-foot-5 for Carter.
All that means there is a lot less space empty space between offensive players to slip passes into and the Magic have been using a very aggressive scheme with lots of swarming ball pressure and clustering at the rim to make the most of that length.
Through five games, they're leading the league in deflections per game at 22.0. (Last season the Raptors were No. 1 in the league at 18.1). They're second in the league in opponent turnover percentage and third in the league in defensive field goal percentage on defended shots within six feet of the basket.
Simply put, they're extremely hard to pass or dribble through, or shoot over.
Suggs is an absolute ballhawk and his aggression at the point of attack is often a tone-setter but everyone seems to have been empowered to pursue turnovers and to get after the ball. I mean, look at Carter Jr., a center, out way beyond the 3-point line and jumping an inbounds pass to force a turnover.
This kind of aggression on the perimeter asks a lot of the entire team. It requires a lot of energy but the Magic have a deep roster of bench players well suited to play this style with length and intensity — Jonathan Isaac, Gary Harris, rookie Anthony Black, Chuma Okeke.
It also requires everyone to be on a string, aware and rotating quickly, because a gamble on the perimeter that doesn't result in a steal can quickly put the backline at a numbers disadvantage.
To this point, the Magic have been able to hold up in this regard with all sorts of players stepping up to help at the rim. Their four primary guards — Fultz, Suggs, Harris and Cole Anthony — have already combined for eight blocks in five games.
For example, here the Lakers try to take advantage of the Magic's aggression with a very high screen from Anthony Davis for LeBron James. Wagner fights over the top of the screen and the lumbering Goga Bitadze does his best to hedge and keep LeBron contained, putting pressure on the ball and leaving Davis to roll free. What looks like a wide-open layup is erased as the 6-foot-3 Fultz crashes down from the corner to stuff Davis.
The Magic still have a lot of issues to work through. Their halfcourt offense is very much a work in progress and the fact that Suggs and Fultz, who make the defensive scheme work, are completely non-threatening perimeter shooters really raises the level of difficulty.
But if Suggs can nudge his 3-point percentage up even to the mid-30s it would make a big difference and there is plenty of talent at this end of the floor, especially coming off the bench. Head coach Jamahl Mosley may need to be making more in-game offense/defense trade-off decisions on the fly than most coaches. Regardless, the Magic are in a much better position than they were two years or three years ago and this is a team that should absolutely be in the mix for a playoff spot this year through the Play-In Tournament.
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The legend of Victor Wembanyama grows
On Halloween, Victor Wembanyama played a solid game against Phoenix, putting up 18 points, 8 rebounds and 4 blocks to help keep the Spurs close enough for Keldon Johnson to steal the ball from Kevin Durant and a win from the Suns in the closing seconds.
Three days later, he dismantled the Suns with a 38-point, 10-rebound work of art. It came in a double-digit win against the Suns, in a game in which both Kevin Durant and Devin Booker were healthy. He was 15-of-26 from the field and 3-of-6 from beyond the arc, adding a steal and 2 blocks and just 2 turnovers. It was the best game we've seen from him yet, a remarkable raising of his floor and a vision of just how high his ceiling is.
READ MORE:
- Victor Wembanyama’s career-high 38 points guide Spurs over Suns: Evaluating the rookie’s performance by John Hollinger, for The Athletic
- Spurs' Victor Wembanyama outduels Durant, Booker, drops 38 in win by Andrew Lopez, for ESPN
- VIDEO: The Victor Wembanyama era has begun by Ben Taylor, for Thinking Basketball
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