The Whiteboard: Orlando Magic offense needs more than just shooting

The Oklahoma City Thunder were one of the biggest stories of the 2023-24 NBA season — one of the youngest rosters in the league taking a massive jump and arriving as legit contenders years ahead of schedule. They followed that up with an incredible offseason, specifically addressing their biggest weaknesses with the home run additions of Alex Caruso and Isaiah Hartenstein.

Their leap last season was less dramatic and their offseason wasn't quite as eye-popping but the Orlando Magic aren't that far behind the Thunder and are looking to follow a similar trajectory.

The Magic, with the fourth-youngest roster in the league, won 13 more games than the season before and made the playoffs for the first time since 2019-20. Led by budding stars Paolo Banchero and Franz Wagner, along with a breakout season from Jalen Suggs, the Magic posted the third-best defensive efficiency in the league, suffocating opponents with their length and activity.

Their offense, on the other hand, was a mess — 22nd in offensive efficiency, 24th in 3-point percentage and 26th in turnover percentage. They did the best they could with the players on the roster but a decided lack of outside shooting closed down space and made everything a slog at that end of the floor. They worked to address that this offseason by re-signing Gary Harris, adding Kentavious Caldwell-Pope and drafting Tristan Da Silva with the No. 18 pick, a 6-foot-8 wing who hit 38.6 percent of his 3s across his four seasons at Colorado.

More shooters on the roster is a step in the right direction but there are other systemic issues in the Magic offense.

A lack of outside shooters wasn't the only problem with the Magic offense

3-point shooting, in and of itself, provides an efficient scoring mechanism but it also helps open the floor for drives, makes defensive rotation decisions tougher and can make other offensive mechanisms more effective.

But one of the other issues with the Magic offense last season was how few options they had for creating advantages. For as good as Paolo Banchero is, he isn't particularly effective at single-handedly creating high value offensive chances.

He was below average in scoring efficiency on isolations, despite finishing with the eighth-most in the league last season — more than James Harden, DeMar DeRozan, Kyrie Irving, Kawhi Leonard or LeBron James. We see a similar scenario with him in post-ups or as the ball-handler in the pick-and-roll. Banchero averaged 12.7 drives per game last season, but averaged nearly as many turnovers as assists and shot 43.7 percent off those drives, 55th among the 58 players who averaged at least 10 drives per game.

Surrounding him with more shooters should help open space and make him more effective in some of those scenarios but that feedback loop can't be the only or even the primary mechanism the Magic rely on to create good shots. The graph below shows their offensive style chart from last season, showing their percentile rank compared to the rest of the league in pace, player movement, ball movement and shot selection.

The Magic didn't take or make a lot of 3s last season but they attempted a ton of shots in the paint and spent a lot of team at the free throw line which helped improve the generic and expected quality of their shot selection. But they also ranked in roughly the 50th percentile in player movement 15th percentile in ball movement. That's a formula that might have worked for a team with an elite shot-creator on the ball, surrounded by strong outside shooters — a team like the Knicks or the Mavericks.

But the Magic didn't have the personnel to make that work and it's not clear that just plugging in Caldwell-Pope, hoping Harris stays healthy and can take some of Markelle Fultz's minutes and that Da Silva is good enough to actually make the rotation, will be enough. If the plan is still to spread the floor with static spot-ups around Banchero and Wagner attacking from the top of the key, the Magic offense may not be all that much better. More movement, of both players and the ball, could really help.

Another obvious solution is speeding things up. Despite their propensity for forcing turnovers, the Magic played at one of the slowest paces of any team last season, even on turnovers. They almost never pushed the ball on a defensive rebound and certainly not off a made basket by the opponents. Getting out in transition more may come at a defensive cost but their ceiling is going to be set by the offense and it might just be worth the sacrifice.

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NBA news roundup:

• It was reported this week that ESPN had laid off NBA analyst Zach Lowe, news that was met with skepticism and plenty of hand-wringing but countless fans. Lowe has been an institution at ESPN for more than a decade and has done as much to advance the quality of basketball journalism as anyone in the field. No word yet on where Lowe will land next but wherever it is, we'll be reading.

• Derrick Rose announced his retirement Thursday, ending a 16-year career that included being selected as the youngest MVP in history but was ultimately derailed by injury. He won the 2011 MVP with the Bulls, in his third season in the NBA, but played just 49 total games over the next three seasons because of knee injuries. He had his moments after that but never again topped 70 games in a season, playing for the Knicks, Cavs, Timberwolves, Pistons and Grizzlies.

• JJ Redick says the Lakers are already planning for when and how Bronny James might make his historic NBA debut, playing next to his father LeBron. If you thought you'd be able to escape this story this season because Bronny will be a fringe end-of-the-bench player spending most of his time in the G League ... too bad, so sad.

More NBA offensive style charts

Adding a little more context to the Orlando Magic offensive style chart below, I thought it would be instructive to look at the offensive style charts for the three most efficient offenses in the league last season — the Boston Celtics, Indiana Pacers and Oklahoma City Thunder.

It should be clear from this graph that this is no singular template for an elite offense. The Pacers, Thunder and Celtics all used very different approaches but they what they had in common was a distinct mechanism for creating offensive advantages. For the Thunder, it was lots of off-ball movement around the singular isolation brilliance of Shai Gilgeous-Alexander. For the Celtics, it was multiple shot-ceators in a perfectly-spaced five-out offense. For the Pacers, it was a breakneck pace and the relentless probing of Tyrese Haliburton.

Building a great offense means have some great offensive players and then fitting the system around them. If the Pacers tried to play the same way as the Celtics, it wouldn't work, and vice versa. Elite offense comes from a blend of personnel and system and that's what teams struggling to score like the Magic, Pistons, Spurs and Trail Blazers need to focus on.