When Orlando opted to start Victor Oladipo at point guard last season — en route to a 23-59 mess — it was interpreted by many as pragmatism, an attempt to better its chances of winning the 2014 NBA Lottery. Oladipo is not a traditional lead guard, and as a rookie surrounded by an uninspiring roster, the former Hoosier suffered a mediocre debut filled with turnovers and missed shots.
Many believed Oladipo was the best player available in the 2013 draft, and Orlando was able to snag the Rookie of the Year favorite with the no. 2 overall selection after Cleveland shocked the basketball universe by taking Anthony Bennett. Oladipo has drawn plenty of comparisons to Dwyane Wade, another dynamic two-way shooting guard (in his prime) who made up for his shorter stature with all-world explosion and playmaking.
While very few thought Oladipo’s ceiling was as high as Wade’s, an uneven rookie campaign has pushed even the most loyal Oladipo fans to question whether or not he can be a multi-time All-Star in this league. That nervousness only grew when Oladipo literally broke his face in October. We had to wonder if his second year was already down the tube. What would that mean for the Magic, a team of mostly unproven, raw talent — where were their points going to come from?
This season began as terrible as its predecessor — the Magic were 3-6 after nine games, and that included wins against the 76ers and an OT victory against Minnesota. But Oladipo returned from his injury ahead of schedule, and Orlando has a much improved 7-10 mark over its past 17 games (they take on Toronto tonight). They took three out of five on a recent West Coast road trip, where they lost to red-hot Golden State by a single point. The Magic are currently 9th in the East, tied in the win column with Brooklyn (8th) and at least three wins ahead of the remaining scum of the conference. Who knows? Orlando could be a Brooklyn fire sale away from jumping into the playoff field. (Fans in New Orleans, it’s OK to scream.)
In year two, Oladipo looks a lot more comfortable with and without the basketball, and his numbers have jumped up across the board. He’s taking the same number of shots and free throws and he’s pulling down the same number of rebounds; meanwhile his turnovers are down, assists are up to 4.1 per game and his 3P% has skyrocketed to 47.5 percent.
And December has been an Oladipo overload. The masked man is hitting 54.7 of his field goals and scoring 18.1 ppg this month, in large part because he has flames coming off the ends of his fingers from 3-point land — making two-thirds of his long-range attempts over the past seven games.
Oladipo is 10/14 on three-pointers above the break this month, and couple that with 12/14 shooting on drives to the basket. He is hitting two-thirds of his shots in the restricted area, fifth-highest among guards who have attempted at least 30 shots in December. Wade is sitting above him at third, but with Oladipo’s current clip on long-range shots, he is doing things shooting the basketball that Wade has never really done. Small sample size or not, Oladipo has been a driving/three-point shooting machine this month.
The Magic split a home-and-home with the Hawks this weekend, going nose-to-nose with one of the East’s best teams. (That may or may not speak louder to the discrepancy between the two conferences, but still.) While Orlando is among the youngest and strangest rosters in basketball, with Oladipo finally on the floor and playing at a high level, they are beginning to do some fun things offensively.
Oladipo, Evan Fournier (having a heck of a season himself) and Tobias Harris are some of the game’s most instinctive cutters to the basket. Oladipo and Fournier will sprint ahead of the defense to a corner and wait for their defender to turn his back before gliding to the rim undetected.
This clutch connection between Oladipo and Fournier set up the game-winner from Harris in Saturday’s 100-99 victory. Look at Fournier time the cut just right so he gets a full opening to the rim.
On a Ben Gordon possession on Friday, Oladipo was so open underneath the basket on a successful cut that Gordon, mid-shot, passed him the ball for an easy deuce — and Gordon NEVER passes up a shot. (If basketball took place inside of a bar, he’d be a fall down drunk.)
This was a great one from Harris, a simple backdoor on a sleeping defender.
With these types of plays in mind, having Channing Frye on board this season, no matter the price, is only helpful for their collection of young guards and wings. His jumper is so deadly from outside that he routinely draws both defenders beyond the arc when he is involved in the pick-and-roll game. Harris is great about spotting up on the same side of the floor as the Frye pick-and-roll, and will often make a mad dash to the tin if both forwards abandon the post. Watch Oladipo find Frye early in Friday’s game after defender’s forget who they are dealing with:
Since his return, Oladipo is playing a lot of point guard, but not in the same fashion as a year ago. Fournier and he form a Phoenix Suns-esque backcourt, where both guards can bring the ball over the time line, and Oladipo defends the better guard on the other team. As one of Orlando’s two lottery picks in June, and when point guard Elfrid Payton gets better acquainted to the NBA game, it’ll be interesting to see when/if Fournier falls into a sixth-man role or not. In the meantime, Payton, Fournier and Oladipo have taken the floor together in short spurts the past few weeks, and a small-ball lineup with Harris at power forward and Frye at center needs to be tried and tried again.
While double-double gobbler Nikola Vucevic was out this month, the Magic got incredible production from Kyle O’Quinn, a stout DeJuan Blair-type who was the closest thing Orlando had to a solid interior defender. While Frye is a matchup nightmare for opposing defenses, he is almost equally a delight for offenses who can take advantage of him down low. He’s just not very quick, and is a lousy rotator. O’Quinn doesn’t do anything special, but lineups have flourished on both ends with him because he is a gifted screener and large man with some instinct protecting the paint.
In seven games, the Oladipo/Fournier/Harris/O’Quinn/Frye lineup posted an offensive rating of 116.5 over 76 minutes, per NBA.com, and scorched the net with a true-shooting percentage of 61.2 percent. Even better was that same group posted a net rating of 17.8 points, limiting opponents to 98.7 points per 100 possessions, which projects to a Top 5 defense.
Vucevic is a talented big man who insists on a healthy dosage of traditional post ups and isn’t much to write home about protecting the basket. The starting and satellite lineups built around him at center are, well, not performing very well according to advanced metrics. With that said, Orlando signed him to a 4-year deal in October that means he isn’t going anywhere, and he is a good enough player to earn that money over time with annual improvement and factoring in the gigantic uptick in league revenue coming over the next few seasons. Still, head coach Jacque Vaughn has seen how well these O’Quinn lineups have done, and working him into the permanent rotation is necessary.
Another lineup that is playing really well when given the chance is the aforementioned small-ball unit (Payton/Oladipo/Fournier/Harris/Frye) that should see far more than the 35 minutes it has gotten over just seven games. Scoring over 108 points per 100 possessions, the same clip as the Cleveland Cavaliers, this lineup does something that no other lineups Orlando plays seem to do very well — protect the basketball. This five-man unit has an assist/turnover ratio of 2.33, which would be tops in the NBA by a mile and is a full assist better than Orlando’s team mark for the season. These five have also rebounded like gangbusters, however small the sample size, pulling down 55.7 percent of available boards, which would put them ahead of the league-best Sacramento Kings.
Against the Hawks this weekend, the Magic made 19/47 three-pointers (40.4 percent), an unexpected performance from a team that typically scores just 22 percent of its team points from perimeter shots, a below-average mark. They should keep shooting — this is a team that pays $8 million a year to Frye and is built around dynamic guards and wing players, and has a humongous Montenegrin center who would love nothing more than to have the paint all to himself. And the Oladipo/Frye pick-and-roll is getting scarier and scarier every game the way Oladipo is shooting the rock.
With more three-pointers comes more opportunities for Orlando cutters and drivers. And just in case you forgot how explosive Oladipo can be on the drive, here are a few of my favorite plays from the weekend.
Now, it isn’t all smiley faces and cotton candy for Orlando, a team that hasn’t seen the green side of .500 since Nov. 6, 2012. For all of its potential on the defensive end — citing the team’s drafting of Oladipo, Payton, and Aaron Gordon, who fractured a bone in his left foot in mid-November, as a commitment to athleticism and defensive integrity — this team has been shuffling between average and below-average all season. Most of their trouble on that end can be traced to their youth, as can their willingness to hand the ball to the other team, but the Magic have been outworked from time to time as well — a no-no for a team full of fresh legs.
Orlando’s transition defense can be troublesome as the team forgets to locate streakers running out ahead of the defense, sometimes even on made baskets. Paul Millsap dribble penetrated the Magic full court on Saturday, earning a free trip to the line for essentially just trying harder then them.
This team is abysmal at the rim, and they badly miss what Gordon could have provided as a shot swatter this year. Many times this weekend, the Hawks just spread the defense apart like Moses at the Red Sea, and can’t miss defensive assignments like Al Horford rolling to the basket completely untouched.
Watch this traditional 1-5 pick-and-roll turn into an easy finish at the basket:
On this play, they committed the ultimate sin when playing against the Atlanta Hawks — losing track of Kyle Korver. Mercifully, he let it slide this one time.
On offense, the Magic will routinely loft high-arching passes into the post that defensive players are sitting underneath waiting to pick off. Orlando brings veteran guards Ben Gordon and Willie Green off the bench because, well, I guess they have to play. Gordon can still score buckets with the best of them — them being overaged, undersize wings — but both of these players are complete black holes with the basketball. Watch Green miss Payton on what would have been an easy lay-up.
And here is Gordon not swinging the ball to Frye who, again, makes $8 million to hit open transition three-pointers.
Complaints aside, I came away impressed with some of the things Orlando is trying with such a young roster. As we saw Saturday night, Orlando is not the pushover they were a season ago. A lot of that can be traced to Oladipo, who is improving rapidly as a modern combination guard in this league. Who knows? Oladipo may prove that the 2013 NBA draft wasn’t a complete waste of time after all.
