Orlando Magic: 5 Christmas Wishes
By Luke Duffy
5. Being A Better Offensive Team/Utilizing Evan Fournier
The Dallas Mavericks this team is not, as they lie 28th in the league in points per game with 93.8. Only the New York Knicks and the Philadelphia 76ers are worse. This was a problem last season as well, when Arron Afflalo was asked to burden much of the scoring load, which he did as best as he could.
Shooting guard Evan Fournier was brought in to combat this, and he’s actually done pretty well since joining the team. This team would be lost without his 14.4 points a game. Here’s where it gets tricky though, and it’s a conundrum we’ll surely return to.
Oladipo is the face of the franchise and also a shooting guard. He can play the point, but Payton was brought in to do that. Together, those two are a great defensive unit, with Oladipo also able to score in a variety of ways.
This squeezes Fournier out, and I would argue he’s a more natural scorer than Oladipo. When Oladipo was injured he did a great job as a starter, and coming off the bench he gives a nice scoring punch.
The problem though, is that while second unit scoring is nice, you actually have to be scoring at an efficient rate through your starters as well. The hope is in 2015 this glaring issue is resolved.