Orlando Magic: Give It To Aaron Gordon

The Orlando Magic need to inject some fun back into their play as the season winds down. Aaron Gordon can do just that.

Unfortunately for the Orlando Magic, this season really got away from them. Despite a promising start to the campaign and hanging around at .500 for a little bit, a terrible start to 2016 saw them slip out of the playoff race badly. With the campaign beginning to wind down for them, it’s now on to the next one, as the team once more heads to the NBA lottery.

But hold on. There are still games to play, and things don’t have to be this bad. After all, there are some young players on this team who, while perhaps not inspiring confidence that they can be world beaters, are at least pretty fun to watch. That’s the problem here, the fun has been sucked from this group.

Is there an easy way to get it back? No and certainly with a head coach like Scott Skiles in charge, the fundamentals are never going to be overlooked. But the fan base could do with a jolt of enthusiasm and energy, and they already have the guy to make that happen.

There have been some flat-out passionless displays lately, but in Aaron Gordon, the Magic have a player they can turn to who can at least make things fun again.

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Gordon, you may remember, provided Magic fans with probably their defining moment of the season (which is kind of sad when you think about it) when he wowed the world in the Slam Dunk Contest during All-Star Weekend. The fact he came away second-best on the night almost didn’t matter, there were some Vince Carter-level acrobatics going down in Toronto.

Twitter exploded that night, and all the talk was of this 2o-year-old forward and his insane hops.

That’s another thing we forget about Gordon, he’s still not old enough to drink legally. Yet in year two of what has been a career slow to pick up steam, he’s beginning to get it. Defensively he’s more aware and tuned in to where he’s supposed to be, while offensively he has a 51.8 effective field goal percentage. That’s a nice jump on the 47.8 percent he posted during his rookie season.

His enthusiasm on the court will never be questioned, and in 23.3 minutes a night he’s putting up 8.9 points (5.2 last season) and 6.6 rebounds (3.6 last season). Even better, his player efficiency rating of 17.4 is not only above the league average of 15, but is way up on the 11.4 of his first year in the league.

A quick look at those numbers again will tell you that he’s improving at a nice pace, and is no longer harming the team quite as much when on the court.

Which is why it’s time to turn this team over to him, at least in the short term. It seems crazy to suggest, after all; is Gordon even one of the five best players on his own team? Certainly Nikola Vucevic, Victor Oladipo, Brandon Jennings, Evan Fournier and even the quietly consistent Jason Smith would have something to say about that.

Indeed, Gordon doesn’t lead the team in any major statistical category either.

But let’s come at it from another angle. Oladipo was given his chance to be the man on this team, and despite being given a long time to do so, he’s done some of his best work off the bench. His chance to be the star this team craves has come and gone, although he’s still a valued member of what this organization is trying to achieve.

Vucevic is the Magic’s best player, but he seems content to just chug along and put up big numbers regardless of how much the team runs through him. This in itself is important; Vucevic is quiet and unassuming and generally consistent in his play, he does not need to be the star of the show to play well.

Jennings has real offensive quality, but as an unrestricted free agent this summer, it is perhaps not wise to make this his show.

Fournier has become streaky in his play, while if Smith was this team’s go-to guy, they’d be in real trouble. Mario Hezonja is an interesting case and wouldn’t be such a bad thing to see him assume a bigger role here as well. But with the season having slipped from their grasp once more, why not give Gordon the chance to prove if he can be a big-time player for this team?

About the only thing it could hurt is their standing come the NBA lottery. But really if that’s where this organization’s focus is at in terms of making the Magic great again, not even Gordon can help solve their considerable woes. Why not stick him in the front of the shop window, and afford him the chance to shine brightest for this team?

There’s a small chance, but a chance nonetheless, that free agents may look at Gordon, as well as the other talent here, and realize that Orlando will be the place to be next season.

It’s not going to lead to somebody like Kevin Durant coming down to Florida to play ball, but there don’t appear to be any other drawbacks to this plan. Others have been given a chance to take this team forward and have fumbled it, let Gordon have a crack.

In four of his last five games he’s scored 20 points twice to go with 17- and 16-point efforts, while also shooting better than 50 percent from the floor in all five of those games.

That’s a small sample size, but on those occasions he was given more minutes (at least 27 in each of those games, while also posting 36 in the recent loss to the Golden State Warriors) and repaid the team’s faith in him with some impressive performances.

Gordon alone can’t mask the fact that this was a disappointing year for the Orlando Magic. But after exploding during All-Star Weekend and becoming more visible to the casual fans of the NBA, he can at least put a bit of shine on these last few regular-season weeks.

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There’s nothing left to play for, and it’s still painfully unclear that a real talent is yet to emerge for this team. Isn’t it time he had a go?