Orlando Magic: 4 areas they need to build on for next season

3. Rebounding

Rebounding as a statistic on its own is an outdated one at this stage. It doesn’t tell the full story on how a team is behaving when controlling the boards on both ends of the court.

Rebounds are still important, however, in keeping plays alive and giving the Magic second chances to score, as well as securing possession when defending their basket.

It might not be as important as it once was to dominate this category, especially with teams playing smaller and smaller, but you also don’t want to find yourself near the bottom of this list either, which the Magic somehow are right now (25th, 41.4 per game).

They also are consistently poor when it comes to rebounding on both ends of the court, ranking 23rd in offensive rebounds and 24th with defensive boards.

This would be more acceptable if the Magic had a roster that reflected their limitations on that end, only they don’t. At all.

Center Bismack Biyombo is basically being paid $17 million a year to set screens and rebound the ball. But the 6.0 boards he is averaging per game are his lowest output in four seasons.

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Khem Birch is another center who broke into the rotation before the All-Star break, and while we can’t rely on his numbers until he has played more games, he has real energy on both ends of the court.

So he should be helping in this area too. This also goes for Nikola Vucevic (who has averaged over 10 rebounds in four out of the last five seasons) and the athletic Aaron Gordon.

Between these four players, they are averaging 27.2 rebounds per contest, despite Vucevic and Gordon missing significant time through injury.

This means the rest of the team combined is contributing 14.2 rebounds each night, a number that is simply not good enough.

If nothing else, it highlights the lack of effort that can be there on some nights for the Magic, which can easily be fixed, especially with some of the players currently on this team. This leads us to our next area that needs to improve.