Orlando Magic: How good has Aaron Gordon really been?

The Orlando Magic need something positive to hold onto as their rebuild stretches into another offseason. Is Aaron Gordon’s play exactly that?

As the Orlando Magic finish out their regular season in underwhelming fashion, now is a time to take stock of where this team is at.

For the most part, it doesn’t make for pretty reading: a team with modest expectations of making the playoffs once again dead and buried by the turn of the calendar year. Looking at who this team can count on to make them better next season, there are only two guys who really stand out.

The first is rookie Jonathan Isaac, but his season has been blighted by injuries. He looks like he will be a real contributor for this team in future, but it will take time to get there.

The other, and at this moment most important player on the team, is forward Aaron Gordon. He has been at times a revelation for the Magic this season in how he has carried them, especially offensively.

But just how good has he really been and how does he stack up against other young players this team has had? Will he continue to improve or is he seeing his numbers increase simply because somebody on this team has to, and he’s the guy it’s turned to?

(Photo by Andrew D. Bernstein/NBAE via Getty Images) /

To be clear, before looking at Gordon’s improvements against others, this is not a question of whether or not the team should extend his contract this summer. Gordon is a restricted free agent, and although the likes of Bismack Biyombo and Evan Fournier are overpaid, Gordon should be given the max in order to stick around.

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He is Orlando’s best hope of being led back to the playoffs, especially when paired with Isaac and their incoming 2018 lottery pick.

So where have the key strides been made that ensure Gordon should be kept around the franchise for the long-term?

If we compare Gordon’s individual numbers in year four to the two other key draft picks of the rebuild, Elfrid Payton and Victor Oladipo, he comes out on top in many statistical categories.

His 18.3 points per game this season are a career high and are better than anything Payton (13 points per game this year) and Oladipo (17.9 points per game in his second year with the team) ever managed in Orlando.

It looks better for Gordon as well if we open the field up to include Tobias Harris, a young player the Magic acquired from the Milwaukee Bucks who has since gone on to better things.

https://twitter.com/KeithSmithNBA/status/942944000868265984

Harris is a far more polished offensive player now than he ever was in Orlando, but by his last season with the team he was showing near nightly flashes of the game he possesses now.

Despite that, 17.1 points was the best he could manage per game in a Magic jersey. Given how this has been the season that Gordon has expanded his offensive arsenal as well, that’s a good sign.

It is no secret that the Magic gave up on Harris too soon, while the same could be said for Oladipo (not that people particularly minded at the time in Oladipo’s case). The jury is still out on Payton.

But assuming Gordon is re-signed in the summer, he will then be with the team longer than any of those players before him. The reward for this appears clear, and only looks better if we delve into the numbers a little more.

Gordon’s 3-point shooting percentage was initially red-hot to start the year, but has cooled considerably to a still career-high 34.8 percent. There’s room for improvement, but that mark is miles better than the 28.8 percent of last season, and Gordon’s jumper has looked so much smoother this season.

That play above simply was not possible during the first three years of his Magic career, but now the team is happy with him taking that shot.

This figure of Gordon’s is also still better than anything Harris or Oladipo could manage while they played in Orlando, despite both going on to be good long range shooters once they’d left.

The only slight concern with both of the above numbers is the fact that Gordon has achieved these this season with a usage rate of 24 percent when on the court.

Not even the point guard Payton posted a number as high when on the team. Neither did Harris. Oladipo, on the other hand, surpassed this number twice — in 2013-14 (24.4 percent) and 2014-15 (25.2 percent).

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Orlando Magic

This lends some weight to the argument that Gordon’s improvements have only come because he is seeing the ball more than ever before, and so could become an “empty stats” kind of player.

To counteract this however, we need only look at the Player Efficiency Rating (PER) of the four players.

PER is a good indicator of how positively a player is influencing the team when on the court, with the league-average being 15.0. Gordon’s 17.1 PER this season is a career high.

In year four of their careers, Oladipo (13.6) and Harris (16.7) didn’t rank as highly. Payton did (17.2), but if anything that lends itself to the argument that he shouldn’t have been traded for a second round pick.

Looking at it from the perspective of the team is even more important, however, and Gordon ranks pretty favorably here too.

The Magic have an offensive rating of 107.3 when he is on the floor, the best mark of his career to date. It is also better than any number the Magic had at any point when Oladipo (104), Payton (105.9, also this season before trade) or Harris (101.6) had.

Looking at how much Gordon’s offensive game has improved it is clear why this is the case, although he does share the court with guys like Fournier that make it easier for him.

The others didn’t have that luxury when they played with the Magic, and it is somewhat telling that Payton’s score in this category was the highest of his career this season too.

Defensively it has been another story, however, with the team logging a rating of 109 when Gordon is on the court this season, the worst rating of his career.

Lol at the dude who thinks Aaron Gordon didn't play defense in college. He ruined people.
— Benjamin Burrows (@Rumblinbuffalo) March 13, 2018

Only Payton (113.6) put up a worse number, and again, that was this season. Oladipo and Harris (both 106.8) gave the team just a bit more on that end of the court during their time with the team.

So in theory, the above shows us that Gordon is improving at a faster rate than former Magic players, but who will also be likely staying for longer than they ever did. Given how Oladipo turned into an All-Star, and Harris may turn out to be the best player in a trade involving Blake Griffin, that is saying a lot.

The only real elephant in the room that must be addressed before declaring Gordon a success story who’s only getting better is center Nikola Vucevic.

One of the more offensively gifted bigs in the league, his defensive abilities have been even more scrutinized while he has been on this team. Yet even his worst defensive output (108.7, unsurprisingly from this season as well) is still better than Gordon’s, even if it is only by a tiny margin.

By Vucevic’s fourth season in the league, he was averaging more points (19.3 per game) and had a much better PER (21.5).

He wasn’t taking 3-point shots nearly as much as he is now, but was still averaging 33 percent just as he is today.

He was the best, most consistent player on an even worse Magic team, and one who has averaged a double-double in four of his last five seasons with the franchise.

He is the kind of empty stats player that most fans want to see gone from the team. The most worrying part is Gordon could then take over that position, and has somewhat similar numbers to back that up.

Despite this, Aaron Gordon has still done more than enough to justify the Orlando Magic keeping him around for the long-term. He is clearly improving at a rate quicker than his predecessors.

Next: NBA Rookie of the Year ladder - Week 23

If only they’d kept a couple of those guys around too, the Orlando Magic wouldn’t be languishing in the position they’re currently in.

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