3 reasons Orlando Magic won’t make the 2019 NBA Playoffs
By Luke Duffy
2. They have no identity (yet)
With the personnel on their roster, everybody expects the Magic to become a defensive force before long. That should end up being the case, but the key words here are “before long,” which means this won’t be an overnight culture change.
Orlando has a first-year head coach in Steve Clifford, who may be the voice to get them playing well defensively, but that will take time. His schemes and rotations won’t be implemented successfully overnight.
Even throughout the preseason so far, we’ve seen flashes where the Magic look like they could be special on the defensive end. As these moments become more regular, their defensive rating will go in the right direction as well.
With that, so too will their win total. Given that they’ve only won more than 30 games once in the last six seasons, that needs to happen sooner rather than later.
Until then, however, Orlando is still going to be a below-average offensive outfit (35.1 percent 3-point shooting last season, which put them 28th in the league) with a similar output to last year when they finished 25th in offensive rating (102.8).
But if it gets to Christmas and the Magic are once again languishing near the bottom of the standings, we could see Clifford abandon trying to grow his defensive ideals around the young core in favor of some win-now moves.
This would mean a quick fix of playing the veterans more to try and grind out more wins. The playoffs will only come once a hierarchy and commitment to letting the young core grow together happens. Even if all goes well this year, it will still be too soon into this head coach/roster combination to yield that kind of success.