Orlando Magic: 3 broad goals for the rest of their season
By Luke Duffy
3. Continue experimenting
While the Magic have gone through both good and bad periods so far this season, it has been nice to see head coach Steve Clifford shake things up when necessary. This was especially evident in the win over the Raptors, when he dropped Jerian Grant from the rotation and used Jonathon Simmons as their backup point guard.
While this was surprising, it also worked. Simmons is a good facilitator, and it gave the team a quirky lineup that the Raptors weren’t entirely sure how to play against. At one point the Magic had Simmons, Jonathan Isaac and Mohamed Bamba on the court together.
That’s a tough unit to break down defensively, but this is only one example of ways in which the rotations have been used, or in other cases kept the same, even when the possibility of changing something could have made sense.
An example of this is Terrence Ross, who has been a flamethrower off the bench for much of the season so far. When the Magic were losing, and looking anemic offensively, the temptation surely must have been there to insert Ross into the starting lineup.
Instead he has come off the bench in every game he has played, and is averaging a career-high 13.3 points per contest. Bamba and Isaac are two other players who have been used with different groups to see how they work best on different nights.
As long as coach Clifford continues to keep things fresh and the players react in the right way, which they have done so up to this point, then this can be one of the areas that brings them real joy as we move into 2019, as opponents will be wary of what could be thrown their way on any given night.