Orlando Magic: 2018-19 player grades for Nikola Vucevic
By Luke Duffy
Weaknesses
To say that Nikola Vucevic is the perfect player and has no weaknesses would not be true, he is at best one of the top 25 players in the league, and nothing more.
But he is among the top five centers in the NBA today and the fact he did a bit of everything for the Magic makes it harder to pinpoint his weaknesses.
Criticizing his defensive play would have been the obvious place to start in previous years, but we have already seen how he had made acceptable strides in that area. Improvement that he, as well as the coaching staff, can take credit for.
Putting up big numbers in losing efforts was the other way to go when highlighting what he couldn’t do, but a winning season, a division title and a return to the postseason with Vucevic as unquestionably their best player means that this is no longer true either. At least for now.
Instead we must move on to the next phase of criticism, and that is how poorly he played against the eventual champion Raptors in the five-game series before they bowed out.
The Raptors were simply the better team, and were able to throw guys like Marc Gasol, Serge Ibaka and even Leonard at Vucevic to slow him down.
https://twitter.com/JoshEberley/status/1120842721751552000
That they did so with such ease is the most worrying thing about how he will carry on in Orlando. Vucevic averaged 11.2 points and 8.0 rebounds in the series, while averaging only 29.4 minutes per game.
Stars are supposed to see more time during the playoffs, so it was telling that his court time actually regressed from the 31.4 minutes per contest of the regular season.
More than that, the attitude of Vucevic throughout this period was troubling to watch.
Not the loudest or most emotional guy on the court to begin with, he appeared to be on autopilot and unable to snap out of the funk the Raptors were able to put upon him. It culminated with Vucevic personally exiting the playoffs with a whimper.
This can’t happen again because he has been brought back to once again lead this young team on another playoff run, with the hope this time being that they can be even better. Vucevic will also be doing this while taking minutes away from sophomore Mohamed Bamba.
His first foray into the playoffs with the Magic didn’t go well, and it didn’t inspire much hope for the future either.