3 reasons why Orlando Magic offense is failing

The Orlando Magic’s offense is woeful right now and there is more than one factor contributing to their poor play on that end.

The Orlando Magic are 3-6 right now and reeling, with only the Washington Wizards and New York Knicks below them in the Eastern Conference standings. Hard as it is to look at any positives right now, their schedule has been pretty tough and they’ve come out on the wrong side of some close games.

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What has kept them in every game so far has been their defensive play, where they currently rank third in the league (99.3 points allowed per 100 possessions) and look capable of locking down whatever opponents throw at them.

The central figure in this continued commitment to defense has undoubtedly been Jonathan Isaac, his recent outing against the Dallas Mavericks seeing him put on a clinic on that end. He added four blocks for Orlando in their 118-86 victory over the Memphis Grizzlies on Friday.

Head coach Steve Clifford will ensure that they won’t slip out of the top 10 in defensive rating throughout the season and with their identity having been built on this last season, it is comforting because it will win them some games as the season progresses.

The offensive end is a different story though. Even the most optimistic of fans would have admitted prior to the season getting underway that getting buckets would be hard to come by for this roster, who returned the joint most players from last season (12) alongside the Denver Nuggets.

But it has been even worse than that, with the Magic currently ranking dead last at 98,8 points per 100 possessions, even with Friday’s season-high output against Memphis. This is the organization’s most pressing concern right now, and even though it was thought that this could be their biggest weakness coming into the season it has been even worse than that.

Even more worrying, there is no quick fix or even obvious singular problem that needs to be addressed to fix the Magic’s scoring woes. But there is some hope: Orlando has topped 100 points twice this season and those outings have come in the Magic’s last two games, their 107-106 loss at Dallas and their blowout win at home over the Grizzlies.

The following are the three biggest hurdles that the franchise faces in kick starting their offense to make their way back up the rankings.

3. This is all still new

Most of the roster may have been returned from last season, but there are still enough new players in key positions that simply haven’t played a lot of meaningful minutes together. This is contributing to the static offensive play.

Central to this is Markelle Fultz, although he has been among the Orlando Magic’s best players to start the season. In the space of nine games he has gone to somebody who it was thought might play 15-20 minutes off the bench to being a key bench contributor early to eventually starting games.

That’s a lot to navigate for a 21-year-old as he takes over leading the starting unit from the veteran D.J. Augustin. Even moving Augustin to the bench unit itself will take time to gel properly, as he is more used to running a two-man game with center Nikola Vucevic which led to both having career years last season.

New recruit Al-Farouq Aminu, although not known for or brought to Orlando because of his offensive ability, has struggled all around in his new role as a lockdown defender off the bench.

This hurts the Magic in that they had a flow to their bench unit last season and both the introduction of Aminu and either Fultz or Augustin leading the second unit will take some getting used to.

The good news here is that this looks like something which will begin to change before long. Fultz is already playing with a ton of confidence, his passing is a plus and defensively he digs in. Some of his turnovers have been sloppy, but don’t forget he has only played in 42 actual NBA games. He is the key to unlocking a better offensive style of play and it will come.

There will just have to be some growing pains first.

This may require leaning into Evan Fournier more during this poor spell, a sentence that would have drawn groans throughout most of last season. He has started the season well, coming off of some strong FIBA World Cup play and is averaging 14.8 points on 33.3 percent shooting from deep (that could do with improving).

He’s the best creator of his own shot on the roster and at 27 is in theory now entering his prime, and they could do with seeing his usage (23.2 percent) overtaking that of Vucevic (25.5 percent) for the time being at least. Anything to try and jump start this offense.

2. Terrence Ross/the bench rotation

Terrence Ross has started this season poorly to say the least. Gone is the ultra-confident sixth man who stepped off the bench and shot 38.3 percent from 3-point range last year, instead being replaced by somebody who looks like he is second-guessing everything he is doing on the court right now.

Ross is currently out for a short period with a right knee issue and this could yet turn out to be a blessing in disguise. When he’s been on the court so far this year he has forced everything he has done, trying too hard to get the offense going as opposed to taking what he was given as he did throughout much of last year.

Ross is only taking one fewer 3-pointer per game so far (six, as opposed to seven last year), yet his shooting percentage from deep has fallen off a cliff and has hit the unsightly low of 19 percent. The season is young and the stats are skewed, but to have gone 8-of-42 from 3-point range isn’t something that has a ready-made excuse to gloss it over.

His minutes are down from 26.5 last season to 22.2 so far this term, which speaks to a broader issue. That is contributing to the uncertainty surrounding the play of Ross right now. The rotation is still being figured out, as coach Steve Clifford tries his best to find the right blend of players at the right minutes to check into the game to help.

Ross is no longer the first man up every game, with Markelle Fultz taking that role to begin the campaign. Confusingly however it doesn’t look like D.J. Augustin will slip into that position instead, with Al-Farouq Aminu having come off the bench first in games as well. This has clearly thrown Ross out of sync and it needs to be rectified soon.

He is among the better sixth men in the league and it is hugely important that the Orlando Magic recognize this and put him back in his familiar position of last season, for the betterment of the team.

In no way is Aminu a dud who should not have been signed, but perhaps the front office is  putting pressure on the coaching staff to squeeze him into the rotation so as not to look like they made a bad decision in signing him to a three-year, $29 million deal.

That is even without considering how Michael Carter-Williams or even Wesley Iwundu, both of whom could claim to be better defenders than Ross, fit into the equation as well. The hope is that Ross can come back from injury feeling 100 percent and that he gets the opportunity to slide into his more familiar role, whatever that means to other guys on the roster.

Then we will see the best of him again and he will improve the offensive output of this team off the bench.

1. Nikola Vucevic

You want to whisper it quietly in case it’s true. But did the Orlando Magic give a center who had actually hit his ceiling a four-year, $100 million contract over the summer when it was unclear who exactly they were bidding against? Early indications this season show that, unfortunately for them, there could end up being some truth to this.

We’re not here to bash Nikola Vucevic. However, but it goes without saying that he too has looked far from himself offensively early on in the season. Part of the reason for this may be because he’s not getting overlooked as often anymore. He was a first-time All-Star last season, but was found out badly in the playoffs against the Toronto Raptors.

With both coach Steve Clifford and Vucevic himself saying many times that the entire offensive structure of the team flows through Vucevic, perhaps opponents simply listened and realized that by shutting him down, the entire team would grind to a halt on that end.

He’s averaging 17.0 points per game on a poor 21.9 percent from deep, compared to the 20.8 points and 36.4 percent from 3-point land of a season ago.

The Magic right now rank dead last in 3-point percentage as a team (26.5 percent), which is just unacceptable in today’s NBA. Again there is a gap between themselves and the next worst team, the Atlanta Hawks at 29.3 percent.

This is on Vucevic, Terrence Ross and everybody on the team (with the exception of maybe Jonathan Isaac, who is shooting 36.4 percent and looks much improved in that area), who simply have not made enough of their efforts from deep.

Almost as important is the fact they rank 24th in team assists per game (21.3), despite finishing 12th a year ago (25.5 per game). Vucevic’s passing was integral to this; he is among the best passing big men in the league and even if he wasn’t credited with an assist on a lot of made field goals, he certainly contributed a lot of hockey assists.

So to see his actual assist per game also shrink from 3.8 per game to 3.2 has not helped matters. All other players on the court orbit around him and it is up to Vucevic to develop an understanding with a different type of point guard in Markelle Fultz, somebody more athletic than D.J. Augustin.

Fultz is not as savvy as Augustin yet, but plays downhill and is already crafty around the rim.

Vucevic too needs to shoot the ball better, so that it creates more space for others to drive and to get shots of their own off. If this seems unfair to lay all of this on Vooch, it is only because both he and the head coach have said that the offense flows through him and he is being paid like a franchise player to produce results.

The slow start of Vucevic more than anything else is hampering the Orlando Magic offensively right now. He showed signs of life in the Friday win over Memphis with 23 points on 9-of-16 shooting and tied for a team-high with six assists after dishing seven against the Mavericks.

They don’t have a lot of other players who can make things happen on that end, save for Evan Fournier and Terrence Ross (when he’s not in a slump, instead relying on Vucevic to be the spark that sets everything off. Until that returns, they will continue to flounder.