The 2015-16 NBA Season starts soon, preseason hoops are in full swing, and playoff prognostications have begun in earnest. Being that season previews can get bogged down by team-specific minutiae, and we cover every basketball team, we’re providing our readers reasons why you should care about all 30 teams in the Association.
DIME MAG’s 2015-16 NBA Season Previews
Gone are the days that Orlando Magic fans, executives, players, and coaches could chalk the team’s poor performance up to rebuilding from the collapse of the Dwight Howard era. In fact, some handsome bloggers would argue that was gone last season. “The time to win is NOW,” experts, analysts, and critics are saying, while those few fans who have hung around since D12 farted his way out of town desperately cling to the belief that this young team, now under the leadership of legendary fan favorite Scott Skiles, is ready to compete at a level good enough to land at least the No. 6 seed in a consistently weak conference.
And there’s no doubt about it, friends – this Magic team is loaded with talent.
So, what now? Can we expect the hard-nosed, no-nonsense, thoroughly-bland Skiles to simply shove Nik Vucevic, Aaron Gordon, Tobias Harris, Victor Oladipo, and Elfrid Payton out onto the Amway Center’s court and make them play winning basketball? Is he the leader who can figure this roster out, making All-Stars of Vuc and Harris, and turning Gordon and Oladipo into the premiere players that GM Rob Hennigan drafted them to be? Will Skiles, a vanilla waffle cone in a dress shirt, somehow inspire raw talents like Payton and Evan Fournier to play with intensity and heart? Most importantly, can this team just be consistent and cut down on the foolish mistakes? The answer to each of these questions, and many more, is… *shrug* Sure!
The X-Factor: It’s-a Him, Mario!
Make no mistake, Oladipo and Payton have had plenty of attention since they came to the NBA, and they’ve both flashed incredible potential. Vuc should be on the verge of becoming one of the league’s few elite centers, too. But the real buzz surrounding this team is the flashy and super cocky Croatian, Mario Hezonja. I still can’t believe that the Magic drafted this guy, because he is just oozing with personality on a team that has had none. This team went from Howard farting on people and (allegedly) begging Mary Carey for sex, Hedo Turkoglu grabbing pizza at downtown Orlando joints at 1 a.m., Big Baby freaking out in hotel lobbies, and handsome J.J. Redick and his gorgeous lady looking like the City Beautiful’s Kennedys, all while Stan Van Gundy hammed it up to the delight of local reporters, to what? Payton’s hair? Oladipo’s beautiful singing voice? Melvin Ejim’s Canadian citizenship?
Hezonja won Magic fans over the moment that he simply arrived in Orlando, since this is a town that still flinches at the mention of Fran Vasquez. But now he brings a heavy dose of charisma and trash talk with him, jogging down the court with a pair of concrete ‘nads dangling at his knees as he jacks up threes and finally offers this team what it has desperately needed for two seasons – someone who can make a f*cking jumper. Is Super Mario the missing piece that will allow this roster of ragtag roundballers to finally come together and become Hennigan’s East Coast Spurs? F*ck it, yes. Yes he is. Six-seed, here they come. (Ed. Note: now Skiles just needs to get over his allergy to rookies and give him some reps)
SPACING! Will the Orlando Magic have any room to operate with limited shooting on the floor?
Victor Oladipo. Tobias Harris. Nikola Vucevic. Elfrid Payton. Aaron Gordon. Those are the players who will decide the future of the Orlando Magic.
If talent was the only factor, there would be no question about Scott Skiles’ team. Oladipo quietly took long offensive strides in his sophomore season, and seems primed to take the next step to early stardom. Harris isn’t everyone’s ideal of a modern hybrid forward, but showed enough offensive prowess last season to offset deficiencies on the other end – ones that should be partially mitigated by additional experience. Some thought Vucevic deserved an All-Star bid in 2014-15, and he’s likely to get it come February if Orlando is in the playoff hunt. Payton exhibited obvious all-around comfort as a rookie, proving a natural floor general and instinctive defender. Gordon has the raw athletic traits to emerge as a force on both ends of the floor, and flashed emerging skill at Summer League when finally healthy, too.
The Magic have a group of young players whose abilities are obvious. This core core represents arguably the most intriguing and unique quintet in all of basketball. But excitement and rarity only matter for so long. And not only does Orlando have very public playoff ambitions in its first year under Skiles, but also a roster containing strengths and weaknesses that look like mismatched puzzle pieces – in the present and the future.
Payton was billed as a project shooter during the pre-draft process, and that assessment almost proved optimistic in 2014-15. The 21-year-old made just 32.6 percent of his field goal attempts outside the paint last season. He shot 55.1 percent from the free throw line and 26.2 percent from beyond the arc, yet didn’t offset those abysmal marks with the finishing proficiency you’d expect from a crafty, explosive, and long-limbed guard. Payton’s 49 percent mark in the restricted area was the league’s worst among players who attempted at least 300 shots from that hallowed ground.
Playing a non-shooter at point guard presents sweeping problems by itself. But when he’s paired with a backcourt partner who defenses don’t respect and a swingman who presents no realistic threat outside of 12-feet? That’s a losing proposition no matter how disruptive Payton, Oladipo, and Gordon will be defensively – let alone their collective impact on that side of the floor at the moment.
Perhaps a player coach?
The all-court scoring ability of Harris draws the attention of multiple defenders when he’s on, and Vucevic might be the most underrated frontcourt marksman in basketball. Rob Hennigan and company surely envision No. 5 overall pick Mario Hezonja becoming a lethal shooter from range both on the catch and off the bounce, too.
But in the NBA where space matters more than ever, it’s still fair to assume Orlando might not have enough of it to manage league-average offense – if the team is intent on employing units featuring Payton, Oladipo, and Gordon for more than short, energetic bursts at a time.
Obviously, the Magic still have ample room to grow. None of the hyper-athletic, shooting-challenged players listed in the trio above is anywhere close to his peak, and Vucevic and Harris have yet to develop the veteran nuance that will help make them better than weak links defensively. Hezonja, for all of his eye-popping gifts, is still an unknown at the NBA level.
Barring major, major individual improvements that literally no one has forecasted for Orlando’s promising youngsters, however, this team is unlikely to produce the offensive cohesion that’s a prerequisite for legitimate title contenders. We hope we’re mistaken; Hennigan’s roster would make a wildly enjoyable champion. But until Payton, Gordon, and the rest prove talent evaluators flat-out wrong, there’s just no reason – except blind optimism, of course – to believe that to be the case.
