Scott Skiles: “Progress, not perfection”

For the early part of training camp, Scott Skiles will be laying the foundation for his team and expecting progress, not perfection from his young squad.

The Orlando Magic will open training camp this weekend with some clear goals in mind. They want to be competitive and turn the corner as a young group in their development. Pretty much all the things the Magic failed to do in 2014.

Orlando hired Scott Skiles to bring some accountability and help the young Magic turn that corner and begin to win. Winning is certainly the expectation for this group now.

That does not mean it is going to come all at once. This is still a young team, almost as young as last year’s team. These players will have to adjust to a new coach and will have to deal with the weight of expectation for the first time in their careers with a coach who demands just a little bit more.

And that appears to be the approach Scott Skiles will take early in camp as he establishes his principles early on in camp.

As he told Josh Robbins of the Orlando Sentinel:

OS: From the opening day of practice, you’ll have almost a month before the regular-season opener. What would make that month a success?

Skiles: One of the things we’re talking to guys about already is just “progress, not perfection.” We want to come in after Day One, Week One, the second week — and our games are now mixed in there, our exhibition games — and we want to feel like we’re making progress and we’re moving in the direction of understanding what we’re trying to do. I don’t have any fear that the team’s not going to play hard. These guys are going to play hard. [I want to see] that we’re just really internalizing and understanding how we want to play on both sides of the ball.

Skiles will undoubtedly spend the first stage of camp establishing his principles and the foundations to build from. It will take time for everyone to get used to each other and begin building up. There will be mistakes and a bit of a feeling out process for sure.

In the early stage of camp, and probably certain heading toward the first preseason game Oct. 3 against Charlotte, it will be about how the team gets better each day rather than how much they get right in the moment.

From a teaching standpoint this seems to be the right approach.

As far as what those foundations are, Skiles said he wants the team to dictate to the offense where they take their shots and to play with pace offensively in everything they do. It should create an interesting way for the team to play with the athletes they have.