The Orlando Magic’s focus on defense is coming along slowly, but they have shown improvement over the course of three games. A positive sign.
Scott Skiles has a defensive reputation. Everywhere he has been he seemingly automatically turned his team’s defense around and into a top-10 defensive team.
He has made it no secret he wants the Magic in the top five this year and believes they can get there with the talent they have on the roster. It will be an important part of the Magic’s identity and what Skiles is trying to build.
During the team’s annual media day, Skiles and the team talked at length about needing to find an identity on the defensive end. Skiles, whose never had a team finish lower than 16th in defensive rating in his 13 years as a head coach, wants, and expects his team to be one of the best defensively in the league. “We want to be a top defensive team,” said Skiles. “That’s exactly what we will do. I don’t expect any issues… I think we’re going to be a good defensive team, and if we’re not, we’ve got to go from asking to demanding.”
The Magic’s man in the middle, Nikola Vucevic, echoed Skiles’ comments, saying it’s “something I think we can do” when asked about being a top defensive team. “We have to do it on the defensive end. I would agree with him on that that it has to be our identity,” said Vucevic.
There is some data now to tell us how the Magic are doing defensively.
The results are not that robust. These are preseason stats, mind you, but they are not a good start to the season specifically defensively.
The Magic rank 26th among NBA teams in defensive rating with a 104.1 defensive rating entering Sunday’s game against the Rockets. Last year, the team posted a 105.2 defensive rating. And, again, these are preseason stats. They are not a be-all, end-all. But the hope had to have been the Magic would make a more pronounced improvement on the defensive end.
The good news is the Magic’s defense has gotten better in each game. Against the Hornets, the Magic had a 110.0 defensive rating. That dropped to 101.3 against the Heat earlier this week and then 101.0 against the Pacers the following night.
That trend is a very good sign for the Magic as opposed to the raw number that exists through three games. And three games is a small sample size anyway.
Orlando is slowly turning things around defensively. It will be something for the team to watch through the final half of the preseason heading into the regular season opener at the end of October.
