Orlando Magic's defense remains difficult to resolve

The Orlando Magic are still a bit flummoxed by their defensive inconsistency. Another frustrating effort against has them back to the drawing board.

The Orlando Magic stamped a clear identity for their team’s success throughout the summer.

Before the Draft, they hired Frank Vogel as the head coach, a defensive savant who taught Roy Hibbert the principle of verticality and turned the team into a juggernaut. On Draft night, they acquired Serge Ibaka, a rim-protecting big who could cover for Nikola Vucevic on one end and step out and hit a jumper on the other. And their big free agent signing was the offensively-challenged rim protector in Bismack Biyombo.

The Magic’s personnel led to one conclusion and one bet for the team to make its first Playoff bid in five years. This team would be a juggernaut defensively, keeping scores low and feeding the ball to the team’s athletes in transition.

This plan has not quite come to fruition. The Magic’s offense, as somewhat expected is anemic. But the team’s defense? The team’s defense is mediocre at best, inconsistent in reality and really bad at its worst. They rank 18th in the league in defensive rating.

Hardly elite.

The Magic defense has not found its consistency or its mark to this point, after a stellar two-week run during the first big road trip this season. This fact continues to confound the team.

“I just think we need to understand we can be a better defensive team,” Serge Ibaka said. “We have to work on it and keep our mindset to play defense. We also have to understand the way we are playing defense right now is not the way we want to be. We know we can do better than what we are doing right now.”

The Magic’s defense was especially bad against the Charlotte Hornets. Or at least the production was bad. Charlotte shot 54.8 percent for the game in opening as much as a 33-point lead in the 19-point victory. The Hornets made some tough shots and exuded confidence in blowing the game open.

From the beginning, the Hornets got their offense going and saw little resistance. The Magic were scrambling offensively to keep up and the confidence and execution from Charlotte was particularly strong.

It left Orlando going back to the drawing board during practice Thursday as the team has a nice three-day break to prepare and sharpen up before the team’s next game Sunday.

Vogel said the team has to tighten the screws of their principles and habits heading into a difficult January. The team’s defensive habits are just not where they need to be.

“It’s a little bit of everything,” Nikola Vucevic said. “You have to communicate and be aggressive, take them out of their comfort zone and follow the schemes. I think we know what we need to do out there. The scheme that coach put for us, we know them really well know. We just have to go out and do them now.”

Ibaka said the team has to do a better job being physical and communicating. The Magic’s defense involves a fair amount of switching and so communication is critical to its success. So too is the way the team corrals ball handlers and contains penetration while maintaining contact with bigs rolling into the post. It is both simple in its philosophy yet can become complex in its execution.

And with the backstops the Magic have in Ibaka and Bismack Biyombo, particularly now that they are starting together, it can produce some harrowing results.

Results like Friday night’s nine-block first quarter against the Los Angeles Lakers. That strong defense seemed to serve as a catalyst for a great defensive performance that game. The Magic held the Lakers to less than 100 points, their first game giving up fewer than 100 points since early December.

Orlando followed that up with a pretty solid first-quarter defensive effort against the Memphis Grizzlies. They gave up 18 points to start the game, opening up a big lead of their own they would not relinquish the entire game.

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“If we have won the past few games, it has been because of the way we started the game,” Biyombo said. “With that being said, we jut have to go back to playing the way that we’re supposed to play. … We can’t let people get confident early in the game and we can’t let them be in their sweet spots. For us, we have to challenge ourselves to start better defensively in order for us to win each and every game.”

Vogel, ever the coach, notes a team is never as good as they look when they win nor ever as bad as they look when they lose. He said against the Lakers and the Grizzlies, the Magic were especially sharp while their opponents were not. Against Memphis, specifically, he said the team made a lot of contested shots.

That came to roost against Charlotte. He said the Hornets were particularly sharp and made a lot of contested shots in the game. Indeed, according to NBA.com, the Magic contested 45 of the Hornets’ 84 field goal attempts “tight” defense, defined as a player within four feet of the shooter. Twelve of those shots were “very tight,” defined as a player within two feet of the shooter.

On top of that, Vogel said he was generally pleased with the Magic’s offensive execution in the third quarter. The team just missed shots.

The Magic have to rely on their defense in that situation. It means being aggressive and communicating, Ibaka said, and sticking to the gameplan. That helped Orlando fend off a late rally from the Lakers before pulling back out to a 19-point win.

Even recently the Magic have seen strong efforts like this. They matched it Monday giving a clue they were turning a corner. Wednesday was a frustrating moment for a team still seeking to establish itself near the season’s midpoint.

“It’s frustrating, especially when you win a few in a row,” Vucevic said. “You feel good, you want to keep it up. You build something.In this league, if you want to be a good team, you have to win consistently and do what you do consistently.”

Sunday’s game against the Pacers, after a few days of practice, will be their chance to straighten things out.