The case for drafting Willie Cauley-Stein

If you had the chance to watch the Magic play last year, you saw their defensive struggles. Cauley-Stein is the best shot-blocker in this draft, and he could bode as a very good decision for the future of the Magic, at least defensively. I mean, having Cauley-Stein sure wouldn’t hurt a Magic team that allowed opponents to convert 49.9% of their two-point field goal attempts and 36.8% on three-point attempts en route to giving up 101.4 points per game, the eighth-most in the league.

Another key stat pertaining to the Magic was the fact that they were one of two teams in the NBA this past season that did not have one player on their roster average at least one block per game — the Boston Celtics was the other team. Neither Vučević nor Frye, the two most utilized bigs for the Magic, ranked in the top forty amongst NBA centers in blocks per game who played in at least 50% of their teams’ regular season games. Their lack of a shot-blocker also factored into the Magic ranking in the bottom-third of league in opponent field goal percentage near or at the rim. Opponents made 64.3% of their field goal attempts that were taken within three feet of the basket.

Having no interior presence provides part of the explanation for the Magic’s unimpressive defense in guarding the three-point shot.

When a team does not have a shot-blocking presence they are more cautious in their close-out attempts. Rather than being able to, literally, run their opponents off the three-point line, the team playing defense must contest the shot, but, more importantly, they cannot surrender drives into the lane. They must be cautious in how they go about challenging the three-point shot since they do not have a player behind them defending the basket like a DeAndre Jordan or Anthony Davis whom deters opponents from coming into the paint — thus they will surrender more shots from long range.