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By John Denton
Dec. 23, 2015
ORLANDO – The holidays are for spending time with friends and family, and for Orlando Magic power forward Channing Frye that means being with teammates outside of the confines of basketball.
Frye has a family of his own with wife Lauren, 5-year-old son Hendrix and 2-year-old daughter Margaux, but he also considers his Magic teammates to be extended family members.
With that in mind, Frye helped to set up “Movie Night” with his Magic teammates and 10 other players joined him on Tuesday to watch “Star Wars: The Force Awakens.”
“We went to a movie as a team last night. Even though everybody has friends and family in town, for me it was about us getting that out of your system and doing something as a team,” Frye said. “You have (personal) team – which is your family – and you have (teammates) – which is your team and your family. That’s huge. Yes, it’s time for you to see your family that’s here, but we’re still a team and we’re going to be a part of one another’s lives and connect to each other.”
Frye said he thought Stars Wars directors “did a great job of paying homage to the original movies and cinematography” while also being “cheesy at times” and “multicultural.” Frye said the group was able to glide through the theater mostly unnoticed other than Tobias Harris, Nikola Vucevic and Victor Oladipo, who were noticed by fans.
“You have to approach this as, `these are the guys that I spend most of my days with,’ and I spend more time with them than I do my family mostly,” Frye said. “So when we go out there and play you have to have some kind of emotional attachment to (your teammates). You have to know how some guys like to be talked to and how some guys need to get pumped up. That’s how we’re going to get good. Look at some of the best teams in the NBA – the top two are Cleveland and Golden State – and you’d say that they have some of the best chemistry in the league. … If you have good chemistry and good attachment to one another, guys are going to lift one another up and will push each other.”
STUDYING THE NUMBERS: Scott Skiles is as gritty and old school as they come as far as being a coach who is tough, not allowing excuses and driving his players.
But Skiles is also progressive and accepting of the new wave of analytics in basketball. He and his staff have periodic meetings with Orlando’s analytics team and that info is used somewhat in determining what lineups that the Magic lean the heaviest on and the player pairings that are used for long stretches. There weren’t many “numbers guys” in the NBA when Skiles played in the late 1980s and throughout the 1990s, but he’s been very accepting of the analytical studies as a head coach.
“There was a little more going on back then than people thought, but they didn’t have full-blown analytics departments and guys that really, really dug into the numbers league-wide like now,” Skiles said of the widespread growth of analytics in today’s NBA game. “Almost all the time, (analytical analysis) backs up what you are thinking anyway. But on the occasion that you may be wrong, it’s good to know that and think about it.”
When Skiles made the daring decision to change the Magic’s starting lineup – he put in Channing Frye in at power forward, moved Tobias Harris and Evan Fournier to their more natural positions at small forward and shooting guard and he moved Victor Oladipo to the second unit – analytics played a major role in the coach’s move.
Frye, a dangerous weapon because of his ability to shoot 3-pointers from the power forward position has the highest offensive rating on the team at 108.9 points per 100 possessions – and his offensive rating (110.9) has been even better in his last 14 games as a starter.
As for Oladipo, the move to the bench has helped his performance as well. In addition to playing “first-team all-league defense,” according to Skiles, Oladipo has seen his offensive rating go from 99.2 points per 100 possessions in the first 12 games as a starter to 104.3 points per 100 possessions in the last 14 games as a reserve.
“We have two ways of evaluating it,” Skiles said of evaluating the Magic’s lineup shuffling. “One, is the eye test and what you see watching the game and watching the film. And then we have extensive analytics that we look at every game and as games go by. The numbers and the analytics guys go deep into everything and they prove that we’ve been better with Channing on the floor. Multiple players’ ratings are better (with Frye playing), but the reason I say there’s no permanence to it is because we’re not that type of team yet. We have to take it game-by-game and week-by-week and see how we’re playing.”
BACK FROM THE D-LEAGUE: The Magic recalled guard/forward Devyn Marble from the NBA Development League on Wednesday, partly to serve as insurance at the point guard spot with injuries to starter Elfrid Payton (sprained ankle) and C.J. Watson (strained calf).
Marble increased his value to the Magic by becoming a more versatile perimeter player of the past year. He came into the league as a small forward, but has since learned to play both shooting guard and point guard. Skiles experimented with Marble at point guard in the preseason and the coach likes him there because of his nose for the ball and how his long-armed length gives other ball-handlers fits.
In eight games with the Erie Bayhawks, Marble averaged 13.9 points, 6.4 rebounds, 2.9 assists and 1.63 steals in 32.2 minutes a night.
