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By John Denton
Jan. 3, 2016
CLEVELAND – With his team’s defense in dramatic decline over the past eight games, Orlando Magic coach Scott Skiles is faced now with the good kind of dilemma regarding his top defensive player: What to do with Victor Oladipo?
Moving Oladipo into a reserve role six weeks produced just the result that Skiles was hoping for as the Magic played their best basketball of the season and ripped off 15 wins in 18 games.
But with Orlando losing the past two games in frustrating fashion, Elfrid Payton suffering a series of ankle injuries and the defense dropping off, Skiles is looking for more ways to get Oladipo’s ball-hawking, high-energy skills on the floor.
Skiles said following lopsided losses in Washington and Cleveland on consecutive nights that he would have to consider changing the rotation again because of recent struggles with the starting five. Skiles must wrestle with whether or not he wants to keep Oladipo in a role where he’s thrived or insert him back into the starting five for an injection of life and defense for Monday’s game in suburban Detroit against the Pistons (18-16).
“Victor has been our most consistent energy guy. That’s something that we can count on,” Skiles said on Sunday. “I’m not leery of (changing his role). It’s something that we may do. Victor is our best on-the-ball defender. Over (eight) games and you have a precipitous drop like that, we have to address the defensive end.
“When we talked to the guys (Sunday) morning about if we have any intention of playing in the postseason or having a chance of winning a series, generally you don’t win a (playoff) game 120-111,” continued Skiles, referring to both the short-term and long-term benefits of playing solid defense. “You might win one game, but generally it’s 96-91. If we don’t understand that now, there won’t be a postseason anyway.”
NBA teams don’t usually practice following back-to-back sets of games, but Skiles put his team through a film session and a light workout on Sunday so that he could ram home his points about the team needing to fix its recent defensive gaffes. To that end, every drill and scrimmage session that the Magic did on Sunday was laced heavily with defensive attention.
“Today was good and we felt like we were back in training camp a little bit,” Oladipo said. “But it was good for us and it’s going to get us back on track.”
Orlando (19-15) could be without Payton on Monday night after the already hobbled point guard was accidentally kicked in the shin/ankle in the third quarter of Saturday’s loss. Payton, who is already battling two sprained ankles and a cold, didn’t practice on Sunday and will be a game-time decision on Monday night.
Potentially losing Payton could be significant for a couple of reasons. First, Payton claims to have never missed a basketball because of injury at any level and he’s played in 116 straight NBA games over the past two seasons. Also, the Magic might need all the defenders they have against the potent pick-and-roll of Detroit’s Reggie Jackson and Andre Drummond.
“It was on a screen in the backcourt and they got me right in the ankle,” Payton said on Sunday while icing his lower leg. “Same spot (as the earlier sprain). It hurts a lot, but I’ll just see how it goes (on Monday). I’ll try to warm it up and do what I’ve been doing and try and give it a go.”
That’s where Oladipo could potentially come back into the picture as a starter. He started 12 of the first 14 games of the season – he missed two games because of a concussion – and averaged 12.8 points, 6.2 rebounds, 3.6 assists and 1.3 steals a game. In the 20 games he’s been used as a reserve, Oladipo has averaged 12.1 points, 3.8 rebounds, 4.2 assists and 1.2 steals a night.
The third-year guard has easily been Orlando’s best defender all season, playing what Skiles repeatedly calls “first-team all-defense” against foes this season. He ranks in the NBA’s top 10 among guards in limiting the shooting percentages of foes.
Oladipo almost single-handedly kept Orlando in Friday’s game in Washington with his on-ball pressure and ability to fight over screens against Wizards’ all-star John Wall. But when Oladipo was out of the game or guarding other players, Wall had his way with the Magic’s defense. Facing a Detroit team that will repeatedly attempt to run Jackson (19.9 ppg.) off the screens of the 6-foot-11, 279-pound Drummond (18.1 ppg., 16.1 rpg., 1.5 bpg.), Oladipo knows that he will have to try and come up with some tricks to keep himself in the mix when Detroit resorts to a bevy of pick-and-roll plays.
“You’ve got to be very in-tune because they do a great job (with pick-and-roll plays) and they have a lot of shooters around (Jackson and Drummond),” Oladipo said. “We’ll have to be ready to guard that at a high level. (Against screens) you have to make yourself small, make yourself skinny, get into the ball-handler – there are a lot of ways to get over screeners. There are a lot of good screeners in this league, but at the end of the day we just have to do it.”
Stopping opposing point guard’s dribble penetration could go a long way toward stopping Orlando’s recent slide defensively. Once in the NBA’s top five in several key categories, Orlando has seen those numbers tumble over the last eight games – four wins and four losses. Since Dec. 19, the Magic rank 26th in the NBA in field goal percentage allowed (46.8 percent), 27th in defensive rating (107.8 points per 100 possessions) and 14th in the points surrendered (100 ppg.).
“That’s unacceptable considering where we were,” Skiles said of the defensive slide. “That’s basically all we did (on Sunday) and we’ve got to work our way out of it. It doesn’t have anything to do with youth or anything like that. It just has to do with multiple efforts and focus and concentration on all of the things that we have to get done.”
If Payton can’t play, Oladipo said he’ll be ready to step in and initiate the team’s offense from the point guard position. He has spent almost all of the past two seasons at his more natural position of shooting guard, but he said that he can always lean on his time at point guard as a rookie for experience.
Basically, Oladipo stressed, it’s just about doing whatever necessary now to help the Magic get back on track defensively and back to winning games.
“Everything happens for a reason, right? That (experience) is helping me right now,” Oladipo said of his time at point guard early in his career. “It was tough at first in the beginning when I was a rookie trying to figure it out. But now I have to be (ready) because some guys are hurt and I have to step in and play that role. God has blessed me to be able to do multiple things out there and I’m going to go there and do what it takes to lead the team and help us win because that’s what it is all about.”
