





I just though it would be nice to talk about something other than JV's imminent departure.

Driving the Ball:

- Ranks 11th in the NBA in Team PPG created on drives with 10.8. This puts him above players including; Rose, Westbrook, Lowry, Parker, Wall, and Wade.

- In Points/48 on drives Oladipo ranks 9th with 8.5. Ranking ahead of players like; Lillard, Parker, Irving, Lowry, Wall, and Dragic.

- Oladipo not surprisingly does not fare as well in the FG% on drives. He ranks 32nd with a FG% of 44.9. This puts him in the company of guys like Teague, Westbrook, Jennings, MCW, and Lawson. (Interestingly Trey Burke ranks last out of all 55 players in the NBA with at least 150 drives with a FG% of 35.7.)

- Victor has slightly raised his FG% on drives this year. 44.9% in 14-15 compared to 42.9% in 13-14.

- Ranks 18th in the NBA in Team PPG created on drives with 10.0. Placing him ahead of Rose, Conley, Wall, Rondo, Curry, and Dragic.

- I wasn't willing to count all of the players ahead of him in FG% on drives. Elfrid is shooting 41.4% when he drives the basketball.

- There isn't a stat that shows team FG% on drives by a certain player. But Elfrid accounts for 6 pts/game via assist when driving the ball, compared to 4 pts/game. There are plenty of times where Payton could force a shot, but instead he does something like this He creates essentially a 100% shot with the Vucevic uncontested dunk. Because he assists more than he scores, this leads me to believe that despite Payton shooting 41.4% his drives could lead to more efficient scoring for the Magic.

- Tobias is driving the ball more this year (4.1 drives/game compared to 2.2 last year.) But shooting a worse percentage (34.1% this year and 46.4% last year.) I wonder how the shift to playing almost exclusively at SF is related to this?

Passing the Ball

Elfrid Payton

- Ranks 12th in the NBA in Pts created by Assist/48. This puts him ahead of players Holiday, D-Will, Irving, James, Conley, and Rose. I realize that all of these players are score-first, but they are also highly regarded NBA veteran ballhandlers. Another Trey Burke comparison; Payton accounts for 7 more pts/48 created by assist (23.2 to 16.5.)

Victor Oladipo

- The Oladipo at PG experiment does not seem to be going well. In Pts created by Assist/48 Victor ranks below big men: Noah, Diaw, David West, Horford and Griffin.

Shooting the Ball

Tobias Harris

- In catch and shoot situations Tobias is shooting 39.2% this year (up from 31.6% last season.) This puts him ahead of Ryan Anderson, Trey Burke, Love, Lebron and Iso Joe.

- Tobias' shooting off the dribble has gone down to 35% this year (down from 43.6% last season.) He still shoots a higher percentage off the bounce than Lowry, Rose, Beal, Burke, and I. Thomas.

Victor Oladipo

- Oladipo has seen a slight rise in his catch and shoot percentage (37.6% this year compared to 35.1% last year.) In catch and shoot percentage Vic ranks ahead of Lebron, Parsons, Love, McLemore. Trey Burke is shooting 38.0%

- Oladipo's off the dribble percentage is nearly identical (35.4% this year and 35.2% last year.) He is shooting better on pull-up jumpers than Melo, Kemba, Lillard, Rose, Lowry, I. Thomas and Trey Burke.

- The notion that Frye is being coached into far fewer 3's than last year seems to be suspect. In catch and shoot situations with the Suns, Frye scored 6.9 ppg on 40.0% shooting. With the Magic Frye is scoring 6.4 ppg on 41.4% shooting

I thought it would be interesting to see how Tobias and Vic have progressed from last year. I also thought it would be useful to see where Magic players rank in driving and shooting the ball and compare them to how other more highly regarded players are performing this year. I realize this isn't a perfect study, I should have used EFG% for the shooting data, but by the time I found it I had already put way to much time into creating a FanPost. Hopefully this will spark some conversation about something other than firing Vaughn and arguing about Mark Jackson.

Go Magic!