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No. 13: Orlando Magic
Last Season: 25-57
13th place in East; missed playoffs
Beneath the rampant hand-wringing about the Philadelphia 76ers' losing and the schadenfreude laughter at the expense of the Los Angeles Lakers and New York Knicks franchises, there lies the sorry Orlando Magic, losing more than all of them. Over the last three seasons, the Magic have piled up a ghastly 68-178 record, giving them more defeats than every team in the NBA since the curtains closed on the Stan Van Gundy-Dwight Howard era.
So, what now? Orlando prays Super Mario comes to the rescue. That would be Mario Hezonja, the team's 2015 No. 5 overall pick from Croatia. The 20-year-old joins a squad bubbling with young talent, but no rudder. Scott Skiles hopes to change that, taking over the head-coaching duties after Jacque Vaughn failed to sufficiently incubate the promising youngsters. The gritty Skiles, who is notorious for having a short leash on rookies, inherits a team long on potential and short on results. And so Year 4 of the post-Howard rebuild begins.
The rebuild wasn't going to happen overnight. But it also wasn't supposed to take this long. With lottery rookies Elfrid Payton and Aaron Gordon joining an already green roster, expectations weren't high for Orlando last season, but the Magic somehow disappointed yet again. The team finished 13 games behind the eighth-seeded Brooklyn Nets, a squad that finished six games under .500. Three-year head coach Jacque Vaughn was shown the door before the All-Star break, leaving assistant coach James Borrego to call the shots.
Even though Gordon missed two months with a broken foot, the season wasn't a total disaster. The organization did see Tobias Harris and Nikola Vucevic develop into go-to scorers on the block. At just 22 years of age, Harris finished fourth in scoring at the small forward position while Vucevic was one of four players to average 19 points and 10 rebounds per game last season, joining some guys named Anthony Davis, DeMarcus Cousins and LaMarcus Aldridge.
One problem: The Magic still couldn't play a lick of defense. It's true that side of the ball did see slight improvement under Borrego's leadership, but Orlando still hemorrhaged 105.2 points per 100 possessions to their opponents, the sixth-worst rate in the league. The big signing of Harris' cousin, Channing Frye, fell flat on its face; he fell out of the rotation by season's end, notching career lows in rebounding rate and field goal percentage. Ultimately, the diaper-dandy squad was as soft as a newborn baby's bum. With Payton and Victor Oladipo running the backcourt, the team finished with the lowest free throw/field goal ratio in the NBA and the fifth-lowest of the 3-point era.
The Magic front office noticed the team's lack of tenacity. Enter Skiles.