By Liam McKeone
While the likes of Andre Drummond and Giannis Antetokounmpo have (rightfully) monopolized the media discussion for this year’s Most Improved Player, Aaron Gordon is making his own quiet case down in Orlando. The Magic were the early darlings of the 2017 season, getting off to a roaring start and going 7-3 in the first ten games while Gordon dominated, dropping 40 points and generally looking like everything Orlando has been hoping for since drafting him in 2014. While the Magic now sit at 10-14 and have regressed across the board since their hot start, Gordon has retained much of his early-season momentum, thanks to a positional change and a sudden confidence in his shooting hand.
By trading away Serge Ibaka at the trade deadline last season, Orlando finally fixed one of its biggest obstacles as a franchise moving forward: playing Gordon out of position. He’s a bit too slow to consistently score on or defend small forwards, yet has been playing at small forward since he was drafted. The Magic, however, have finally come to their senses, and with a full offseason dedicated to game planning Gordon as their first option at power forward, it’s all beginning to come together. With Gordon at the four, they become a much better team defensively; Gordon may be too slow to consistently guard wing players, but he’s athletic enough that he can hang with just about any player in the league for one possession, and can switch from his man to any others at will.
This kind of positional flexibility allows for the Magic to plan around their own defensive liabilities in Nikola Vucevic and Elfrid Payton. When the effort is all there, he’s one of the better one-on-one defenders this league has to offer.
The biggest difference-maker this season for Gordon remains to be his three-point shot. When he was taken out of Arizona three years ago, everyone knew he could jump out of the gym, but the big question was his shooting ability. For his first few seasons in the league, it remained a well-founded concern. Gordon gave us a handful of amazing dunks every season, but he couldn’t become a consistent scoring option because teams didn’t respect this jump shot. Why would they? He shot under 30 percent from three over his first three seasons, and only 35 percent on midrange jumpshots during that same time span. He improved incrementally, but had yet to take that jump that can so often define a career. So far, Gordon looks like he’s taken that jump in 2017.
He’s cooled off since his preposterous start, but Gordon is still averaging 18 points a game, mostly on the back of his 42 percent three-point shooting. By forcing teams to defend his three-point shot, he’s able to use his other-worldly athleticism to blow by defenders and get to the bucket with much greater ease than when they played six feet off of him. This is creating better spacing for his teammates as well, and the Magic rank as one of the better offenses in the league. The Magic have been bad for a long time, but their path to contention remains steadfastly on the shoulders of Gordon. It’s taken a few years, but at only 22, Gordon may just be making the leap from stud to superstar.
