Orlando GM Rob Hennigan discusses his team’s inconsistent season

Orlando Magic general manager Rob Hennigan was tasked with presiding over one of the tougher rebuilding projects in recent memory back in 2012, with only the Brooklyn Nets’ ineptitude saving him from digging out of the league’s deepest hole. He inherited a team with no coach, and a franchise player in Dwight Howard that didn’t have the temerity to publicly demand a trade, yet still wanted out.

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Orlando did end up dealing Howard in the summer of 2012, intelligently refusing to take on a big contract in exchange for the All-Star, but because they were rebuilding following a Howard-led playoff season, the team had to wait a year before acquiring a lottery-bred young prospect to build around. That prospect (Victor Oladipo), however, came from the 2013 NBA draft – one of the weakest in league history. The team’s eventual coach, the highly-regarded Jacque Vaughn, did not work out. The team has worked within the lower realms of the lottery in the years since and is still without a showcase star to build around.

The Magic took in an expected bump early in 2015-16 due to the first-year coaching work of former Orlando guard Scott Skiles, starting on a 19-13 clip. Since then the team has lost eight of nine; and unfortunately the team’s last three wins have come against woebegone opponents from New Orleans and Brooklyn (twice).

As a result, the Magic are now stuck a game below .500 at the squad’s 2015-16 midpoint, and a game out of the Eastern playoff bracket. Due to the 41-game nature of the team’s current standing, Hennigan decided to sit down with Josh Robbins at the Orlando Sentinel to discuss his team’s up and down season:

Let’s call a spade a spade: It’s a product of being extremely young across the board and still learning how to win in the NBA. But we’ve shown we can play well against top-level competition. Yet we’ve also shown that we go through phases of inconsistent play and effort. So whether it’s game-to-game or sometimes even possession-to-possession, we sort of do fall into, I think, a collective struggle at times. And so we need to keep working to address that. We need to keep sticking with it.

[…]

But if you take a step back and look at the big picture, I’d say, by and large, we’ve made considerable progress. We’re a game out of the eighth seed in a much-improved Eastern Conference. We’ve played more games decided by three points or less than any team in the league. The next step for us is obviously doing a better job of closing out those games, and I think the key thing to remember is we’re doing it primarily with players in their first, second, third, fourth and fifth years. I looked up this stat the other day: Eighty-six percent of our total minutes played this season have been played by players with five years of NBA experience or fewer, and I believe that’s the second-highest percentage in the NBA behind Philadelphia.

It’s true, the Magic are young. The frustrating thing about this club is that they appear to be the wrong kind of “young.”

This isn’t to completely dismiss the team’s core. Oladipo remains a solid two-way player who has thrived in a sixth man role. Aaron Gordon is a highlight machine that we’re chuffed to see fully healthy, and he’s only 20. Guard Elfrid Payton is still a little careless with the ball, but he’s learning on the level and only 21. The squad has traded for both Evan Fournier and Nikola Vucevic, at ages 23 and 25, and they’ve provided solid contributions. Tobias Harris, the team’s highest-paid player, won’t turn 24 until the offseason.

Is there a star, here, though? And with the Magic either on their way toward the team’s first playoff berth since 2012 or a likely run in the low lottery, is the team in place to eventually grab one?

Orlando will have cap space this summer, but it also has the restricted free agency of Fourier and Andrew Nicholson (who is forever being pulled in and out of the rotation) to consider. In a weak free agent class full of teams with plenty of teams that will be anxious to spend once Kevin Durant says “dude, no,” Fournier will have his suitors. And the team will have competition as it looks to build.

Scott Skiles can coach, and the team has improved from 24th to 11th this season defensively despite handing major minutes to Vucevic and Gordon, two players that have a lot to figure out up front. Veteran Channing Frye has started 29 games and nominally plays center, but he boasts a small forward-sized rebound rate. For Skiles to have nearly a top ten defense with a roster this young and with this many holes is an accomplishment.

All the worrying Skiles hallmarks are there, however. The team is dead last in free throw rate, free throws attempted, and free throws made. The team fouls too much, and it has only moved up three spots in offensive efficiency this year, to 24th in the NBA. The bumped hasn’t bumped as much as anyone would like.

What’s worse is that everyone involved appears to be blameless. None of the team’s lottery picks should be chided for not playing like an All-Star to-be. Skiles is coaching as he always has, doing well to start; and as we stated above GM Rob Hennigan was given a miserable set of circumstances to start over with.

Magic fans, sick of Big Name Centers leaving Florida for Los Angeles, probably aren’t as enthused with pushing for a superstar. As if the Magic could pull off some Herschel Walker-styled trade and reel one in. The Boston Celtics, who also possess everyone’s next lottery pick, haven’t even been able to thus far with a similarly-styled batch of on-court talent.

It’s tough out there, for a rebuilder. Weirdly, are those Philadelphia 76ers going to come out ahead of everyone in this thing?

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Kelly Dwyer is an editor for Ball Don’t Lie on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at [email protected] or follow him on Twitter! Follow @KDonhoops