Speaking of
the Magic’s new coach, Clifford says he's recovered fully from a health scare that forced him to take a medical leave of absence last season.
On the day he was introduced, new coach Steve Clifford reminded us of just how innovative, interesting and intoxicating the Orlando Magic used to be.
And in the days, months and years ahead, it will be up to Clifford to put the Magic into his own DeLorean time capsule and take them back to the future — back to an era when they were trendsetters and trailblazers instead of the flops and flubs they have become.
Before the Golden State Warriors and the Houston Rockets were stretching defenses and torching opponents with a barrage of 3-point bombs, Clifford helped devise the Stan Plan as part of Stan Van Gundy’s Magic staff that pioneered today’s wide-open spread ‘em and shred ‘em style of NBA basketball.
In many ways, Van Gundy’s 2009 Magic were groundbreakers
who opened the door and showed the rest of the league what the future would look like. They were a defensive-minded offensive juggernaut that made it to the NBA Finals by surrounding Dwight Howard with four shooters — setting the stage for the 4-out, 1-in motion offense that today has become all the rage at every level of basketball.
“I don’t think we get enough credit for a lot of this 4-out, 1-in style that started with that team,” said Clifford, who was one of Van Gundy’s trusted assistants. “We were one of the first teams that ever started playing 4-out. “
Believe it or not, the radical Orlando experiment began by happenstance when Magic starting power forward Tony Battie went down with a shoulder injury. During the offseason, the Magic had acquired high-priced free agent Rashard Lewis, a slender 6-foot-10 sharp shooter who made it clear when he signed he did not want to play the 4 (power forward) and only wanted to play the 3 (small forward).
Says Clifford: “I remember when Stan brought Rashard in, we were all holding our breaths when Stan told him, ‘Rashard, if you’ll play the 4, it’s going to be hard for you, but I think we can be really good.’ Rashard said, ‘If that’s what it’s going to take to win, then I will play the 4.’ … It changed everything; that was the move that set the tone.”
Recalls Van Gundy: “We had Rashard and Hedo [Turkoglu]. With Tony out, it made no sense to bring one of them off the bench. We were simply playing our best players. Rashard’s willingness to battle bigger, stronger 4s without complaint or excuses was the key to the whole thing.”
Van Gundy and his staff devised a scheme that made opponents pick their poison. At the time, Dwight Howard was a beast; the most dominant big man in the league who simply could not be single-covered. The high pick-androll became unstoppable. Defenses either collapsed on Dwight or they left Lewis, Turkoglu, Jameer Nelson, Rafer Alston, Courtney Lee, J.J. Redick, Mickael Pietrus or one of the Magic’s other shooters open for the 3.
“We had Jameer or Hedo handling, Dwight setting the pick and rolling and everyone else behind the arc,” Van Gundy says. “We thought we shot a lot of 3s back then. Now our 3-point attempts would be near the bottom of the league.”
But at the time, the Magic were considered the forerunners of the top-gunners. They led the league with 2,241 attempted 3-pointers and 849 made 3-pointers — including hitting a singlegame NBA record of 23 treys that stood until last season. It’s astonishing what’s happened to the league since. This season the Rockets set the NBA record with 3,470 attempted treys. The 2009-10 Magic’s 3-point attempts would have ranked 20th in the league.
Depressingly, this all shows just how incredibly inept the Magic rebuild has been since Van Gundy’s departure. He once had the Magic on the cutting edge of where the NBA was headed, but in the six years since they have fallen hopelessly behind the times. In an era when 3-point shooting is at an all-time premium, former GM Rob Hennigan drafted a bunch of players who couldn’t shoot.
Now, the new management team headed by Jeff Weltman, the president of basketball operations, is trying desperately to get the Magic back up to speed.
New coach Steve Clifford was part of the Stan Plan that helped transform the NBA, but now we are asking him to do something even more radical and revolutionary.
Please, Coach Cliff, can you somehow make the Magic relevant again?