Augustin motivated by critics
MIAMI — Orlando Magic point guard D.J. Augustin knows there are naysayers out there. He knows about all the comments about how the Magic need a point guard. To the 6-foot veteran’s credit, however, he doesn’t let it hinder his game. Instead, the negativity drives him.
“I kind of use it as motivation. Since I was little, people have always doubted me because I was small and what-not,” said the 31-year-old Augustin, who is in his 11th season in the NBA this year and his third with the Magic. “It just motivated me and made me want to prove people wrong and try to work hard every day to do what I needed to do as basketball player.”
Magic coach Steve Clifford sure likes what he sees out of Augustin as his floor general. “D.J. is playing at a really high level. He’s a pro. He takes care of himself off the court. He’s in a great routine. He gets ready to play and he’s highly, highly skilled and highly competitive, plus he scores,” Clifford said. “He’s a veteran guy, he knows his teammates, he has a good idea of how he has to play to play well, and he competes. He competes hard at both ends of the floor.”
The statistics show he’s doing what he’s being paid to do. He’s making players around him better, he’s making very few mistakes and when he needs to score, he can do that as well. Augustin leads all NBA starting point guards in taking care of the basketball. Heading into Tuesday’s victory — in which he scored 11 points and had 5 assists — Augustin had a league-low 26 turnovers. The next closest was Darren Collison of Indiana with 35. Augustin also was averaging 5.4 assists and 10.4 points.
“It’s important for any point guard to not turn the ball over, but myself, personally, I don’t pay attention to that stuff,” Augustin said of the stats. “I didn’t even know that. I just go out there and play every game.”
His teammates certainly appreciate what he does, and that’s what Augustin is all about. “That’s always been my game — to make my teammates look good and be a pass-first point guard. I’ve always been like that since I was young,” Augustin said. “I look for my shots every now and then, but I feel like when you get your teammates involved things open up for you as well.
“My teammates do a great job of being where they need to be so I can get the ball to them, and when you’re playing with guys like Vooch [Nikola Vucevic] and Evan [Fournier] and A.G. [Aaron Gordon], all the talented guys, they draw so much attention it leaves things open for me every once in a while to score.”
What he’s done is even more impressive considering that he’s done it with a new coach, a new offense and a few new teammates in the rotations. “Just learning the offense, knowing the offense, knowing what coach expects from me and what he wants me to do as a point guard is an important job, so I guess you just gotta kinda weed things out and find a rhythm,” Augustin said. “Now that I guess we’re 23 games in, it’s all starting to come together and feel better.”