Okeke settling into his role
After the Magic traded away veterans Nikola Vucevic, Evan Fournier and Aaron Gordon two weeks ago, the coaching staff has been leaning on second-year forward Chuma Okeke to step into a new, consistent role.
Okeke missed all of his rookie season a year ago while recovering from a torn ACL he suffered during the 2019 NCAA Tournament. The Magic drafted him in the first round out of Auburn in 2019. Okeke has shown he can be a versatile piece for the Magic on both ends of the floor, and he’s finally finding a comfort level.
In the six games since the trade deadline, Okeke has averaged 16.2 points and 6.3 rebounds per game. He had a career high 22 points against Portland a day after the team’s shake-up and he pulled down a career-high 10 rebounds against New Orleans last week. He has shot 38-of-78 from the
field (49%) in the past six games.
“I’ve been feeling like I’m being more aggressive both on the offensive end and the defensive end,” Okeke said. “Each game, us as a team, we’ve been getting better, we’ve been starting to gel more and play more as a team. ... I feel like we’re getting better every game.”
Magic coach Clifford said Tuesday’s practice went a long way toward giving his players more familiarity with each other outside of a game setting. Coming off a five-game road trip, the third-year Magic coach saw plenty of things to work on.
“We can either go easy on ourselves and say we haven’t been together long, or we can fix it, and that’s what we tried to work toward today,” Clifford said. “Today was excellent. They’re still a little bit tired, but we did a lot of team organizational things ... flash defense, pick-androll defense, defensive protections, a lot of fiveon-none offense just to get organized with some against switching and some against different catch-and-shoots.
“We added a couple of different offensive sets and I thought the guys were really good. We’ll be able to do something similar to this on Thursday and I think it will help a lot.”
The Magic begin a four-game homestand Wednesday night at 7 against the Washington Wizards.