Culture of Hoops

The growth of Orlando Magic youth

[tps_title]Victor Oladipo[/tps_title]

Image courtesy of RMTip21/Flickr.

Image courtesy of RMTip21/Flickr.

The Magic’s prize possession from last year’s draft, Oladipo enjoyed a very solid rookie season. He was thrust into learning the point guard position after predominantly playing off the ball while at Indiana University. As expected, the freak athlete had some issues with his ball-handling and turnovers at times, but also showed improvement throughout the season.

His numbers overall may not jump off the page at you, but Oladipo was steady for the entirety of his rookie season. Seemingly each month, Oladipo saw his assists go up, capping off at 4.9 and 4.8 in February and March, respectively. While the dimes dipped down to 3.1 in April, much of that can be attributed to his minutes being closely monitored by Magic head coach Jacque Vaughn.

Oladipo had his struggles on the offensive end, shooting just 41.9 percent from the field and 32.7 percent from three, but showed he could be a lockdown type on the defensive side of the ball. He has some nice go-to moves on offense, including a pull-up jumper from the elbow, but will need to work on finishing around the rim, most notably with his left hand during the offseason.

The rookie was asked how he would grade himself on his rookie season, to which he replied, “I think I did okay, like a D+ or something. No, I don’t know; I think I did alright for myself. Again, there’s a lot of room for growth and a lot of room for improvement, so just going to attack this summer with an attitude to get better and I’m looking forward to do that.”

Needless to say, through his ups and downs, Oladipo had a solid rookie season and will undoubtedly continue to work hard in the offseason and get better. Plus, that’s the only way he can become one of the greatest in the league, right?

Pages: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8

Click to comment

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

To Top