Victor Oladipo: 'I'm finally starting to realize how good I can be'

As the Orlando Magic continue to search for a new head coach, Victor Oladipo may have come up with a good selling point: Victor Oladipo can be very good.

The sophomore guard reflected on his second campaign this week, and despite the team finishing a somewhat disappointing 25-57 - "It was a tough year," he conceded - the Indiana product sounds pleased with his individual development.

"I'm finally starting to realize how good I can be and what my potential is," Oladipo said. "So I'm definitely going to keep working on getting better so I can exhaust my potential."

Oladipo's second campaign was an interesting one at the team level, as the Magic spent a good deal of time experimenting with an Elfrid Payton-Oladipo backcourt. That duo has tons of defensive upside but seemed a curious offensive fit considering neither is much of an outside shooting threat off the ball.

The returns in Year One weren't bad - in the 1,682 minutes Oladipo and Payton played together, the Magic were outscored by 3.9 points per-100 possessions, a better performance than their -5.6 mark as a team for the entire season.

Oladipo also seemed, at times, to make strides as an off-ball shooter, but he was inconsistent from 3-point range. He did see a second-half scoring surge - he averaged 20.3 points after the All-Star Break, compared to 16.6 before - but that didn't come with an uptick in efficiency. Overall, the change in Oladipo's offensive numbers in his second year are encouraging.

The one second-place vote he received in the Most Improved Player voting overstates his development some, but he's certainly not wrong to be encouraged by the strides he's made. Another offseason spent working on his long-range stroke and focusing on a full-time transition to the two-guard should do him and the Magic wonders as they look to take the next step on the development curve under a new bench boss.