Magic's Oladipo to come off bench vs. Knicks

Orlando Magic head coach Scott Skiles is ready to make adjustments to get his team back in the win column following losses in three of their last four outings. Moving Victor Oladipo to the second unit will be his first drastic change of the new season.

The 23-year-old Indiana alumnus will come off the bench on Wednesday night when the Magic host Carmelo Anthony and the 8-7 New York Knicks at Amway Center.

Veteran forward Channing Frye will be inserted into the starting lineup at the four spot in his stead, along with Elfrid Payton, Evan Fournier, Tobias Harris, and Nikola Vucevic.

"It’s nothing punitive," Skiles said after shootaround on Wednesday, according to the Orlando Sentinel's Josh Robbins.

"It’s just we feel like we’ve got to try to find a little bit better balance. I’d like Victor to have some more opportunities like he’s had a little bit in the past where he can be on top of the floor and attack and get a little bit more vertical and not only get to the rim but just be a little bit more on the attack but not necessarily start the game that way."

This move will also allow Fournier and Harris to play at their more natural positions. Fournier has predominantly been a shooting guard throughout his career, but has played a career-high 63 percent of his minutes at small forward through the team's first 14 games. Harris has also been playing out of position at power forward (82 percent of minutes), having played nearly three-fourths of his minutes last season at small forward.

It's a relatively small sample size with Frye playing alongside four of the starters sans Oladipo, but when comparing the numbers to what Skiles' go-to lineup delivers, the differences are rather staggering:

(Numbers courtesy stats.NBA.com)

Even with the change of role, Oladipo won't allow his confidence to diminish as he prepares himself to become a backup.

"You just can’t let it do that," Oladipo said. "I think the biggest thing for anybody that would be put into a situation like this or go through adversity or whatever you want to call it - even though I don’t think it’s anything important - (is) don’t listen to what everybody else is saying, because everybody else doesn’t know what’s going on ... "

"Just do whatever it takes to help your team win, and that’s what I’m doing. I’m going to embrace it. I’m going to get it poppin’, like I always say. Whatever it takes to win, that’s what I’m going to do."

Oladipo is averaging 12.8 points on 37 percent shooting, along with 6.2 rebounds, 3.6 assists, and 1.3 steals in 32.3 minutes per game.