Evan Fournier’s rise may surprise us, but it doesn’t surprise Scott Skiles

He didn’t know it but Orlando Magic swingman Evan Fournier had been waiting for someone like Scott Skiles. A hard-nosed, no-nonsense coach who cares more about sweat equity than draft slot or country of origin. A combative contrarian who enjoys debunking stereotypes. A guy who will give him every minute he earns.

At the beginning of his fourth NBA season, Fournier still faced the daunting task of getting regular rotation minutes. On a team that featured two 20-year old forwards and one 23-year-old shooting guard who were taken among the top five picks in the past three NBA drafts, Fournier didn’t figure to be a top priority. Yet, after Skiles changed the starting lineup, Fournier has emerged as a crucial component on a ball club that has won seven of 10 to become the NBA’s most surprising success story and, at 13-11, a surprising playoff contender in the improved East as we pass the quarter pole of the 2015-16 season.

Right now that amounts to more playing time than any of his Magic teammates. Fournier, tall and lean at 6’7, 205, is also the team leader of a balanced attack, getting his 14.6 points per game on an efficient mixture of splashes beyond the three-point arc and finishes off the dribble at the rim.

Fournier has emerged as one of the team’s most dependable performers thanks to the unconventional approach of straight-laced Skiles. But it’s also a sign that coach and team will do whatever it takes to spark a Magic team with high ambitions in the suddenly resurgent Eastern Conference. In late September, four months after hiring Skiles to replace Jacque Vaughn, GM Rob Hennigan stated, “Our goal is to make the playoffs but our expectation is that we’re in the playoff mix from start to finish.”

Skiles has a history of turning ball clubs around. He more than doubled Chicago’s win total, from 23 to 47 his first full year coaching the Bulls in 2004-05. It only took him two years to bump the Milwaukee Bucks up 20 victories, from 26 to 34 his first season there in 2008-09, and then up to 46 the following campaign.

Skiles has stressed to the media that he wanted to be choosy about his next opportunity, preferring to interview only with those he believed could be a good fit. “I like this team,” he said of the Magic during the press conference to announce his hiring in late May. “From afar, I like the things Rob has done.”

But few people, if anyone, knew that one of the things he liked was Orlando’s acquisition of Fournier from the Nuggets (for Arron Afflalo) in June of 2014. That was especially true after the Magic drafted yet another wing in hotshot small forward Mario Hezonja, a shooting specialist from Croatia, with the fifth pick in the draft a month after Skiles was hired. The conventional wisdom was that the defense-first coach would love honing the renowned defensive tenacity of his promising young backcourt duo of Elfrid Payton and Victor Oladipo, and that the residual value of Fournier’s scoring prowess would be diminished by Hezonja’s arrival.

But from the start, Skiles’ plan, which included a role for Fournier, trumped convention. Asked last week if Fournier’s emergence was a surprise to him, he replied, “Ah, not really. I was high on him before [becoming the Magic coach], just watching him. He is very versatile, and there are a lot of things you can do with him.”

Most obviously, Skiles exploited Fournier’s ability to swing between small forward and shooting guard. He began the season with a starting lineup that featured the undersized forward tandem of Fournier at the three and Tobias Harris at the four. Skiles, who concedes that Fournier is “really a two guard,” appreciated the way he battled against small forwards in the original lineup. “Yeah, I don’t know why Evan has gotten that reputation [as a mediocre defender],” Skiles said. “We always thought he was a good defender.”

But that smaller lineup yielded 108 points per 100 possessions and had a minus 13 net rating in their first 115 minutes together. The Magic were still improved at 6-8, but the coach believed he had to make a change.

To get more spacing on the floor and lessen the redundancy among the backcourt tandem of Oladipo and Payton, both relentless penetrators with questionable jumpers, the coach inserted Channing Frye in at power forward, bumped Harris and Fournier down to their more natural positions, and made Oladipo a sixth man. In 167 minutes together, that unit has produced a net rating of +8.6 points per 100 possessions, including a sparkling defensive rating of 99.8 points allowed that has helped propel the Magic from 25th to seventh in overall defensive efficiency this season.

It takes a bold coach to bring all three of the club’s top-five lottery picks — including their consensus best player in Oladipo -- off the bench while starting Fournier, who in November turned down a four-year, $32 million extension offer and is playing for a new contract.

Fournier took a risky leap, not only purposefully banking his future on his performance this year, but doing so while introducing himself to his fourth different coach of his four NBA seasons.

“Yeah, that’s hard, because you have to show everything you can do all over again,” Fournier says. “The new coach has to be shown that you can shoot, that you can play defense—you’ve got to earn his confidence. That’s part of being a professional, but as a player you like stability.”

What Fournier was able to show Skiles flew in the face of all the negative stereotypes of foreign players who can’t, or won’t, defend. Against all odds, the mutual admiration between the risk-taking Frenchman and his traditionalist coach grew from their shared approach on the defensive end.

Defense, of course, is Skiles’ calling card and the first seed he wanted to plant in his new charges’ heads. “Drilling it all the time every day. We don’t relent,” the coach said simply. “Of course you need buy in from the guys and they have done a good job of that. But if you want to be a good defensive team at this level, it is boring, tedious. You have to do it every day, the same drills over and over. You have to be in the right spots and understand all of the things that go into it. It is hard to be very creative with it, because at the pro level it is [about defending] post ups, pick and rolls, guys coming off pin-downs, a lot of similar action. And you have just got to dig in and commit to it.”

Fournier made the commitment early. “If you’re from Europe, people have a tendency to say, ‘oh, he can’t defend,’ or ‘he’s just a shooter.’ They think we’re soft and it’s not true. There are soft players from Europe, and America too. It goes both ways.” Some of the bite in his words may stem from the fact that Fournier has heard the contact-averse rep even though he was raised by his judo champion father in France. For years now, he’s worn a tattoo inside his right wrist with the scripted word, “Régularité.” On the inside of his left wrist, “Intensité.” Consistency and Intensity.

“Let me tell you: You’re not gonna play for Coach Skiles if you don’t play defense,” says Tobias Harris, who played for Skiles his rookie season in Milwaukee.

“I love Evan’s game—he is fearless,” Harris added. “He wants to win more than anybody—I think of ourselves as a unit out there. He wants to compete as a warrior out there and is one of my favorite players to play with.”

That fearlessness extends to the offensive end, where Fournier is more than “just a shooter.” More than 45 percent of his total field goals have come from within five feet of the basket this season, due largely to the fact that he is shooting 57.6 percent on shots at the rim, most of which (61.4 percent) are unassisted.

“He has been our best finisher,” Skiles said. “We’ve struggled to finish as a team—we’re getting better at it now—but Evan is our best at it.” And more often than not, he’s doing it off the bounce—well over half of his two-pointers are unassisted this season.

If Fournier stays in his current range of 31.9 minutes per game — he’s had more difficulty staying on the court recently due to foul trouble -- he will establish a new career high in playing time at some point in February. And if he retains his level of all-around play, and the Magic keep their nose above .500, he has a chance to earn the NBA’s Most Improved Player Award this season, which he can set alongside the two similar trophies he won in France in 2011 and 2012.

In any case, it is clear that, if he gets paid, Fournier has found a comfortable home under Skiles. “I am very happy with the Magic. I don’t want to leave,” he stresses.

Meanwhile, even as Skiles praises Oladipo for his selflessness in taking the sixth man role, and repeats that the current situation isn’t permanent, his respect for Fournier comes through in a reassurance he made before the game at Minnesota last month.

“Now that Evan has gone back to the two, he has Victor right behind him. So one of the things we want to guard against is him not looking over his shoulder. We want him to be confident and shoot the ball well and play like he can.”

So, does Evan Fournier, who at 23 is actually six months younger than Oladipo, have to worry about regular playing time?

“No,” Skiles said curtly.

So he will remain one of your key guys going forward?

“Absolutely. No question.”

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