Is winning a bad thing right now for the Magic?
By sfenech
The experience of winning basketball games and creating a positive culture outweighs the potential risk of receiving a worse lottery pick for Orlando Magic.
The Orlando Magic are currently on a three-game winning streak., their best streak of the season. Winning streaks usually inspire optimism, but the current NBA Draft Lottery odds and rules can make winning games bittersweet for the league’s worst teams.
The Magic have already suffered through multiple seasons with one of the league’s bottom-three rosters in regards to talent. Simply put, the Magic are not in the conversation when the league’s least talented teams are debated anymore. Such a thought is reflected in the standings.
The New York Knicks, Philadelphia 76ers, Los Angeles Lakers and Minnesota Timberwolves are far behind the rest of the league. In different ways, each of the aforementioned franchise’s management has made a move or two that hinted at potential tanking for the remainder of the season.
While an argument could be made that Orlando’s front office did not do everything they could to maximize this team’s ability to win basketball games prior to the season, they did nothing to hamstring their team at any point either. The firing of Jacque Vaughn was the tangible proof of the frustration felt as this year’s squad failed to live up to expectations.
The current roster has the talent to compete for a playoff spot. Qualifying for the postseason for the first time in the post-Dwight Howard era should certainly be the primary goal for next season.The roster is flush with young talent and even a few players that are trending toward playing at an All-Star level.
Nikola Vucevic had a very strong argument to be included in this year’s festivities, and Victor Oladipo has shown flashes of brilliance. Elfrid Payton has continued to improve as the season has progressed, and although raw, Aaron Gordon has proven to be the athletic freak the Magic hoped they were getting with the fourth overall pick in last year’s draft.
If the season were to end today, the Magic would enter the draft lottery with an 8.8 percent chance of winning the first pick. Unfortunately for Orlando, the odds of the organization having a better statistical shot at securing the first pick are slim. The odds of making the Playoffs, according to Hollinger’s Playoff Odds on ESPN.com are even slimmer (just 0.2 percent).
The closest team to the Magic are the Lakers, but even Los Angeles is five games behind Orlando in the win column. For better or worse, the Magic will not be able to leapfrog the NBA’s true bottom-dwellers this season in regards to Lottery odds.
While securing better lottery odds has the potential to be majorly benefit long term, a strong argument could be made that the wins this young team has ground out is more important to future success. Orlando has one of the youngest cores in the league and the talent to develop into a serous playoff contender. The experience of winning basketball games and creating a positive culture outweighs the potential risk of receiving a worse lottery pick.
NBA history is littered with talented young teams that did not reach expectations. Talent alone does not win games in the NBA, especially in such a deep league. Winning at the highest level is not easy, which has made the recent win steak encouraging.
It might sound like a cliche, but the most important thing the Magic can do under interim head coach James Borrego is to learn how to win basketball games. Orlando’s arrow is definitely trending upward, but that needs to be proven on the hardwood.
This is not time to tank that positive momentum away.