The Orlando Magic came out in the second half lethargic and lost another late lead. They did things wrong, but found a way to grind out a win by any means.
The Orlando Magic had to scramble and do so quickly.
The pieces were coming together defensively. Every player was focused on his man and focused on getting his job done. Even when a mistake was made — and boy was a mistake made on the final possession — the team was trying quickly to recover.
DeMar DeRozan came free along the baseline as he escaped Evan Fournier with the Toronto Raptors trailing by one point in the final possession. DeRozan paused a bit though and allowed Tobias Harris and Evan Fournier to collapse and recover. The scramble was on as DeRozan fumbled the ball. The Raptors kicked it out and found Jonas Valanciunas in the paint.
The task was up to Jason Smith to close this deal out and defense Valanciunas.
He threw up a wild hook shot and the Magic did what they had struggled to do the possession before (when DeRozan split two free throws to create the one-point deficit instead of a tie game), grabbing a rebounding and sending Victor Oladipo off to the races.
It was ugly — the game-winning score was a Tobias Harris’ free throw with 30 seconds left to put the Magic up two. Winning often is as Oladipo and Evan Fournier iced the game from the foul line to enable the Magic to survive 92-87 over the Raptors at Amway Center on Friday.
| Score | Off. Rtg. | eFG% | O.Reb.% | TO% | FTR | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Toronto | 87 | 92.8 | 37.8 | 30.6 | 10.7 | 33.7 |
| Orlando | 92 | 98.2 | 48.7 | 17.1 | 13.9 | 28.6 |
DeMar DeRozan (TOR) — 23 pts., 7 rebs.; Cory Joseph (TOR) — 19 pts.
Tobias Harris (ORL) — 20 pts., 9 rebs.; Victor Oladipo (ORL) — 18 pts.
The Magic had done just about everything wrong to preserve their lead in the second half, but it all came down to digging out one play.
“Just don’t foul him,” Jason Smith said of the final possession. “Don’t put him on the free throw line. Try to stay between him and the basket, that’s what we talked about the whole game. And finish the possession with a team rebound.
“It was a great win for us,” Smith added. “We gave them a lot of second chance points, that got us down a little bit. But it was a battle of the game. Great game though.”
What the Magic did wrong throughout was foul, the thing Smith so desperately was trying to avoid with Dewayne Dedmon having fouled out late in the fourth quarter.
Orlando sent Toronto the line 11 times in the third quarter. The team came out lethargic to open the second half, giving up 19 points in the first 5:07 as part of a 19-4 run to start the quarter.
Scott Skiles resorted to the risky move of pulling out his entire team and replacing them with reserves to reconfigure the team. When asked why he did it, Skiles quipped: “Did you see the game? Were you there at the beginning of the third quarter?”
It was that painfully obvious a change needed to be made. The Raptors were simply running circles around the lethargic Magic team.
“Just got to be ready to play at all times,” Victor Oladipo said. “They came out with their head on fire and we have to respond. We just have to do a better job of being ready to play.”
On top of that, Orlando was struggling to corral rebounds and finish possessions. The Magic gave up 15 offensive rebounds and 18 second-chance points. The inability to rebound severely affected their transition opportunities to just eight in the game (making only two).
The fouling on top of the rebounding along with 13 turnovers for 16 Raptors points would normally equate to a loss though.
Orlando found a way. The effort returned and the Magic did a good job scrambling to close out on shooter and make things difficult for the Raptors, keeping them out of their offense.
Toronto shot just 34.9 percent from the floor and just 5 of 23 from beyond the arc. Orlando pestered Toronto into 10 turnovers, but turned those into 19 points. The Magic took advantage of the Raptors’ every mistake.
And when it came down to the end of the game, Tobias Harris and Victor Oladipo stepped up and the defense made Toronto take difficult shots.
“I thought we were better,” Skiles said. “I won’t know if we grew from it or not until games keep coming. We were trying to play the right way and share the ball. We got those good looks because we were making the right play. We made progress.”
Harris finished with 20 points on 8-for-10 shooting, adding nine rebounds including several key boards and buckets down the stretch. Oladipo had 18 points on 7-for-14 shooting with seven rebounds and six assists. He recovered nicely to make big plays for the Magic down the stretch.
And the ball was in Harris’ hands at the end as he drew the foul that would win the Magic game, ostensibly. It was his mismatch the Magic continually sought to exploit.
Orlando was fairly disciplined throughout the game on the defensive end and put itself in a position to win the game. And, unlike maybe previous efforts, the Magic went out and took the game.
Their last-second scramble was ugly, but effective. A message received both of how the Magic have to play to compete and how they need to play to win.