Ball movement bails out Orlando Magic to grind out Brooklyn Nets

The Orlando Magic had a fast start followed by an ugly finish. The offense and the ball movement kicked in just in time to topple the Brooklyn Nets.

The first quarter was spent easing past the Brooklyn Nets. The Orlando Magic moved the ball and got open shots. It looked like the team had found its flow.

The rest of the game? It was spent trying to find that flow again in a difficult grind of a game where shots just refused to fall — even the open ones.

Brooklyn had mucked the game up and pushed Orlando more than the team probably thought it would after it jumped to an early lead.

Then the gates opened. The Magic found the holes in the defense and everything seemed right in the world. Orlando’s defense was suffocating and got stops and the offense moved the ball, found easy shots and (in this game, this is a skill) scored.

When previously the ball might have stopped with a player, now there was Victor Oladipo going off a pick and roll, getting stopped and moving it to Tobias Harris who took the ball drove and passed to an open Aaron Gordon or a cutting Aaron Gordon.

The Magic offense was forcing the Nets defense to react to their movement and the plays became self-evident and apparent.

It was not easy at all for the Magic. It was a grind and Orlando gutted it out 83-77 at Barclays Center on Friday, snapping the team’s four-game losing streak and providing some sense the team was back to its “normal” self from the beginning of the season.

Nikola Vucevic (ORL) — 20 pts., 10 rebs.; Victor Oladipo (ORL) — 20 pts.
Brook Lopez (BKN) — 17 pts., 8 rebs.; Joe Johnson (BKN) — 13 pts.

The fourth quarter proved to be the awakening the Magic needed as they finally seemed to awaken from a two-quarter slumber offensively.

Orlando found their rhythm thanks to Victor Oladipo‘s sudden shooting emergence. He scored 20 points on 7-for-11 shooting, including 6-for-8 shooting from beyond the arc. He hit two of his three 3-pointers in the fourth quarter to jump start the Magic offense.

Then the Magic got Tobias Harris going, finding him on cuts off the perimeter. Instead of his typical isolation plays, Harris drove and found passers as the defense collapsed time and time again. He had four of his career-high eight assists in the fourth quarter. Aaron Gordon was the beneficiary of much of this as he had nine of his 14 points in the fourth quarter.

When Orlando moved the ball, the team was pretty difficult to stop. And the defense was energetic and making the extra efforts to get stops. Even when the offense struggled.

There were open shots given up and a few late rotations that gave Nets bigs some runs through the lane. But the percentages and the result speak for themselves too. The Nets never consistently made shots.

Even during Orlando’s 11-point second quarter, Brooklyn found little traction offensively.

The Nets shot 39.7 percent during the game and 15 turnovers. During the second quarter, where the Nets came back and scored 21 points, they shot 38.1 percent from the floor.

Brooklyn’s comeback from the 26-13 lead Orlando built was a very slow burn. More a product of the Magic’s struggling offense than anything else.

Orlando started the game the same way it finished with the ball moving quickly around the perimeter and players attacking the paint off the dribble quickly after the catch as the defense adjusted.

The Magic just could not sustain that play and the game got very ugly through the middle quarters. Where the ball movement went was mysterious.

Even though Victor Oladipo is not the greatest point guard in the world, once he left the game the team just struggled to get the ball moving consistently or attack much at all. Orlando’s shot only six free throws in the entire game.

Nikola Vucevic missed many of his typically reliable shots on missing 14 of 23 shots. When he finally got it going in the fourth quarter, the Magic offense opened up.

It was about time through this ugly game that seemed like the Magic just needed that little burst to take control. At least the defense was there throughout the game. The Nets never had their own run.

Next: Is Victor Oladipo Sixth Man of the Year?

And snapping a four-game losing streak is always a good feeling, no matter how ugly the actually game was.