Sustainability is next on Orlando Magic’s checklist

The Orlando Magic’s 96-94 victory over the Atlanta Hawks was a game with a story that could be told quarter by quarter.

The Orlando Magic got a sorely needed victory over the Atlanta Hawks on Super Bowl Sunday as Nikola Vucevic stepped up as a hero once again.

But it did not have to be that way.

By that, we mean the Magic easily could have avoided a close finish altogether. Orlando played top-notch basketball for three quarters and looked especially good defensively in the first and third quarters.

The fourth quarter was just a meltdown, but one whose bitter taste was sweetened by the game-saving heroics of Vucevic. The Hawks trailed by 11 entering the game’s final period, but the Magic allowed several substantial Hawks runs.

“I felt like beginning to end our overall defense was pretty solid against them except for the fourth quarter offensive rebounds and the threes,” coach Scott Skiles said. “We don’t want to give up there. But the main thing was the rebounding. We couldn’t get a key rebound. But overall our defense was better than it has been, so we’ll take that as progress.”

The Magic simply have to avoid these stretches of basketball. You know, the ones where they cough up leads.

This is not some type of bemoaning that all 48 minutes of basketball are going to work out favorably for Orlando. The Hawks are a solid basketball team and the Magic would be fortunate to function as smooth as the Hawks all the time.

It is just that Orlando at several points was in fact far better than the Hawks in this game, particularly in the first quarter when the Magic raced out to an 11-point lead it would maintain most of the game.

“It has definitely been missing,” Elfrid Payton said of the defense in the first three quarters. “It’s something we’ve talked about. Today we were actually able to go out there and do it. The ball moved from side to side and we were able to move from side to side. It was good for us.”

Perhaps key in all of this is the play of Evan Fournier.

Even so, Fournier scored 11 in the first quarter, including three of four from 3-point range, and was +10 for the game, which is fairly illustrative of how good the Magic were when he was locked in.

Fournier sat just five minutes in the game, and the Hawks outscored the Magic by eight during that span. That is telling.

But it is not just about Evan Fournier, and it really is not all about making triples either.

It is about playing tough team defense, because that is what gives Orlando the identity it had during its impressive start, during the strong play of December.

They were reminded of that in the way they played, at least through three quarters.

“That’s a great win,” Fournier said. “Hopefully we can rebuild confidence for us. We needed that one. It just feels good right now. I can’t lie. We know we have some games before the break, we have to take care of it.”

The Magic had some admirable traits in the first 32 games that are starting to resurface.

It is all about sustaining the strong effort over 48 minutes.

It has far more to do with avoiding mental lapses and breakdowns in communication. When the Magic function strong as a five-man unit and aid one another properly on defense, this team looks like a playoff team.

“We felt like it’s another one of those games,” Skiles said. “We’ve had a lot of games like this this year where we appear to have control of the game and then all of a sudden in the fourth quarter the rebound you’re supposed to get or the three you’re not supposed to give up or the foul to give you’re supposed to take, where we just haven’t gotten it done. We’ll take the win. It’s always better to teach after you win, but we’ll also have some things we need to learn from tonight’s game.”

That is a strong start toward compiling complete efforts, but the Magic did not play a perfect game.

The fourth quarter alone illustrates that, and for as good as Fournier was offensively, Kent Bazemore had a big night while out hustling the Magic on several plays and possessions.

The difference was the Magic did play better defense, overall.

Aaron Gordon logged a great night of work on Paul Millsap, who has been prone to having big games against the Magic. Millsap connected on just 5 of 15 shots and Gordon forced him into a lot of tough looks. It was not just poor shooting by any stretch of the imagination.

Gordon struggled shooting the ball in his own right — but otherwise played a superb game, and his four blocks only start to tell the story of the defensive plays he was making.  He also came up with two steals, and Gordon seemed to be in the right place at the right time to make plays.

That speaks to his effort, prescience anticipating defenses and his talent, not at all to “luck.”

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“We had a good start,” Gordon said. “We played pretty well up until about 40 minutes and kind let those last eight minutes get away from what we were doing. We slowed down a little bit. The pace stopped. But for the majority of the game, I think we played very well.”

But had Orlando went into overtime and lost?

We might be singing the praises of Bazemore and lamenting Orlando’s lack of defense in the fourth quarter. We might be looking at sequences like the run Atlanta put in late coming out of timeout as defining reasons for the loss.

For one game at least, the Magic survived on late-game heroics. But this is a game that could have never come down to that.

“You kind of have to act your way into a feeling,” Gordon said. “When they come down like that, the feeling starts to creep in and you can’t let that feeling impede how you play. That’s what we did. We stayed positive, we stayed upbeat and we continued to do what we know is right.”

And that is where sustainability comes in. Orlando’s defense in the third was great: shot clock violations, turnovers, awkward sequences by the Hawks — that was what won the game.

Vucevic’s shot was just to avert disaster. Sustainability saves Orlando from needing that moment of brilliance from its center.

Next: Nikola Vucevic's game-winner gives Orlando Magic some relief

Philip Rossman-Reich contributed to this report.