Orlando Magic truly foul in loss to Phoenix Suns

The Orlando Magic had an effort to forget as they were lazy on defense and slow on offense, falling to the struggling Phoenix Suns at home.

Someone had to try, right?

It may not be the most efficient or the most effective method. But someone had to try. Someone had to match the scrappiness and effort the Phoenix Suns were giving at Amway Center on Friday night.

Instead they waited and got frustrated. They waited and saw the lead balloon out of control. They waited and never really showed up.

As Ronnie Price or whomever was literally taking the ball out of Dewayne Dedmon‘s hands on a dribble handoff or as C.J. Watson tried driving right into Tyson Chandler‘s chest or nearly every player frustrating reached to try to dig the ball out and end this desperate quest for any type of feasibly decent play, forcing effort rather than giving it.

That is a sure recipe for disaster.

A disaster that saw the Magic give up the first nine points of the second half and fall behind by 17 points, a deficit they would never really dig out of. A disaster that saw the team miss on its first 12 shots and get more frustrated with each passing moment, reaching in and fouling with regularity to parade Phoenix to the line.

With so much on the line for the Orlando Magic, the one thing they could not afford was to have this kind of effort. The kind of effort Scott Skiles and his coaching staff said they feared might come after a sluggish day and a half of preparation.

The kind of effort that leads to a 102-84 loss to the moribund Phoenix Suns at the Amway Center on Friday.

Alex Len (PHX) — 31 pts., 15 rebs.; Ronnie Price (PHX) — 14 pts.
Elfrid Payton (ORL) — 19 pts., 11 assts.; Nikola Vucevic (ORL) — 15 pts.

“There is no coaching magic wand,” coach Scott Skiles said. “That comes from inside the people. If you could go around your whole team and make an incision right here [Skiles points to his head] and right here [Skiles points to his heart] and look inside of everybody then you could have some answers. It’s very disappointing. It’s a game we had to have. They came in here and basically from the time the ball went up, they had all the life, all the physicality and we struggled.”

Orlando lacked a lot of fight from the very beginning of the game, relying on their offense to buoy the entire team.

Once Elfrid Payton stopped getting into the lane and giving the Magic some semblance of ball movement and once Nikola Vucevic stopped hitting jumpers, the dam was about ready to break open and allow the Magic to drown in their own poor effort.

Skiles said the Magic started the game poorly on the effort side, getting four or five feet off players. They never got into their opponents physically and right from the start were letting players shoot jumpers clearly into their face.

Nikola Vucevic specifically struggled defending Alex Len, who scored a career-high 31 points and took it to Vucevic from the beginning of the game.

Vucevic was trying to score with him and that seemed to take the Magic somewhat out of their offense. Vucevic had 15 points on 7-for-19 shooting, missing all five of his shots in the second half.

The poor defensive performance from the beginning caused Vucevic to issue a personal mea culpa.

“I told the team when we walked in here, this one is on me. As the leader on the team, I have to do a better job getting into the game on Alex Len. I don’t want to take anything away from him, he had a great game, played really great. But I felt like I just wasn’t aggressive enough on the defensive end. It’s hard to stop anyone in the NBA once we get going. I told the guys this one is on me. I need to do a better job in the game to lead and to have more aggressiveness.”

Orlando just was not able to match Phoenix’s physicality from the beginning. Aaron Gordon picked up two early fouls trying to wrestle Tyson Chandler. It was a repeated problem throughout the game.

Phoenix was physical and Orlando was sloppy.

The third quarter was the telltale sign of all of Orlando’s problem as the team missed its first 12 shots and committed 11 fouls, conceding 18 free throw attempts, three more than Phoenix’s field goal attempts in the quarter. The Magic might have gotten away with a decent defensive quarter if not for those fouls.

But a lot of that sloppiness was born out of the poor offense as the Magic again let their offense dictate their defense. That trap has led the Magic to disappointing efforts throughout the year.

The problem is not new for this young team with an answer that seems to elude them.

“We’ve just got to be consistent,” Payton said. “We have seen what we can do. We have done it before. We’ve just got to continue to bring that same energy.”

That energy was certainly not there throughout the game. The Magic were slow getting through their cuts and walking through plays. The magic had difficulties creating much offense and that was easily trickling down through the roster.

The defense quickly had that lethargic feel to it. Many of the fouls the Magic created were either from reaching in and being lazy defending with their hands or overcommitting to steals and giving up good defensive position.

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These are all fundamental mistakes. And even a team struggling like the Suns will take advantage.

And they did take advantage, burying the Magic in their own disappointment.

“We just didn’t deserve to win,” Evan Fournier said. “Lack of effort, obviously a lack of energy on the court. It was bad.

“It’s one of the worst losses of the year because they dominated us just on being more active. No disrespect at all to Phoenix, but they have one of the worst records, so it is not acceptable.”