The Orlando Magic head into the regular season still building chemistry. There is no timeline or deadline to have it work. Only patience to build.
D.J. Augustin has been with Frank Vogel before when he had to build a new roster.
During the 2013 season, the Indiana Pacers were thrown an early curveball when Danny Granger went down to an injury. Suddenly Paul George had to move from fifth option to starring option and Lance Stephenson had to take on a bigger role to fill the gaps.
It was something of a happy accident — the Pacers went to the conference finals that season and dominated the regular season on their way to a second straight appearance the following year. But there were plenty of headaches on their road.
The Pacers that year started 3-6 and did not stay better than .500 until Dec. 14. The team slowly found itself to get to 49 wins and begin the makings of a team that could challenge the Miami Heat for the Eastern Conference title. Players began to fit their roles. The team blossomed and gelled.
But it took time. Much longer than perhaps anyone would have thought.
“He definitely has a plan,” D.J. Augustin said. “It’s on us to execute and let it all fall into place. Right now we have a lot of young guys playing new positions. We have a lot of new faces. If we just follow his plan, stick with it and stay together, it will fall through.”
The Orlando Magic face a similar task in integrating seven new players and a new coaching staff. It has been a long and arduous process through the preseason. One that feels incomplete — with the ups and downs and inconsistency of a team still clearly integrating a culture and internalizing new thought processes.
No one can tell when things will click in and become second nature. It seems the only thing anybody knows is that it has to happen at some point. And that the team is working to get there.
Thursday was a sign of both how far the Magic have to go with how they struggled in the first half and how good they can be with how they dominated the second half.
At some point, things will lock in and the team will come together.
“I think the biggest thing for some guys is the patience part,” Jeff Green said. “We all want things to happen quick. We all see the talent that we have. We expect quick results. But we don’t think about the patience and the time that it takes to get those results that we want.
“You’ve got to develop the patience of the grueling hours you have to put in to being on the same page, to make sure you are getting across your point for what you are trying to do in the season. It takes time. The patience is something a lot of people forget about. You always see talent, you always see what you have on paper. You don’t necessarily see the time and effort it takes to get on the same page.”
No one seems ready to put a timeline on when things will click together for the Magic. Vogel said it will likely go into the season for the team truly to get on the same page and gel.
When it clicks it will just click for the team as the Magic go through the process of learning to play with each other and improving as a unit.
There remain signs and flashes of that kind of play. The Magic’s second-half defensive effort against the New Orleans Pelicans on Thursday was about as together and sustained the team has put in this season. Making that consistent will remain the challenge for the team.
That remains a major learning process for the Magic.
“There is a lot of newness,” Vogel said. “There is a lot of learning each other. Players got to learn each other. The players got to learn the coach. The coaches got to learn the players. Hopefully you hit the ground running and win your first 10 games But if you don’t, that doesn’t mean you can’t figure it out. We’re going to be positive and encouraged with the parts we have on this team. We have to figure out how to use them effectively and get the job done.”
There will have to be a lot of lessons while winning. And there almost certainly will be hiccups on the road there too. The team may falter some as they click into place and continue to get on the same page. It may be a continuing process that lasts deeper into the season than many want.
The schedule will not wait on this to happen, of course. The Magic will have to play through these hiccups in their schedule in games that count. The hope is Orlando can win these games while building chemistry. But the reality is teams struggle after massive changes.
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The Miami Heat went 9-8 to start the regular season when LeBron James and Chris Bosh joined the team in 2011. When James returned to Cleveland, the Cleveland Cavaliers went 6-7 to start the season and may not have gotten on the same page really until near the end of the season in a devastating way.
Even the top teams need time to build on-court chemistry and precision.
The process for the Magic might very well be tougher than they anticipated. But every team is capable of buying in to a process and thriving in it. Vogel said the goal is to get better every month.
Vogel is still figuring things out on his end too. Having run through his rotation once, Vogel said the rotation he ran was close to the blueprint and he is still experimenting with rotations and lineups for future games.
Undoubtedly though, he and the Magic still have a tough task ahead of them. A task that will take some patience to figure out and see to its fruition.
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“I figured it would be tough, but not as tough as it was with the same players from last year,” Elfrid Payton said. “But It’s just a new system, new things wants us to do. It’s just going to take time, but I think we’ll figure it out.”