The Orlando Magic are clearly frustrated with their up-and-down season. They are keeping an even keel and giving themselves a chance as they figure it out.
Hang around a NBA locker room for long and the same phrase inevitably pops up from players — specifically veteran players — in the midst of a slump or even a minor surge forward.
It is a league of highs and lows. You can never get too high, nor can you ever get too low. It is such a long season and there are so many ups and downs, the best way to approach the season is with an even keel.
The other favorite cliche? You are never as good as you look when you win and never as bad as you look when you lose.
That is where the Orlando Magic find themselves as they try to weather through an odd, inconsistent and frustrating stretch since Dec. 1.
Orlando is 9-10 since then and keeping its head above water in an increasingly cluttered Eastern Conference playoff race. Entering Thursday’s games, the Magic are 2.5 games out of the final Playoff spot.
With no teams really creating separation, it still feels the Magic are one good win streak or stretch of games away from putting themselves in pole position.
The Magic have to keep the boat steady while trying to figure things out. It is a mission they are plenty aware of.
“Have a short-term memory, first and foremost,” Jeff Green said of dealing with the team’s inconsistency. “You have to be able to accept your defeats and be able to move on, correct yourself and as a team you have to come together and make the corrections. We have to be better. There’s no secret to being a good team. It comes with work. It comes with individually starting with yourself and looking in the mirror and being able to go out and do your job and make sure you are there for your team. There’s no secret to it. We just have to be able to do it consistently.”
None of those external facts matter to the Magic. Not if they cannot get themselves out of this cycle of being a .500 team. And with the schedule toughening up starting Friday against the Houston Rockets at the Amway Center before a six-game, 11-day road trip, urgency should be pretty high.
The Magic are searching desperately for consistency right now. The team has essentially traded a loss for a win in every game for the last month. That has been good enough to keep the team close, but not good enough to allow the Magic to make a move up the standings.
To be sure, Orlando knows it has much to improve on. This is specifically on the defensive end.
After a strong November, the Magic have given up 109.9 points per 100 possessions since Dec. 1, the 28th worst mark in the league. The team, as coach Frank Vogel put it, is an “aspiring defensive team.” That identity has certainly not taken any firm root.
And it is critical to the team’s future success and righting the ship.
“We all want to perform well,” Vogel said. “We want to have a good season and we want to push toward the Playoffs. Getting a team that has not been in the Playoffs into the Playoffs is not an easy thing. It’s not supposed to be easy. It takes a lot of hard work. It takes a lot of performances where we’re not good enough and you have to learn from our mistakes and continue to build those habits.”
The Magic were left asking a lot of these questions again after their 111-92 loss to the Atlanta Hawks. Orlando had played energetically in a win over the New York Knicks in their previous outing and looked flat on both ends against Atlanta. The Hawks deserve credit for disrupting and frustrating the Magic’s offense. But Orlando’s defense was still a huge question mark.
It seems still the Magic are asking these questions every other game. Despite this, they always seem to find a way to pull themselves back. The Magic have not lost three consecutive games since early December when they lost the final three games of a three-games-in-four-nights stretch. And, of course, in true-.500 team fashion, that losing streak followed a three-game win streak.
Orlando has done plenty to survive. Now comes the harder part — putting together a win streak and gaining a consistent identity.
This has been the consistent and persistent fight for the team all season. They have acknowledged it throughout the year. Despite all the frustrations, all their goals remain very present.
They just have to fight that frustration, keep an even keel and persevere until they get things right.
Next: Frustration builds, but Orlando Magic must look inward to fix
“The attitude and spirit is good,” Vogel said. “We are all pulling in the right direciton. We all know we have to be better.”