Orlando Magic Grades: Indiana Pacers 98, Orlando Magic 88

The Orlando Magic dropped their second straight game as the Indiana Pacers held on to win their third straight meeting with the Magic this season.

The Indiana Pacers started in attack mode, going at the basket right from the start. The Orlando Magic, at times, did respond. But the Pacers controlled most of the game and walked away from the Amway Center with a 98-88 win on Wednesday.

The Magic started the game with a 2-0 lead, and that was the last time the Magic lead in the game. The Pacers lead rose to 15 a couple times during the game and the Magic were never able to completely come back.

This game was a very weird game, to say the least. The Magic cut the Pacers lead down to five, at times, but they were never able to push and get a lead.

The Magic held the Pacers to less than 100 points, the first time the Magic held their opponent to less triple digits in the last six games and just the third time in 29 games.

The Magic played adequate defense the whole game, except against pick and rolls, which the Magic guards more often than not, struggle at. It all started with Jeff Teague. Teague got to the rim, which drew the attention of the Magic bigs and then resulted in an easy dunk or a wide open jump shot.

This is how the Magic lost the game. They could not string together a few stops. When they did, they were not able to capitalize on the offensive end.

The Magic did a very poor job sharing the ball. Having 17 assists is simply not acceptable for this team to succeed. The Magic only at a few occasions moved the ball side to side and got their looks to go down.

“We don’t have large margin for error and sometimes it’s turnovers, sometimes it’s poor defense, sometime’s it’s moving the basketball and getting a lot of good looks that we weren’t able to knock down,” coach Frank Vogel said. “I thought our best offensive possessions ended up with an open shot miss. That’ snot to say we were great offensively all night, but you have to capitalize on the good possessions and we weren’t able to. And it’s just the game of basketball sometimes.”

The Magic were not able to knock down their shots when they got good looks.

Paul George, who the Magic certainly invested a lot of their gameplan on, struggled. He shot 3 for 14. The Pacers secondary players rallied together though and made the plays they had to. It was C.J. Miles who buried the Magic for good with a 3-pointer in the fourth quarter to give the Pacers an eight-point lead and snuff out the final run.

The Magic, now 19-32 have a long way to go if they still want to fulfill their playoff aspirations, a very vital decision that the Magic front office has to make.

The Magic will get a chance to put this loss behind them as they face the Toronto Raptors on Friday.