Defenseless.
That’s the only way to describe the performance by the Orlando Magic against the Oklahoma City Thunder on Sunday night.
Sure the Magic were without Vince Carter, Ryan Anderson, and Rashard Lewis. Sure, Matt Barnes was sick with flu-like symptoms, but losing a game like this is inexcusable.
Orlando was bad on both ends of the floor and showed no intensity. After the Magic got behind in the second quarter, they seemed to just mail it in, losing 102-74.
After a 25-pont first quarter, the Magic scored 19, 13 and 17 points in the next three quarters. The Magic shot 36.8% from the field (25-of-68) and were just 3-of-16 from beyond the three-point line. After making 10-of-16 free throw attempts in the first quarter, the Magic were just 11-of-18 the rest of the way. Orlando also committed 15 turnovers and had just 14 assists. Opponents came in to the game shooting about 45% against the Thunder.
Not to be outdone by their poor offensive showing, Orlando’s defense was terrible as well. Oklahoma City shot an incredible 57% from the field (40-of-70) and 9-of-16 from beyond the three-point line. The Thunder scored 102 points when they were averaging just 91.8 points per game.
Magic Head Coach Stan Van Gundy was obviously very upset with each and every player and basically called the Magic soft in his post-game press conference.
"“We’re a white collar team right now and those kinds of teams won’t win on the road and won’t win when they’re not shooting well.”"
The Magic were still in the game at halftime, trailing but 9 points after a Jameer Nelson jumper beat the halftime buzzer.
Then, Oklahoma City scored the first eight points of the second half, taking a 61-44 lead. The Thunder later had a 9-0 run to increase their lead to 23 and took a 79-57 lead in the final quarter. The Thunder led by as many as 33 in the fourth quarter, before finishing with a 28-point victory.
The Magic were forced to play with two Point Guards and two Centers on the court at a few different times during the game. Anthony Johnson played 4 minutes at Shooting Guard while Marcin Gortat logged several minutes playing alongside Center Dwight Howard.
Mickael Pietrus provided somewhat of a spark off of the bench. He was Orlando’s second leading scorer off of the bench with 15 points and was 2-of-2 from beyond the arc (the rest of the team was a combined 1-of-15). I did like the way Pietrus utilized the pump fake several times. Rather than take an ill-advised three-point, which Pietrus is sometimes prone to do, he would pump fake and get into the lane to draw a foul. This would have worked out much better had Pietrus not gone just 5-of-11 from the line.
Jameer Nelson followed up two very good games by having the worst +/- of the entire season at -37. The only Magic player not in the red was Jason Williams. Russell Westbrook appeared to be doing a poor effort of defending Nelson. He was giving Nelson a lot of open space, but Nelson failed to take advantage of it. Nelson wasn’t his usual aggressive self and it cost both him and his team. He finished with 10 points on 4-0of-10 shooting. He did have 4 assists, 4 rebounds and only 1 turnover, but he could have and should have had a much bigger impact on the game.
I’m not ready to panic yet because of the injuries to Ryan Anderson and Vince Carter and the suspension of Rashard Lewis, but the Magic must get much better on the defensive end. No team should ever shoot 57% against you, especially against a team that came in shooting 43.3% from the field on the season. Magic Head Coach Stan Van Gundy continues to grow more and more frustrated each day. After every game, he preaches defense but the Magic just don’t seem to be improving.
"“We’re not a good basketball team right now. I’ve been saying that, but nobody’s listening. We’re totally predicated on shooting. We do not have any kind of defensive mindset, we don’t have much toughness and we’re not very smart. So, right now we’re not a very good team.”"
That better change. Quickly.
Game Notes:
- Kevin Durant was awesome in the second quarter, scoring 11 points during Oklahoma City’s run. He finished with 28 points on 11-of-17 shooting. Durant entered the game shooting just 38.5% from the field.
- Dwight Howard picked up 4 more fouls today including a few more controversial offensive fouls.
- Orlando attempted 19 more free throws but made just 8 more.
- The Magic were out-rebounded 45 to 30.
Final Thought: If the Magic hope to be a player in the Eastern conference again this season, we need to see a drastic improvement on the defensive end of the floor.
Next Up: The Charlotte Bobcats will play host to the Magic on Tuesday night.
(Andrew Melnick is Howard the Dunk’s lead blogger and a contributor at NFL Mocks Subscribe to his RSS feed and add him on Twitter to follow him daily.)