It was a modest accomplishment. Most teams would not care too much about reaching such an ultimately trivial and meaningless goal in the middle of the season — a season where the Playoffs are seemingly far beyond reach. Those little goals matter and are something resembling a sign of progress.
On the road, the Magic are one of the worst teams in the league.
At home? Orlando is surprisingly strong. The team has defeated the Thunder, Pacers and Clippers on the Amway Center floor. After Sunday’s win over the 76ers, the Magic are sitting at 15-15 at home. For a team, 24 games beneath the .500 mark, that kind of measurable success has to be a confidence builder, right?
Even at 15-16 at home and 25 games beneath .500, the Magic are a surprisingly difficult team to beat at Amway Center.
“I definitely think guys enjoy the fact of hearing the crowd and getting the crowd excited and playing at home and playing for our home fans,” Jacque Vaughn said. “There is deifnitely something to that. I just think overall the comfort level, our feel at home, or being in situations at home, there is a confidence and comfort level of being at home.”
Young teams typically play well at home. Typically much better at home than on the road — although probably not to this extent.
The numbers bear out how much better the Magic have been at home compared to the road (entering Wednesday’s game against the Rockets):
| PPG | Off. Rtg. | eFG% | O.Reb.% | TO% | FTR | |
| Home | 100.7 | 102.3 | 50.2 | 22.0 | 15.3 | 27.0 |
| Home Opp. | 100.4 | 102.1 | 49.7 | 23.1 | 14.5 | 24.3 |
| Road | 92.9 | 96.3 | 46.6 | 21.7 | 14.5 | 24.9 |
| Road Opp. | 102.8 | 106.3 | 50.6 | 25.5 | 14.2 | 28.9 |
Nearly every statistic on this chart is dramatically better for the Magic at home than on the road (except turnover rate). Again, this is somewhat expected with a young team. The statistics make the difference between home and road wins pretty dramatic.
“We’re a very good home team,” Tobias Harris said. “We have a great crowd every night that encourages us. I think the biggest thing for us is to continue to play well at home and gradually get better on the road. I think that’s our biggest thing and that comes with establishing ourselves on the home court and playing as well as we can at home.”
Translating it to the road is the next step. But clearly something the Magic wanted to focus on was regaining a home court advantage.
The Magic went 12-29 last year at home. It was an added emphasis from the beginning of the year for this team to defend its home court better. Orlando did a good job banding together on the road in the early parts of last season, but things predictably fell apart quickly for the Magic during that campaign.
This year has obviously taken on a different story and path as the Magic continue to see individual growth from their players. The pride in playing at home certainly has helped with that development and shown exactly what this team might be able to do in the future.
Sometimes it is as simple as the ball bouncing the right way at home and the confidence that has provided.
“I think that has been one of the differences for us on the road, those 50/50 balls occur in the second quarter, the third quarter, the first quarter and we have to get those. That’s been the big difference,” Jacque Vaughn said. “At home, we have been able to do it and use the energy of our fans and the comfort level of being home. But that’s where we have got to translate that on the road and get those ont he road as well.”
Luck does not explain that big difference at home. Not really at all. Maybe there is extra energy that comes from being at home. Maybe there is an added comfort from being able to sleep in their own bed or the spaciousness of that Amway Center locker room. Maybe it is the familiar sight lines.
Vaughn has had to try to figure out how to get his team to play better away from home to get this team up a notch (however small). That may just be part of the growth that will come as the team finds some normalcy and discovers who it is.
Right now, it is a team that plays with a lot of energy and feeds off whatever they can get from the crowd.
Getting to .500 at home — and, remember, it is just .500 — is not something the team specifically pointed toward. But with the record Orlando has, you find success wherever you can.
“We haven’t pointed toward it, but we’ll take anything we can get at this point,” Kyle O’Quinn said. “There is 20 games left, we’ll take the good and keep building on it. Nex tyear, we want to have an overall record of .500 or even better. But we’ll take that and build on that.”