The Orlando Magic are far from perfect defensively, but they are still fighting to find 48 minutes of solid basketball to earn a win.
It was a momentary lapse. That momentary lapse can have a big impact though.
Missing a man or missing a rotation or getting to a shooter late can always have a major effect on any game. How you recover or bounce back or learn from it matters most.
The momentary lapse this time for the Magic came with Tobias Harris crashing in on the paint in transition to cover Ian Mahimni even with Kyle O’Quinn already there. That left Damjan Rudez open int he corner for three. He drained it and made a nine-point lead a six-point lead.
An assist from Rudez on a C.J. Watson 3-pointer, another Rudez 3-pointer and a drive and dunk from Rudez off a late close out and an epic screen from Mahimni to clear the runway, and the Pacers had tied the game. They would take the lead a few minutes later for good with Rudez draining another 3-pointer on his way to 16 of his 18 points in the fourth quarter.
The mistakes were virtually the same. Players either going to the wrong man (well-intentioned though they might be) or failing to communicate, it cost the Magic at the end. They could point to those mistakes. They knew it was happening not just how to fix them.
The same narrative from earlier in the season persists: the Magic cannot put together a 48-minute game.
“We don’t have any room to make mistakes.” — Victor Oladipo
“We don’t have any room to make mistakes,” Victor Oladipo said. “We don’t really have any room to make a mistake or miss an assignment. We’ve got to be at it. We’ve got to be on our Ps and Qs. We’ve got to do better.”
Things were better tonight, despite the offensively challenged Pacers posting a 110.5 offensive rating in the game. Orlando played with renewed energy thanks to Aaron Gordon‘s presence in the starting lineup and seemed poised to take a win. They led by as much as nine points in the fourth quarter.
Were things perfect? Hardly.
Orlando still struggled some defending the pick and roll and
Oladipo said the team is recovering and shaking things off better. The intent to be better was there for the Magic. Players were active in trying to recover and it was rare (until the fourth quarter) that even when a rotation was late that the shot was not even partially challenged.
“I just want to get to a point where we realize each possession counts,” Jacque Vaughn said. “It really does matter. We have to have an urgency and we have to have a discipline that each possession counts. The very first possession of the game counts the same as two minutes left to go in the fourth.”
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Whatever message Orlando needed to get, it got. In a general sense, at least.
The Magic still need to be able to execute late in games. There was not enough time, as Nikola Vucevic put it, to shake off mistakes and recover from them late in the game. Games still come down to that late-game execution. The same things the Magic have gone back and forth with time and time again this season.
Oladipo said the team still has to find a way to compete and give them a chance to win a game. That is something the Magic still appear to be doing — the Magic still had a chance to defeat the Knicks and still had a chance to win this game.
The Magic are still working to get to that point. Oladipo may have pinpointed a major problem with the defense when things turn south. Opponents are comfortable on offense. The Magic are not making opponents feel them defensively.
Vaughn made the change with Aaron Gordon to try and change that. For three quarters, it worked — Indiana had a 103.8 offensive rating through three quarters, which is not great but better.
The fourth, things fell apart. And so the Magic are back to trying to discover how to bring the same intensity and same focus for a full game. That is the only way they can win.
“This one does not feel good,” Aaron Gordon said. “It just goes to show we can’t have any lapses. That’s what happened. I really don’t know what it is. If we go back to film, we could probably nitpick. When it comes down to it, we’re not good enough to have any lapses. We need to play our best basketball all of the time.”