A brand new start for James Borrego’s Orlando Magic

The Orlando Magic are starting fresh almost under new coach James Borrego. And they delivered an emotional win for him in his first time in the lead chair.

James Borrego admitted he was exhausted after his first day in the lead chair for the Orlando Magic.

The career assistant had only been asked to do this once before, and that was in the low-pressure situation of a Summer League game — perhaps with directions on minutes restrictions and lineups and the whole game really mapped out. Winning is not the important thing.

This was clearly different. Borrego certainly felt it as he had to manage substitutions and deal with referees, the kind of things he never had to do while sitting next to the guy doing all those things. Borrego even had the most embarrassing of miscommunications, failing to get Aaron Gordon off the floor during a substitution and getting called for a “Too many men on the court” technical foul.

There were bound to be hiccups.

After the game, though, the emotions were pretty clear. This was a team desperate for a win and a team that pulled together to get it.

“I was just fighting for these guys,” Magic coach James Borrego said. “They were fighting for each other. We were fighting for each other out there. I’m just really proud of them. Those 15 guys bonded tonight. They fought together. I was proud of our bench both on the court and what they did off the court supporting us. It was an emotional game for all of us. We were fighting. These guys have been trying to get a win here recently. I’m just happy for them. They earned this victory tonight.”

The first half, Borrego said, was an anxious half. The team admitted earlier in the day that the firing of Jacque Vaughn was a jarring one. A lot of the players had never seen a coach dismissed in the middle of the season. It is quite the adjustment.

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The Magic had to come together to overcome that — not to mention stand behind teammates Tobias Harris and Channing Frye who arrived from New York less than three hours before tip off to attend their grandfather’s funeral — and begin turning that proverbial corner the Magic have talked about all year.

One game is not going to do that. Orlando was extremely tight and flat in the first half. But something clicked in the second half. The Lakers shot just 32.1 percent in the second half and overtime. The Magic finally kept a team to less than 100 points for the first time since January 7.

The defense just clicked.

“When you get a couple stops like we did tonight, you kind of feed off of it,” Vucevic said. “It helps you offensively too. For some reason teh defense wasn’t where we wanted for the last 10-15 games. Tonight, I think we really clicked. It wasn’t perfect and it is never going to be perfect. We really put in the effort. When we needed the stops, we did that. It was a team effort.”

Vucevic did play a big part in that. He stood his ground well in the post and hedged hard to deter ball handlers. The Magic were getting more physical and dictating the game with their defensive will. Even with Victor Oladipo shooting an icy 5 for 14 from the floor, missing a couple 12-footers off the pick and roll that would have helped put the game away.

Oladipo though made up for it on the defensive end, as just about everybody did. He missed a shot and then ran down the floor and helped change a transition layup into a miss. It was the kind of flying around that helped the Magic suffocate the Lakers defensively.

Borrego said there was an edge to get into the ballhandler and get up on screens. The Magic tightened their defense, he said, and the game turned on the Magic’s energy defensively. There were still adjustments to make — a lot of switching stuck Elfrid Payton on Robert Sacre and allowed him and the Lakers to get offensive rebounds — including one on the final possession of regulation that put a scare in the Amway Center crowd.

This is what Borrego said he would try to deliver in these final 30 games. For one night, he got his team to turn it around in a major way. But watching a win is different than watching a loss, the positives get accentuated more and the negatives feel easier to overcome.

“It is easier to say this is a start on a win than a loss,” Kyle O’Quinn said. “We broke this losing streak. Hopefully we turn it around.

“It’s a big burden [off our shoulders]. We can go to the good things we did tonight instead of picking at little things we did from losses, and say we can do more of this, more than that. Tonight, we can look at film and say we did this right and it resulted in a win. So that’s big.”

The Magic will still have to get better from this game — the team’s first practice with Borrego comes Saturday morning.

This is still only a beginning for the Magic. A new era, even if a short-lived one. Nobody knows yet if this is a short jolt of energy from a new voice and a new approach entering the locker room or if it is something a little more permanent.

The team shared a moment. But in the grand scheme of things, this was a much-needed confidence boost.

“I’m just proud of them,” Borrego said. “They wanted this win so bad. Not necessarily for me, this was about the team. The team needed to feel this win. The group as a whole needed to feel this win. We needed something to build off of. I think we felt that emotion in the room. there was an excitement, but not a satisfaction.”

So it is on to the next. But onward with a positive mindframe for what is to come.

Next: Orlando Magic beat the streak, hand James Borrego his first win