Orlando Magic getting tired of the rinse and repeat of losses
The Orlando Magic were frustrated to let another chance at victory slip away. A feel-good first half was followed by another inconsistent second half effort
38. 105. 66. Final. 100
Victor Oladipo scored a career-high 38 points in Wednesday’s 105-100 loss to the Phoenix Suns. He was aggressive attacking the basket, finding holes in the defense and blowing past defenders to the rim. He shot the ball well as he aggressively pulled up.
He was in one of those zones for a good chunk of the night. And 17 points in the fourth quarter almost single handedly won the game.
You could not tell Oladipo had anything close to a career high in the locker room afterward. He was quiet and determined, as he usually is after a loss. It is the team result that matters to him. He made that abundantly clear. He just wants to win.
Just right now, it seems like the team is continuing to fall into the same traps and the same struggles that prevent them from getting that breakthrough.
“It’s really frustrating,” Oladipo said. “We’ve got to find a way to come out better in the second half. It’s crazy because we fixed our problem in the first quarter. We’ve got to fix the problem in the third quarter now. We’ve got to put a whole game together in order to win. We’ve got to do a great job of that if we want to win games in the future.”
The bright side, if there is any, Oladipo said is that all these problems can be corrected. The Magic showed flashes of that in building a 15-point lead in the second quarter and in moving the ball seamlessly and freely. The Magic were very much the aggressors for the first 24 minutes.
Coach James Borrego said things then got sloppy. Orlando started turning the ball over. The defense relaxed some as the Suns started pushing the pace back at the Magic and dictating the tempo of the game. Shots stopped falling. Things got stuck.
“It’s a simple game. Simple formula. And we didn’t do it in the second half. I don’t know why.” –Tobias Harris
If it were not for Oladipo’s second-half heroics — and the sense of urgency that helped Orlando make it a three-point game late in the fourth quarter when a Willie Green turnover off an inbounds ended hopes for a tie — it could have been a crazy turnaround the other way with Phoenix running away with things.
This lack of consistency over the course of 48 minutes has been a maddening problem for the Magic all season. It is not an unexpected one with the team’s youth. Although, it remains a frustrating issue at this late stage in the season.
“We didn’t move the ball,” Tobias Harris said. “We didn’t get stops. They made shots. It’s a simple game. Simple formula. And we didn’t do it in the second half. I don’t know why. We’re up nine points coming out of the locker room and we just start playing who knows what basketball.”
Orlando has lost games about every way that a team can. Harris’ terse statements kind of echoed the frustration of the moment. The Magic have done all these things well in spurts — a 23-8 run in the second quarter to go up by 15 points was some of the best basketball the Magic have played this year. James Borrego has brought that focus on the defensive end.
But it has begun to slip. Harris said he could feel it as the team put its offense ahead of its defense yet again. The Suns erased the deficit in the third quarter on the strength of a 23-7 run, turning that nine-point halftime deficit into a seven-point third-quarter lead.
Orlando went from in control to playing from behind in a matter of seven minutes.
“When teams pick up with pressure, you have to react with poise,” coach James Borrego said. “You have to act with aggression yourself. You’ve got to fight some aggression with aggression. If I’m always on my heels when my opponent becomes the aggressor, that’s not going to end well. I thought we got on our heels a little bit. They picked up their pressure. We were not sharp offensively, we did not set screens to get open and we didn’t attack their aggression with our own aggression.”
When the Suns started rolling it was hard to see where the Magic’s aggression was going to come from. They started getting tentative and the offense lacked the movement it had earlier in the game.
In these moments, it was hard to hold onto the positive.
The first half was great. But in the end, it was a loss. A loss like all the other ones. A loss where the Magic had a real chance to win and maybe should have won but simply did not. Harris said seeing another win slip through the team’s fingers was frustrating.
No matter what the individual accolade or the circumstance, the Magic are in a tight spot trying to grow and learn to win.
“At the end of the day, I just wanted to win,” Oladipo said. “Thirty-eight or three, it’s all the same. Winning and losing is what it’s all about.”
At some point the frustration will turn into results. Otherwise it will be the same story for this team and the same dejection postgame.