Orlando Magic pulling together to finish the season

The Orlando Magic, fresh off back-to-back road wins, are eyeing the final five games as a chance to build momentum. There is no relaxing toward the end.

The Orlando Magic trailed the Milwaukee Bucks by nine points after the first quarter. The poor start seemed to signal another disappointing defeat after the Magic eked out a win the previous night against the Timberwolves.

There were certainly moments this season when they would let that 12-point lead slip to 24 and put the game completely out of reach. Those moments are the reasons even players have viewed this season as disappointing.

These final five games are not about the past though. There is no taking the previous 77 games back. There is still the remaining five though and the team is not about to fall apart and look past those games.

“We want momentum going into the summer,” coach James Borrego said. “We’re going after every win, every game. Every practice is big for us, every shootaround. We want to close out this thing on a strong note. And it does carry into the summer. These are all part of building a culture that is sustainable that is a winning product. These are a big five games for us.”

This has been the refrain for several weeks now as the team hopes to build momentum for the offseason. This weekend in two road games where the Magic did not play their best for the full 48 minutes, the Magic finally put that work to action.

After losing 10 of the team’s previous 11 games, Orlando was just searching for that little bit of confidence. Back-to-back road wins, the first road win since January and the first back-to-back sweep for the Magic since early December, certainly can add that little boost.

So too could be the final stretch of the schedule. Except for Saturday’s home finale against the Knicks, every team the Magic will play the rest of the way is in the middle of a Playoff hunt and has something to play for. The Magic, on the other hand, seem all but locked into the fifth best Lottery odds.

The hope is that the rising tide of opponents fighting for something will increase the alertness and competitive drive of this Magic team.

“It’s about being in the moment right now,” Tobias Harris said. “We have a lot of guys locked in and just trying to get better. That game against the Bucks showed a lot. The biggest thing for all of us was we were encouraging each other to make the right play, to be aggressive on defense.”

Of course, the Magic have been here before. Before that losing stretch, the Magic won two games in a row and seemed to have built some of that momentum and confidence.

Harris said the key difference in the win over the Bucks was how the team imposed its will physically. They met the challenge from the Playoff-bound Bucks team and pushed back harder.

Even though it is a young team, there certainly seems to be a sense of professionalism going through the roster. Harris exemplifies that as much as anyone. He said it is only right that the team finish the year off right — even if there is very little to play for.

“It has been a tough season for us,” Nikola Vucevic said. “It’s not the way we want it to be. You’ve still got to keep playing. You’ve still got to keep doing your job. All the guys here are competitors. We all want to finish the season the right way. I think these last two games were good for us for our confidence to show to ourselves that we can do it.”

The season has been a disappointment overall. No one is denying this.

Vucevic said the pair of wins on the weekend were important for the team’s confidence. The team did not play its best early on in Milwaukee and, on a back-to-back, could have given in to fatigue. Victor Oladipo could have succumbed to the disappointment of his shooting performance. Instead he made the big shot and the team got the win.

Like the other 76 games this season, that is now in the past. It is only valuable as an example for what the team can do moving forward.

All the team has left to show for itself is these final five games. The Magic have long said they plan to make the most of it, but now they seem equipped and confident to follow through.

“They feel like they can win every single game, every night they step on the floor,” Borrego said. “This is a competitive, proud group. They want to win every single night. We’re seeing that right now in the midst of end-of-the-game situations, end-of-the-season situation here, it would be easy to fold up our camp and go home. But we want to win. We want to grow. It speaks to our group and their character, who they are and what we believe in.”

Next: Victor Oladipo is seeking respect for his improving jumper