Trust is growing within Orlando Magic
The Orlando Magic are winning games in a new manner. There is a growing trust that seems to be lasting more than the immediate game as the season ends.
Trust is a funny thing.
You cannot just have it. It takes time to cultivate and earn. It takes time to form. It is not just something that rolls out of bed and happens.
It is not only making the right play and getting the result, it is knowing it is the right play even when the results do not show up.
The Magic have needed a whole season to reach this point, but it is starting to look more and more like the Magic have built some trust and some rhythm together. And the results have been splendid, giving Magic fans the most satisfying and complete wins of the season and the grittiest and toughest too.
The play that best exemplified this was one James Borrego pointed out himself.
It was not Victor Oladipo‘s driving layup past Jimmy Butler with 1.5 seconds left that gave the Magic a 105-103 lead, the one where Oladipo went against the scouting report and took Butler to his left to get all the way into the paint. It was the play before that which cemented the Magic’s lead:
Elfrid Payton pushed the ball and Aaron Gordon and Victor Oladipo ran the floor with him. Payton fed it to Gordon who had Nikola Mirotic on his heels trying to catch up. Gordon did not hesitate and sent it to Oladipo in the corner, knowing he would be there.
The results paid off for the process and Oladipo drained the 3-pointer to give the Magic the lead for good.
Trust can be a powerful thing.
“The joy for me comes out of watching our players,” coach James Borrego said. “Their excitement, their joy. They’re the group on the floor. The credit goes to those 15 men in the locker room that have stuck together, that pull for each other, that compete with each other. They’ve never backed down from that. And I’m proud of the way they have stuck with that. They made growth on the floor, but as a group they have come together and the credit belongs tot he 15 men in that locker room.”
The last two games have shown how deep that trust can go.
Orlando, like against Milwaukee over the weekend, fell behind by double digits in the first half and seemed destined to get overwhelmed by a superior opponent. The Magic were struggling to get into a good offensive rhythm and the Bulls were draining 3-pointers.
Patience is not the strong suit of the young. There have been plenty of times the Magic have wilted in the face of such a deficit. The fight has returned and the team is pushing onward and through any frustration to cement these wins.
“I think we’re getting there,” Nikola Vucevic said. “It is late in the season and we’re not going to make the Playoffs. It is important for us that we keep battling and we keep playing for something. What’s good about this team is we could have all just given in and finished these five games. But we really want to finish these games the right way and show we’re really battling. For us to finish this season the right way would be great for us going into next year.”
There have certainly been plenty of growing pains throughout the season. Why it took 78 games for the team to find this kind of rhythm is certainly baffling enough. The past is the past though and the Magic are trying to work on building momentum for the future with the time they have left.
Slowly but surely, the team has found confidence and late-game chops to close these things out.
How have they done it?
There is definitely a pecking order and roles setting in, helped along by Aaron Gordon’s late-season emergence and Evan Fournier‘s return from injury.
Like against the Bucks, the Magic found a way to spread the floor and move the ball, trusting where each other was going to be on both ends of the floor.
Evan Fournier missed a three-pointer with 2:36 left and followed his shot, grabbed the rebound and took advantage of the shifting defense to finish a difficult layup around Pau Gasol at the rim to tie the game. The Gordon pass to Oladipo in the corner for three gave the Magic the lead for good and was a sign of the trust that has developed in this group.
Defensively, it showed itself more as the Magic rotated well and made things difficult for the Bulls, who shot 43 percent from the floor. The only points the Bulls scored in the final two minutes came from Pau Gasol working for position on the block or a cheap foul given to Nikola Vucevic.
Whereas, the Magic might have hung their heads like they did after the Bulls came back and upended them last time they came to town, this was a different Magic team with a better understanding of itself and its roles.
And more importantly playing with confidence.
“I’m very proud of this group,” Borrego said. “We could have easily closed up shop, called it a season, but we’ve stuck with it every single day. We said we’re going to get better. We have not strayed from that. Every day in practice, in shootarounds, in games, the mentality is to get better. No matter how many game, how many days we have left, that’s our goal, that’s our mentality right now. Even through the losses, we never wavered.”
James Borrego has long had faith that his team was getting closer and closer to figuring it out. It seems unfortunate that the season is about to come to an end at this moment when things are about to click.
Only time will tell if the Magic make good on this promise or if it will be another flash in the pan.
They are clicking though. And before everyone parts ways to work on their individual games, the team is picking up steam as a team and looking suddenly dangerous for what they are.