Orlando Magic searching for consistency in extended home stretch
The Orlando Magic have nearly two weeks at home to practice and bank up some wins. Scott Skiles and co. are more worried about building consistency for now.
The logic of the situation for the Orlando Magic is simple.
Having survived a difficult opening stretch to start the season — six of the first 11 games were against teams that made the Playoffs last year and the combined record of the 11 teams the Magic have faced so far this season is 46-66 (including matchups with the three worst teams in the league in the 76ers, the Lakers and the Pelicans — all wins) — the Magic have appeared to have found some footing at 5-6.
That by no means is a sign the team has rounded a corner or become who it wants to be. There is a lot of work the team needs to get to — most pressing, figuring out why the Magic start games so well but struggle in the third quarter and fourth quarter.
The next two weeks provide an opportunity for the Magic to really discover and learn themselves in many ways. It is a chance for the team to gain some much needed consistency and get some practice time to re-enforce principles that may have slipped throughout the season.
“We’ve played well enough on both sides of the ball for enough stretches that — it’s one thing we talk to the guys every day — when we are playing good, solid defense and we are doing the detail-oriented things on offense, like running the floor hard, setting screens, concentrating on our spacing and not dribbling too much, we look like a good club,” Scott Skiles said. “There are part of the game where we stop doing both and we look like a terrible club.”
The good news is the Magic appear to be getting healthier. Skiles said Victor Oladipo participated in the Magic’s non-contact practice Tuesday. That is the final step in the concussion protocol. If Oladipo shows no signs of concussion symptoms and at least matches his baseline test, the path would be clear for him to play in Wednesday’s game against the Timberwolves.
Jason Smith also participated in his second day of practice Tuesday and appears ready to return after a weeklong absence. C.J. Watson did not participate in practice and neither did Evan Fournier. Fournier was in the Amway Center after staying away Monday with a fever.
The return of these players could be vitally important for the Magic’s long-term plans and season as the schedule gets set to pick up again.
The Magic will play five of the next six games at home. It is, by logic’s argument, a great opportunity to build some wins before the team embarks on a seven-day, five-game road trip out West.
That all might be thinking too far ahead. The Magic at this point are still a young team and their lack of consistency has Skiles less focused on that big-picture goal of making the Playoffs and more focused on the day-to-day machinations of his team.
“We have to take this game by game for our group right now. I don’t look too far ahead right now. If it’s a really great veteran team, even this early, you can kind of focus in. But that’s not where we are. We have to literally come in here every day, work on the things that we’re not doing well, solely focus on the team the next night and go from there.”
Seeking consistency is really the biggest task for Skiles and his team in the next two weeks — winning games will be a byproduct of that. Skiles said he is more concerned at this point with how much effort his team puts into games and how much attention they pay to details.
The team, he said, has not gotten to the point where they can afford to revert back to bad habits and he can trust them to bounce back. There are no random bad days yet, like you might see with a more established team. It appears the Magic are still more establishing themselves.
And the more frustrating thing for Skiles and the Magic, he said, was the team has displayed a lot of the things he wants to occur happen in practices but have not translated cleanly to games quite yet.
“I don’t think it’s so much an issue of guys not willing to put forth the effort,” Skiles said. “It’s just sort of maybe we’re a little too easily satisfied sometimes. We fight hard in a quarter and almost like, not that we assume the other team is going to quit, but we relax just enough. We just don’t have the margin for error for that. We need to look at the tape when the game is over and say, factoring in the typical ebb and flow of a NBA game, for 40 out of the 48 minutes, we outplayed the other team. If it’s 32 out of 48, for our team, that’s not good enough.”
In that sense then, the home schedule could become a trap. But only if the team lets it. It happened last season. The Magic returned home from a West Coast trip at 9-14 with nine of the next 14 games at home. They would go 4-10 in those games and fall completely out of any meaningful competition from there.
These games do represent an opportunity to get some rest and some much-needed practice time while trying to bank home games, but it is nothing guaranteed.
“We look to get a lot better with these practice days and work out the kinks of all the problems we have,” Elfrid Payton said. “You try not to look ahead, but this is definitely a time to get better as a team.”