The Orlando Magic were struggling offensively exiting the road trip. All of a sudden the ball is moving and the offense is flowing again.
The Orlando Magic were as low as any team could be last Friday. Their five-game win streak was a distant memory, they had just been embarrassed on their home floor and had struggled to find any offensive flow in losing three of four games.
Maybe they just needed a mental break and some time in the gym to work out the kinks and rediscover their offense again. That appeared to do the trick.
The Orlando Magic came out of the gate in rhythm. The shots were falling and the ball was moving quickly. Charlotte did not have time for its defense to close out or catch up.
Thwick!
There was a quick pass from Nikola Vucevic to a cutting Elfrid Payton, who had just fed the ball to Vucevic on a pick and roll.
Whoosh!
There went Tobias Harris stealing the ball and staying inbounds while warding off the defense and jamming it with two hands.
These were the kind of plays the Magic had wanted all along. Their offense fed their defense which fed their offense. The ball moved quickly around the perimeter before the defense could catch up. They attacked holes and found room to get into the paint and dish it back out.
“Everybody was attacking the paint and making the extra pass and then guys were making shots,” Elfrid Payton said. “It was a good job by us. It’s definitely contagious. Guys were feeling it, so we did a good job.”
Payton was a driver of this whole offensive flow with 12 points and nine assists. He probed and found it easy to get into the lane and kick it out.
But he was not the only one having his way.
Channing Frye was sitting on the perimeter firing away as the Magic finally spotted him and got him the ball in positions to score. He had 17 points on 5-for-7 shooting from beyond the arc.
In fact seven Magic players scored in double figures and only two had 15 or more. It was the balance and ball movement that had won the game for the Magic and won it in convincing fashion.
All the things Scott Skiles had been preaching to his team seemed finally to click. The Magic were not standing around at all. They were not dribbling into traffic too deep. They were finding the open man before that brief door closed.
“We came out and we were seeing each other game, stepping into our open shots,” Skiles said. “Sometimes it is pretty simple, you shoot when you are open and you pass when you are covered and we did a pretty good job of that tonight.”
Skiles has said balance has been the key to Magic victories. They need four, five, six, maybe even seven guys playing well to win. Clearly when the team is playing together like the results can be pretty overwhelming.
For the second straight game, the Magic just had it all working and did not need suffocating defense to keep them in the game. It turned out they only needed a few key stretches of defense to close this out. Skiles said they had a run of eight out of 10 possessions where they got a stop, that helped Orlando grow the lead from 10 to 18 early on in the second half and helped them keep it there.
The Magic turned in their second straight game with an offensive rating of greater than 110 points per 100 possessions and second straight game with an assist rate greater than 58 percent.
These were two of Orlando’s best offensive performances of the year.
“When we play good basketball, it is infectious,” Channing Frye said. “I think we can be a great team. It’s just when we understand individually, we have to rely on each other and get the best shot possible every possession.”
Whether the Magic can maintain this level of play remains to be seen. Orlando will likely fall back to its mean and will not average more than 110 points per 100 possessions every night. Season-high field goal shooting will not happen every night.
Orlando is moving the ball more. That has been much of the secret for what was missing when the Magic’s offense struggled last week.
Things are clicking again for the Magic. They have found their way back to offensive comfort.
Next: Orlando Magic show potential in huge win over Charlotte Hornets
“We’re just playing together, sharing the ball, passing the ball to each other,” Vucevic said. “It’s just much more fun to play that way. I think we’re a much better team as well. And I think we know if we want to be a better team, we know we have to play that way.”