Orlando Magic failing to take on the necessary identity

The Orlando Magic were not playing intelligent basketball on either end of the court in its 107-93 loss to the Los Angeles Clippers.

A glance at the box score yields some puzzling results from the Orlando Magic’s 107-93 loss to the Los Angeles Clippers.

On one hand, the Magic were “forcing” turnovers, but a lot of those Clippers’ miscues were just the result of Chris Paul and company toying with the Magic in the half court. It was Clippers’ carelessness to blame for the miscues, not standout Magic defense.

And beyond those Clippers’ turnovers producing some easy buckets, nothing else came easy for the Magic. Orlando shot just 42 percent from the field and 4 of 20 from 3-point range.

Outside of Evan Fournier and Jason Smith, no Magic players could really find the range.

Sure, there were the typical struggles of Elfrid Payton (two of seven from the floor), but even the usually reliable Nikola Vucevic was throwing up rim-clanking bricks.

Vucevic connected on just 6 of 16, and he was even missing put-backs at the rim that are typically “gimme buckets” for the Magic’s leading scorer.

The Magic just could not seem to get much going right. There were a couple of brief runs, as in every game, but the overall picture was just not really good in any area in this loss. And with so many things going wrong, it is difficult to imagine how the Magic can steady themselves.

“You’ve got to find a way to stay positive, although it’s not easy,” Nikola Vucevic said. “We all get frustrated in moments like these and sometimes you can see on the court we are not happy with where we are right now. We have to find a way to come out of it. It’s not the way we wanted things to go especially with the really good start we had to the year. For some reason, we lost that. We just have to find it and find a way to play better and play the right way and start getting some wins.”

Orlando turned it over 18 times in its own right while also being out-rebounded 44-39 by one of the league’s worst teams on the glass.

The Clippers’ bench outscored the Magic’s 42-37, and the Magic’s bench was one of the bright spots in the game. Credit Evan Fournier for most of that as he brought Orlando 16 points off the bench.

Getting outscored in the second unit is a bright spot, though?

That should give an idea of just how ugly things can really get for a team that has now gone 2-15 in the calendar year.

“We’re 2-15 our last 17 games, so it’s not just one guy,” coach Scott Skiles said. “We’re struggling. You’ve got to be able to work yourself out of it. We can’t afford to start a game and be unaware of the very first play that we’ve already gone over and give up a three. And then things snowball and we fight back and we’re able to hang in these games. But we’re just not consistent enough right now for long enough stretches.”

Perhaps some of this was expected, at least that the road was going to get rougher.

But the Magic had just come off one of its best offensive performances of the season in Wednesday night’s loss to the Oklahoma City Thunder. The Magic put up 114 points, 15 above its season average.

And then there was the regression to Friday: six points below the team’s season average while really doing close to nothing smoothly nor right.

But how does it change?

Teams have dared Payton to shoot all season, and teams look to be employing that gameplan even more heavily now. Streaky though he is, Victor Oladipo has his nights of hitting jumpers. Yet compare him to Clippers 2-guard J.J. Redick or even sixth man Jamal Crawford. The Clippers 2-guards combined to hit 14 of 28 including four threes by Redick, who drew smatterings of applause from his former home crowd.

Shooting guards are typically lights-out shooters. Evan Fournier certainly is. But where do the Magic go to balance its lineup when Payton is misfiring and Oladipo is doing so many other things right?

“We just got to win basketball games at the end of the day,” Victor Oladipo said. “I believe this team is good enough. We can’t use any more excuses. There’s no need for them. We’re good enough, we need to figure it out.”

Oladipo is too good to leave off the court, but by playing him it often leaves Fournier out of the loop. Tobias Harris can hardly afford to sit, either. He scored nine points in the third quarter as the Magic erased the Clippers double-digit lead — just to fall back behind by double digits again in the fourth quarter.

All of the good times were short-lived, and even with the Magic forcing some miscues, the Clippers still shot 54 percent in the game.

In the first quarter alone the Magic shot 2 of 15 on shots outside of the paint. Credit DeAndre Jordan for knowing the right night to dare Nikola Vucevic to shoot the ball. Really, though, credit the Clippers altogether for playing one of their most poorly executed offensive games of the season yet still winning by double digits.

These are the doldrums we thought were behind the Magic. With a new coach and a new attitude, things seemed to be entirely different this year.

But the same old habits have returned: the same carelessness, the same complacency and the same losing behaviors that befit a team likely on its way to another lottery pick. And no matter how much the players seem to deny it those new habits and that new mentality is having trouble sinking in.

“We have new habits in place,” Aaron Gordon said after the game. “The more we try to keep carving these new habits, the better it’s going to be for everyone in this program.”

When your opponent commits 22 turnovers and the result is still a 14-point loss, there has to be some soul searching. The Magic entered the fourth quarter down just four points, but the Clippers outscored them 30-20 in the final period and put the caps on one of the more frustrating performances Skiles has had to endure to this point.

Skiles now has the job of breaking down a film littered with blown defensive rotations, appalling offensive sequences and some sheerly bad basketball.

The Magic film room is not going to be a picnic for the players, because Skiles has to have seen enough of this. Some may turn to blame the coach, but he cannot make the shots for players, he cannot compensate for guys not rotating quick enough — he cannot step off the sidelines and play for them.

“I think a lot of it is simply we’ve struggled a lot lately,” Skiles said. “The reality is there are a lot of guys in the locker room who haven’t won many games. They’ve got to figure out how to get out of it. And the way you get out of it is you work yourself out of it. You start the game with some energy and good things will start happening for you. I’m aware that basically the last three years at this point in the season, the season was over. We’ve got to fight that urge to give in and right now, we’re not doing that successfully.”

And that maybe at this point is Skiles’ biggest frustration. The things his players are doing are things he so rarely did himself. He never backed down and never gave in. It was never an option not to play with precision and focus.

This Magic team, as much as it wants to avoid youth as an excuse, still fights off its own inexperience and those defaults. Something Skiles never worried about or thought about in his playing days.

This team has not quite taken on the personality of its coach. Or any identity other than the one it was trying to rid itself of.

Next: Sloppy L.A. Clippers rout Magic

Philip Rossman-Reich contributed to this report.