Orlando Magic team apathy making Playoff dreams vanish

The Orlando Magic are giving fans few reasons to tune in with their apathetic and lethargic efforts on the court.

There comes a point in every losing season at which fans begin to tune the team out. The reasoning is usually pretty simple and straightforward: The team has given up trying to win games, so what reason does the fan base have to support it?

The Orlando Magic should not be at that point. Whether they believe it or not, the Playoffs are still within grasp — just four games back after Friday’s loss to the Phoenix Suns. It would be difficult to make it, but not impossible.

The team should still be fighting for that goal until the dream finally and officially dead. There is still plenty to play for and there is constant urging that every game remaining is a must-win toward that goal.

But with the lethargic efforts the Magic have put forth in recent games, it is not clear how much the Magic are willing to give for that end. And perhaps that is just as well, because the Magic are not playing like a playoff team and truthfully have no business lacing up for the league’s “real” season — the “win or go home” part.

And what is worse, it does not seem there is not much fight to prevent that from happening even with so much still to play for. The latest offense in this struggle to the end of the season came in an embarrassing 102-84 loss to the Suns at Amway Center on Friday.

“The only thing that I can say is it’s easy for me to say or Mario [Elie] or Adrian [Griffin] or somebody to discuss the Playoffs and how much fun it is,” coach Scott Skiles said. “But if you have never been through it, it’s just words. We should probably stop talking about that right now. This was a game that we had to have or at least a performance we had to have. The question is we need to find out is I know I’m not going to get much sleep tonight. I’m wondering if most of the guys are.”

That is a might big question to ask your team in the middle of a Playoff race, the most fun and engaging part of the season. The thing every team works for.

And yet with those goals in front of them, the Magic continue to fall short.

Perhaps what makes it all the more disconcerting is that this season began with such high hopes. The Magic were 19-13 when the calendar year turned over and in the Playoff pole position. They controlled their own destiny.

That Magic team, the one playing with real tenacity and grit, was one that fans could have rallied around. The Magic were showing all the positive signs of a team starting to break through to relevancy.

But those good feelings seem like truly distant memories, and the team that looked so promising appears to be filled by corpses, players unwilling to commit to anything more than half-spirited efforts or an occasional glimmer to provide optimism quickly snuffed out.

The fan base has been lulled into the same stupor. It seemed in the third quarter against the Suns on Friday, the fans were unsure whether they were actually even at a basketball game.

The Magic went the first six minutes of the period without a field goal, as more and more fans wandered to the bars in the Amway Center in search of something more exciting than the so-called basketball game taking place on the court. Those who stayed in their seats booed the Magic for their poor effort.

And that is what this season has become at this point, some passing diversion, some sideshow, something that fans at home are struggling even more to feign interest in. Nothing more than empty hope for the something better — struggling to grasp on what was so good early on in the season.

The same struggles and apathetic play that characterized this team during Jacque Vaughn and James Borrego’s tenure has returned in some form. The routine of losing taking hold at a time when the Magic’s season had otherwise been decided the past three years.

Skiles said he has tried to have his team guard against this habit and this thought. Clearly those efforts have not taken hold.

“Everybody in here is competitive,” guard Elfrid Payton said. “I don’t think anybody in this locker room likes losing. We’re all going to take this hard. At the end of the day, once you go to sleep, you’ve got to get back up and go back to work. We have a tough road trip. We can’t let this linger.”

The cast members are slightly different, but this is the same losing Magic team that fans have grown tired of supporting.

It cannot remain that way. It cannot if the Magic are to ascend to relevancy again.

Perhaps that is all overstated, or even just overly ominous based on a gut reaction to a struggling basketball team. But that really does not seem like the case. There has been four seasons of basketball since Dwight Howard took his talents westward, and the product is only marginally better in all of this time.

Yes, Orlando has won more games this season than last and there has been improvement. But right now we are watching the ugly half-spirited effort of a team that does not seem to want to win.

That raises only bigger questions for the offseason, leaving the franchise’s future in that much more uncertainty.

The Magic seem content only to win when it is literally handed to them on a platter, as it was Wednesday night against the Chicago Bulls. If the opposition shows even a bit of intensity, the Magic do not offer much resistance.

Related Story: Orlando Magic truly foul in loss to Phoenix Suns

The result is a team muddling through a season, utterly indifferent as to whether each game passing is a win or a loss.

Philip Rossman-Reich contributed to this report.