Injuries forcing Orlando Magic to scramble

Nikola Vucevic and Elfrid Payton will both miss Tuesday’s game for the Orlando Magic as the team has to deal with injuries to two key players.

The Orlando Magic will once again be without two starters as they take on the Denver Nuggets on Tuesday as Nikola Vucevic (sore groin) and Elfrid Payton (sprained right elbow) will miss the game. Ersan Ilyasova will play after missing Monday’s practice with a shin bruise and Brandon Jennings is expected to play after missing Saturday’s game in Portland with soreness in his Achilles. C.J. Watson missed the morning shootaround with an illness and his status for the game is still unknown.

That is quite the long list of injuries for a team already struggling mightily and seeking some type of stability after an up-and-down couple of months.

Injuries are a reality in the NBA, as they are in any other sport, and the Magic have faced their fair share. But with so much seemingly on the line and the team having so many difficulties, it seems the Magic are in a worse position regarding injuries as anyone else.

All they can do is take a next-man-up mentality.

“That’s part of the job,” Evan Fournier said. “If you can play and if you are on the court, you have to give everything. The guys that are out, you can’t pay attention to it. You have to do the job regardless. It’s a next-man-up mentality. Dewayne is playing really hard right now and playing well.”

Vucevic leads the team in scoring with 17.8 points per game. For all his flaws, the Magic still rely heavily on him offensively to free up space for others and simply score when the offense is struggling.

And the Magic have needed him to.

In the first three-game stint Vucevic missed in November, the Magic posted a 96.7 offensive rating and 96.6 defensive rating. Obviously the Magic’s defense has changed dramatically since then and that bore itself out when Vucevic missed all four games on the West Coast road trip.

The offensive struggles without Vucevic though continued.

Vucevic has missed seven games this year and Orlando has posted approximately a 95.2 offensive rating and 101.4 defensive rating. The offense especially without Vucevic falls well below the season average, although defense does tend to improve.

Of course, the sample size is very small and the outlier of Saturday’s frustrating performance against the Trail Blazers certainly skews some of the numbers.

The point remains though, the Magic have to work extra hard without Vucevic in the lineup.

“Nobody wants their leading scorer to be out,” coach Scott Skiles said. “That’s always a strain. Our challenge is a large part of our offense revolves around Vuc — getting the ball into the post, his pick and pop game, his driving game, he has been one of our better playmakers. We have to find a way to get enough points and get enough stops to win a game.”

That is made even harder by missing Elfrid Payton too.

Payton is the kind of player who despises being out. Skiles almost had to force him to sit after spraining his ankle in December, missing the first four games of his NBA career in early January after playing all 82 games his rookie year and every game in his college career at Louisiana-Lafayette.

Payton’s absence in January saw the Magic really get deep into their struggles. The team posted a 98.7 offensive rating and 107.6 defensive rating with a pace of 90.7 possessions per 48 minutes in those four games. In the two games, Payton missed on the West Coast trip, the Magic posted a 93.7 offensive rating and a 111.1 defensive rating with a 100.7 pace.

In total the Magic have approximately a 95.0 offensive rating and a 106.2 defensive rating in games Payton does not play. Both those numbers are certainly pretty alarming.

Obviously two games skew those numbers heavily against the Magic — a blowout loss at Detroit and at Portland. In either case, the Magic clearly had some struggles without Payton available.

And the most important fact to remember, the Magic have won just one game when Payton does not play this year.

He along with Vucevic leave big holes to fill. And the schedule will not stop for them to get healthy. The Magic have to rally and find a way to replace their production and scratch out a win.

“We’re short handed, people are hurt,” Victor Oladipo said. “But that’s a part of the game. It’s next man up. You just have to step up and play and play at a high level. We’ve got to be ready to play today and tomorrow and for the rest of the year.”