Orlando Magic hope road trip can bring them together again

The Orlando Magic came together for their strongest play on their last big road trip. With the season in the balance, they hope they can do it again.

The Orlando Magic were disappointed in themselves during Thanksgiving week.

They had dropped three relatively winnable games at home and were on a four-game losing streak. The Magic were fighting to stay above water. They needed some momentum and faced a daunting five-game road trip starting in San Antonio against the San Antonio Spurs.

Magic fans were fearing the worst. And there was no reason not to with the task ahead and the season slowly slipping away.

Something funny happened, though. Orlando went to San Antonio and won for just the fifth time in franchise history in San Antonio. The team’s defense kicked into high gear on the road trip and Orlando won four of five games. The Magic were back in the Playoff conversation — if only on the fringes — and had found their identity.

It slowly slipped away as the Magic fell into playing .500 basketball, alternating wins and losses for much of the last month.

Orlando again finds itself hurting and trying to stay in touch with the Playoff pole sitters. The Magic are three games out of the final Playoff spot heading into Saturday’s games. They are likely the lowest team in the standings holding on to Playoff hopes.

The Magic are now coming off two home losses to the Atlanta Hawks and Houston Rockets. And their difficult January is preparing to get much, much tougher.

Like that holiday losing streak, Orlando is now heading back out on the road for a six-game, 11-day trip to the West Coast. Like the team was in November, the Magic are hoping going out on the road can set the team back on the right path.

“We are more comfortable on the road,” Evan Fournier said. “It’s amazing. Hopefully, we put together a very good road trip and come back to Orlando with a lot of confidence.”

The Magic’s road will take them to Los Angeles to take on the Los Angeles Lakers (Sunday) and L.A. Clippers (Wednesday). It then winds to Portland (Friday) and Utah (Saturday), before wrapping up with a MLK Day game against the Denver Nuggets (Monday) and the New Orleans Pelicans (Wednesday). The schedule remains daunting with the Milwaukee Bucks and Golden State Warriors at home following the trip.

Orlando will need every win it can get to stay in the Playoff race. This road trip is going to weigh heavily on the direction the team moves next and whether it stays in the Playoff race.

The Magic have fared well on the road. They are 9-9 and still the only team in the league with a .500 road record and a sub-.500 home record. Orlando has had to make up ground at home. But they have built the bulk of its victories on the road.

For whatever reason, Orlando seems to respond to this kind of adversity.

“The only thing that I can say is the camaraderie,” Aaron Gordon said. “If you want to win on the road, it has to be higher. Everyone has to be more together. They are the only ones out there rooting for you.”

The Magic will certainly be spending plenty of time together in the next few weeks. That first road trip did a lot to build chemistry with a new team.

But this is a much different time. The pressure is increased now to start stringing some wins together. This is not simply about getting to know everyone on the team. The magic have to find some consistency.

The hope is the isolation from home and forcing everyone together will sharpen the team a bit more. Just like it did in early December. The Magic were playing at their defensive peak then as they had to rally together on the road and scratch out victories.

Orlando hopes they can rediscover that now. And that they can find some consistency on the road.

“Just scrambling on defense, communicating on defense and just sharing the ball like we did on that road trip,” D.J. Augustin said. “If we continue to do that every game, we have a chance to win every night. Sometimes we don’t share the ball. Sometimes we don’t play defense. We have to put it all together in one game.”

If there is one bit of optimism, the Magic found some defensive focus in holding the Houston Rockets to 100 points in Friday’s loss. That is something to build on, even in defeat.

But the Magic’s season is balancing on the edge as things stand now.

Orlando has lost four of its past five games. The Playoff dreams are slipping away. And a poor road trip could end up the death knell for the season — it certainly would necessitate change sooner than later.

The Magic hope to delay what perhaps seems inevitable with another strong road trip. And then build some momentum off of that to the rest of the season.

It starts with the first game of the trip. Momentum is the next day’s pitcher, as the saying goes. Orlando cannot have a good road trip without picking up that first game and starting the train moving forward.

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“One at a time,” coach Frank Vogel said. “It’s not about a huge road trip at this point. We’ve got to go out and do whatever we’ve got to do to beat the Los Angeles Lakers. That’s it.”