Orlando Magic dig themselves in deeper as they try to learn to win

The Orlando Magic want to use the final 24 games this season to learn how to win and establish a base. Those lessons are proving hard to teach still.

The Orlando Magic have seen the script that played out Thursday night at the Amway Center too many times in the last five years. Nikola Vucevic most of all.

He has stared down the defeats time and time again, watching star players catch fire and his own team’s mistakes and frustrating offense bog his team down as the team lets go of the rope and watches their lead dwindle into another crushing defeat.

Nikola Vucevic tried. There is no doubt he did. What he could do was not enough. And often the frustrating play he put on trying to rescue his team was part of the problem for the Magic.

Orlando took an 11-point lead with 9:52 to play. It looked like the Magic would start the second half of the season on the right foot and build some momentum. Then the bottom dropped out as it so often has in an 112-103 loss to the Portland Trail Blazers on Thursday at Amway Center.

“We didn’t do a good job of closing out the game,” Vucevic said. “I thought defensively, we let them get what they wanted and offensively we didn’t do a good job getting looks. We took some quick shots. A lot of bad decisions late in the game. We pretty much gave the game away that way.”

The final tally in the fourth quarter: The Magic scored 18 points shooting 4 for 18 from the floor. Damian Lillard nearly outscored the Magic on his own with 17 points in the quarter.

Lillard is more than capable of going off for these big scoring outbursts. Even against good defense, he rose up and hit difficult shots. But Lillard also found his way into the lane and scored in and around the basket. He torched Elfrid Payton off the dribble to the point coach Frank Vogel pulled him before crunch time.

Orlando Magic

Many of those opportunities to attack came courtesy of rushed shots offensively for the Magic. Including plenty from Vucevic. Vucevic only took two shots in the period but committed two turnovers. It felt like he and the Magic were forcing their offense in the final quarter, trying to scratch out a victory that would not come.

“We couldn’t get stop sin the last couple minutes. We were lackadaisical on defense,” Jeff Green said. “We were in control most of the game, the whole game basically. We let the rope go in the last five or six minutes. Games are won in the fourth quarter on the defensive end. We let this one go.”

That is where the disappointment lies. As it has for much of the past five years. Orlando has been unable to win these games.

It is this point Vogel wants to spend his attention the last 24 games correcting. It is here the Magic want to begin seriously correcting mistakes and building a foundation for a future.

Vogel said the team is not going to pack it in with the Playoffs (nearly) out of reach. He said he wants his team to pick up wins and shed some of their bad habits. For too long, he said, the team has suffered losing without learning what it takes to win.

Thursday was a perfect opportunity to start on that path. An opportunity lost.

“You’re up nine or whatever we were in the fourth quarter at home, you should win that game,” Vogel said. “It’s exactly what I am talking about. You have to put together a complete game. But in certain situations, you have to step on an opponent when you have them down. You have to make those plays when you are up. We didn’t do that tonight. That’s been a problem with our organization, our franchise and our team. These guys have to figure out how to make those plays.”

After going up nine with nine minutes to play, the Magic gave up a 14-4 run to give up the lead in the following four minutes. The Magic missed five shots and turned the ball over twice in that span.

In the final nine minutes, Orlando went 2 for 12. The team simply could not make shots, forcing play whether it was Elfrid Payton driving too deep, Evan Fournier struggling to hit jumpers over contesting defense or Nikola Vucevic fighting too hard to force his post ups.

Portland found the right plays, finding Lillard on several occasions or passing the ball to the post to Jusuf Nurkic or rotating it out to Maurice Harkless for a killer 3-pointer. The Blazers had the Magic reeling and unable to stem the tide.

Nothing Orlando seemed to do could get them out of this hole. Instead, they dug deeper into it. The Magic had lapses on both ends of the floor. But the problems for Orlando

The Magic had lapses on both ends of the floor. But the problems for Orlando stem back to the same problem that has plagued this team all year. Communicating and staying on the same page.

“Gather our composure and know the game is won on the defensive end,” Jeff Green said. “We have to be smart on the offensive end. I think we tried to force a couple shots toward the end and that allowed them to get out on the break. Defensively, we stopped communicating. Just communicate a little bit better.”

The Magic will need to continue working at this aspect and find some leadership and some central point to gather themselves when things get tough.

To that point in the game, Orlando had withstood a few runs on their healthy lead. Eventually, as time ticked away the Magic could no longer withstand it and fell apart.

Learning how to win is not an easy process, though. The Magic have spent five years trying to figure this part out to no avail.

All the team can do is pick up and try again Saturday. With some tweaks and more familiarity, perhaps this time they will learn these lessons.

Next: Orlando Magic have no plans for tanking

“You’ve just got to keep playing, stay positive, play hard and play tough,” Terrence Ross said. “You have to flush it out of your system. You can’t dwell too much on the bad stuff. We just have to keep our head up and stay positive and keep playing hard. Eventually, we will get the hang of it.”