The Orlando Magic fell behind early and never truly recovered. Their defense abandoned them and they fell in a blowout to the Chicago Bulls.
On the Orlando Magic’s first offensive possession, the team ran through their two best players. Nikola Vucevic got the ball at the elbow and Jonathon Simmons flared out toward the corner. Nikola Vucevic tried to loop the ball over to him. But Jonathon Simmons lost control of the ball and it trickled out of bounds.
Meanwhile, the Chicago Bulls kept scoring. Contested shots? Sure. But the bigger problems were the way Denzel Valentine and Kris Dunn and Jerian Grant darting through the lane. Chicago took a 12-0 lead off the bat. Orlando was climbing uphill.
And the bigger problem? Those came at the end of the first and second quarters.
At the end of the first quarter, after the Magic had cut the deficit to one, they began to unravel. A 3-pointer from Bobby Portis followed by a three-point play as the buzzer sounded from Kris Dunn after poor defense from D.J. Augustin, a late rotation from Jonathan Isaac and a late charge attempt from Shelvin Mack. It was a 6-0 run that put the game seemingly out of reach.
Another quick run to end the second quarter showed just how much the Magic had unraveled. Even the little bit of momentum the team had built to keep the game close in the second quarter was undone with a series of poor offensive possessions, turnovers and poor transition defense.
Chicago had its way against Orlando in a 112-94 win at United Center on Wednesday. The Magic had no answers and no fight, taking another devastating defeat.
Orlando is still struggling with injuries and it is no surprise the offense continues to flounder. The Magic finished the game shooting 39.3 percent. They hit on just 5 for 27 on 3-pointers, with D.J. Augustin hitting three. It was not a good offensive performance at all, with the team often trying to force the ball through Nikola Vucevic, Jonathon Simmons or Elfrid Payton.
And the Magic’s defense opened up consistently. Orlando was unable to get stops consistently. The Bulls shot 50.0 percent from the floor. And, reminiscent to last year’s penultimate game in that same building, Orlando seemed to lose its fight, allowing the deficit to grow too big.
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The Orlando Magic will lick their wounds and get back at it against the New Orleans Pelicans on Friday at the Amway Center.