Orlando Magic need collective effort offensively to succeed

The Orlando Magic’s offense hit a major rut in the second half Monday. Their poor ball movement is to blame as the team searches for its way.

Orlando Magic coach Steve Clifford was extremely unhappy in his postgame press conference. His team had just scored a lowly 33 points in the second half, letting a halftime lead slip away and succumbing to a 103-88 defeat to the Detroit Pistons.

It would have been easy to excuse some of the offensive struggles. The team is playing without two of its top three scorers in Nikola Vucevic and Aaron Gordon after all.

But Orlando is taking a “no-excuses” approach. Their loss to the Indiana Pacers on Saturday saw the team score plenty of points. And the loss to the Pistons on Monday saw the team pick the defense apart for a half before things suddenly stopped.

And Clifford was not pleased with how the team moved the ball — or rather, did not — in the second half.

The Magic struggled mightily offensively against the Pistons, to say the least. They played well enough defensively to win but just did not have enough juice offensively. The absence of Nikola Vucevic and Aaron Gordon was evident.

But the team did not do the simple things to get open shots. Clifford dismissed the notion the team struggled because it was short-handed. The team did not play the right way to get open shots. And so it found everything difficult.

It starts with the team’s passing. The Magic tallied a season-low-tying 15 assists. Their 46.9-percent assist rate was the second-worst this season.

Orlando tallied only 39 potential assists, according to Second Spectrum. The team averages 46.7 potential assists per game this season. That is a significant increase. Orlando’s problems went far beyond its poor shooting.

Playing one-on-one basketball and relying too little on ball and player movement is not going to get the job done for this team. Now with their struggles from beyond the arc.

Orlando especially missed their outside shooting Monday. The Magic shot 38-percent from field and 32-percent from 3-point range.

Evan Fournier went 0 for 5 from three and Al-Farouq Aminu missed all four of his attempts. Uncharacteristic of both players, who have been shooting it well from three as of late.

Orlando was unable to create enough plays offensively with two of their top playmakers out of the lineup. Often times the offense just stalled and when the Magic were able to find the open man, shots were not going down.

Clifford said this stalling offensive play was part of the team’s overall bad habits. The team does not always play with the ball movement and attention to detail necessary for them to score.

The Magic are going to need everyone to be playing their best basketball with Gordon and Vucevic out. Orlando has to find a way muster up enough offense going forward. The ball movement has to be better and when players have open looks, they have to take the shot.

Against the Pistons, players would dribble themselves out of position, pass up an open look, to dribble into a tougher shot or turnover.

The worst part is the Magic continue to show they can play the right way and can succeed offensively despite the absences and perceived poor shooting. Right now, when Orlando faces some resistance too often the team reverts to forcing play to get things going.

Orlando this year has typically done well on this. The team has the lowest frequency in the league of isolation plays according to NBA.com at 3.2 percent of possessions. This is just not a part of their game.

Early in the game, the Magic showed they could score. But doing it will take more attention to detail and playmaking. And everyone stepping up within their role together.

It is going to take Markelle Fultz being aggressive and attacking the paint, players hitting open jump shots, Evan Fournier and Jonathan Isaac playing their game and a lot of hustle on both ends of the court. Sometimes defense will turn into offense.

Also, centers Khem Birch and Mohamed Bamba have to maintain their activity around the basket throughout the game. Everyone has their part to play.

The Magic’s ball movement can unlock everything. Markelle Fultz was especially effective in Monday’s game attacking the basket. He tallied three assists and did a good job using his drives to finish around the basket and find teammates. Both he and D.J. Augustin can be drivers that generate action within the offense.

All this can help set up their shooters too.

Fournier is one of the best spot-up shooters in the league (1.13 points per possession on spot-up shots, which is in the 75th percentile of the league). Getting him off the ball would help him improve offensively and give him a break from the pressure of being on the ball.

A player that can play a bigger role offensively going forward is Terrence Ross. He was the lone Magic wing to shoot the ball well against the Pistons. He scored 19 points on 7-for-14 shooting from the field and 3 for 5 from three.

Terrence Ross seems to be over his early-season shooting slump and back to end of last season form.

But Ross scored only five points in the second half as the ball movement stopped. He hit on only two of his five shots in the second half. The Magic’s poor ball movement did the work to eliminate Ross from the game.

The one thing that is clear is that the team does better when everyone stays involved. And if the Magic want their offense to be consistent, they have to be willing to stick to their passing and movement to get there.

It is going to take a collective effort for the Magic to score but with Gordon returning soon, he should be able to take some pressure off offensively.