The Orlando Magic have not gotten off to the start they imagined this season. But they find themselves in playoff position ahead of a difficult stretch.
The Orlando Magic entered the season believing they were a playoff team. Most predictions believed the Magic were just outside the playoffs at worst and a potential to get home-court advantage at best.
The focus and the belief in this team were abundantly clear before the season started. And a lot of the optimism followed with the team returning virtually the entire rotation from last year’s 22-9 run to make the playoffs. If Orlando could recreate that energy, urgency and play, then the sky really felt like the limit.
That has not quite come around though. The Magic struggled a bit out of the gates. Coach Steve Clifford admitted he tinkered with rotations understanding the lessons of the Magic’s quick playoff exit. the offense might have gotten some tweaks too.
Regardless, the Magic started the year shooting as cold as possible. The team, already facing a bit of a shooting deficit, hit near rock bottom offensively through the first quarter of the season.
Orlando got out slow out of the gate. Not slow enough to eliminate them from the playoff race. But slow nonetheless. Enough to raise some concerns.
The Magic have found their footing to hold a small lead in the early Eastern Conference playoff race. Nobody is knocking them out of the playoff conversation. Then again, those dreams of homecourt advantage might need to get tempered just a bit more.
Still, the Magic have seen plenty of good.
Jonathan Isaac has emerged as a Defensive Player of the Year candidate, nearly leading the league in blocks as a wing player. Jonathan Isaac has become a terror defensively, able to lock down his man and help near the basket all at once.
Markelle Fultz has been a pleasant surprise too. He has supplanted D.J. Augustin as the starter and has brought new energy and pace to the team. His development is vital to the team as a whole and has been one of the biggest surprises of the year.
The root of the team’s success is on defense. The Magic can reach down and play elite-level defense when they need to. The group needs a bit more consistency on that end and they are missing one of the most disciplined team defenders in Nikola Vucevic.
But the big story to start the season has been injuries.
In the last two weeks, the team has had to find a new way to play — just as the team was finding its rhythm — without Nikola Vucevic. it has taken a while and it is still not clear if Orlando has found its footing firmly. But the Magic are holding steady. No one is ready to write the season completely off.
So the Magic head into the second quarter of the season — a part of the schedule that will feature the team’s first big West Coast road trip and the beginning of their second road trip — sitting in the playoff position.
That is ultimately where the Magic want to be. But they still have a lot of work to do to be the team they ultimately want to be.