Orlando Magic: 5 questions for the second quarter of the season

Is Evan Fournier the All-Star now?

There is a minor obsession among the Orlando Magic fan base in finding a star. I am certainly guilty of it too.

At the end of the day, the best teams have the best players. Winning teams are able to get All-Stars. But in the playoffs, it comes down to the best players for each team making plays to win the game.

That was something the Magic lacked in last year’s playoff series. Nikola Vucevic had the numbers and the consistency to get his first All-Star bid. But he struggled to get himself going in the playoffs. The Magic a whole struggled to get themselves going in a major way.

Aaron Gordon was the best player in that playoff series. the Magic were probably eager to see if he would be the one to step up to the plate. While his defense was on point, his shooting has needed some time to come around.

As coach Steve Clifford said before the season, the Magic do not have a player they can dump the ball to and easily get a basket. That is not who this group is. They are going to be a collective effort with one player stepping up as needed. Consistency is valued far more than having that one guy go off.

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If the team wins and is competitive in the playoff standings, the coaches will surely reward someone with an All-Star bid (position dependent).

The way things are going this year, Evan Fournier looks like he has the inside track as the Magic representative at the All-Star Game.

Through the first quarter of the season, Fournier is averaging 19.8 points per game with a 58.9 percent effective field goal percentage and 44.6 percent shooting from beyond the arc. Those are all career highs.

From Vucevic’s injury through Wednesday’s game, Fournier is averaging 25.1 points per game, shooting 50.0 percent overall and 43.6 percent from beyond the arc.

Both his full-season numbers and his recent numbers are certainly at an All-Star level. Defenses are starting to give him that kind of attention too.

Fournier has put up big games and solid numbers for a long time. But never this high for this long. And the real question for Fournier is whether he can continue playing like this for the remainder of the season.

Vucevic will return and he will help boost the team some. Vucevic is averaging a solid, but not All-Star level, 17.1 points per game and 11.6 rebounds per game. That will still get the job done. And the week before his injury, he won the Eastern Conference Player of the Week award.

Once Vucevic returns, he will get going again and probably take his place as the key figure of the Magic’s offense. He will get all those shots. Orlando will likely keep some of those sets for Fournier to score in this way. But they will decrease. Hopefully, though, Vucevic’s return will mean more open looks for Fournier from beyond the arc to make up for it.

Unless the Magic really go on a tear to get into contention for home-court advantage, they may just have to hope for representation on Saturday night in Chicago for All-Star Weekend.

At least, for now, Fournier is the team’s candidate to go for Sunday’s game. For the Magic to stay in playoff position, they will need Fournier to keep it up.