On one hand, the Orlando Magic are no further behind or ahead of where they were last year.
At the quarter mark of the season, the Magic were 8-10. One game better than they were in the 2020 season and only one game behind the pace set in 2019.
That is all to say, there is clearly a lot of season left to play. And if the Magic’s goal is simply to make the playoffs, they are still on track to do so. Nobody can clinch a playoff spot in the first quarter of the season, but certainly, teams can put themselves out of the race or make it that much more daunting to come back.
Orlando found itself at the quarter mark of the season not having the start the team wanted. The Magic got off to a 6-2 start before Markelle Fultz’s torn ACL flipped the team on its side. Suddenly, the Magic did not have its point guard anymore. And the team had to change its identity on the fly.
The team obviously struggled in the final 10 games, winning just two of the final 10 before this arbitrary mark. The team fell from its perch atop the Eastern Conference — or at least, staying in the middle of the playoff pack — to being on the fringes and fighting both to get into the eighth seed or in the packed race for the play-in tournament.
Injuries have further decimated the roster and the team could quickly fall into the deep lottery.
The Magic have not been able to stick to their goal of climbing the playoff ladder and are seemingly fighting for their playoff lives again. The Magic have to find their way to play again and that has been the biggest struggle of the first quarter of the season.
That is not a place anyone wants to be a quarter of the way through the season. Teams are going to start separating themselves more in the next 18-20 games and the lines will clearly be drawn of who is in and out of the playoff picture.
And the way the second quarter of the season has started has certainly made things look even bleaker. The season is quickly falling apart.
The Magic will not have much time to get things back if they slip any further. They will have to get themselves right quickly. And that process is proving to be an ongoing and lengthy process.
Orlando is struggling to start the second quarter of the season already. Another major injury is going to make that task even harder. There is a lot of work to do and a lot of questions to answer.
Can the Orlando Magic rebuild their defense?
The Orlando Magic know at their very core they have to defend at a better level. Plain and simple.
This is who the team is supposed to be. That kind of gritty, committed defense is what lifted the team from Eastern Conference cellar-dweller to playoff team. At the Magic’s very core, this is who the Magic have to be to find success.
Nobody on this Magic team is considered a high-level defender outside of Aaron Gordon (and Jonathan Isaac and Al-Farouq Aminu when they are healthy). This group became a top-10 defense out of sheer force of will and game planning.
This is very much what a Steve Clifford team is. They play above their station because of a commitment to the details and a specific way to play. It is simple and beautiful.
Defense, largely on its own, can make a team competitive — last year, no team in the top eight in defensive rating had a record worse than .500 and only one team in the top 11 missed the playoffs.
That was part of Clifford’s project when he stepped in. The Magic had to be good defensively.
That is who they are.
Orlando Magic
That is not who they have been this year. Even before Markelle Fultz’s injury.
In the first quarter of the season, the Magic ranked 19th in the league with a 110.1 defensive rating. There were some bright spots throughout the season, but nothing that lasted. The inconsistency has been the thing that has been maddening.
Perhaps that is part of what is so frustrating. They know how good they can be defensively and it is not about effort, but merely execution and detail. These are supposed to be the things the Magic are great at.
This season has challenged Clifford a ton without a doubt. He would undoubtedly love another week of training camp to pin down these details and drill the team’s offense and defense. He would probably wish for three straight days off and a normal schedule to get real practice in.
He has been unable to reel the team’s defense in. He and the Magic were betting on familiarity and continuity to shrink this learning curve and build these habits without practice.
The team has to do its work too. Even through all the injuries. But the Magic are not turning their season around without their defense. It is central to everything that they do.
Without it, this is one of the worst teams in the league.
Will the Orlando Magic be able to solve their point guard problems?
Undoubtedly, the Orlando Magic have been down a lot of players and key players. There is probably a point for every team where they just lose so much that they break.
The better teams have a softer cushion to fall on. The Magic were always a team that had a small margin for error and the wrong injury to the wrong player would break the team.
Last year, Orlando survived injuries to everyone at the power forward position essentially — Jonathan Isaac was out for most of the year, as was Al-Farouq Aminu, and Aaron Gordon was in and out of the lineup until the All-Star Break. So there was some confidence they could weather the storm.
But this year, the Magic made a very specific gamble that has turned up craps for them.
The Magic decided to let D.J. Augustin walk in free agency and drafted a rookie in Cole Anthony to back up Markelle Fultz. The team was relying a whole lot on Fultz to help the team push the pace and give the team its offensive force.
Losing him has caused a lot of the team to collapse.
King James Gospel
Anthony has done his best for sure. He averaged 11.0 points per game and 3.3 assists per game while shooting 36.9-percent and 33.9-percent from beyond the arc. He got better as he got more comfortable in the starting role.
But the Magic are still trying to do their best to protect him too. They wanted to bring him slowly off the bench and put him in lineups where he could experience success and slowly grow his responsibility.
Even though he is starting, Anthony is still largely in a secondary role. The team is not using him as their primary initiator a lot of the time.
Even when he is, the Magic still look a bit disorganized and unable to get into their sets quickly and efficiently. Anthony is probably still thinking too much out there. But that is expected from a rookie.
Orlando’s efforts to turn Aaron Gordon into a point guard or initiator has had a lot of inconsistency. Gordon has either looked really good or really poorly. And it has let him go into his over-dribble mode that takes him out of the game and the magic out of their offense.
And now that option is completely gone likely for the rest of the quarter with his sprained ankle, which occurred while Gordon was bringing the ball up against pressure defense. The Magic may have no choice but to trust Anthony to play the point guard more fully. He may have to take on more responsibility.
Orlando’s offense is inconsistent not just because of the team’s poor shooting, but because the team has no answers at point guard right now. It is impossible to win without this organization.
The Magic are unfortunately stuck though. Unless the team fully trusts Cole Anthony or Jordan Bone to run the team, the Magic have no open roster spots to add anyone. They might have to wait until they are ready for trade season to make this change.
Can Nikola Vucevic keep up his All-Star pace?
The only bright spot for the Orlando Magic in this darkening season is Nikola Vucevic.
He was clearly the team’s first-quarter MVP, averaging 23.5 points per game and 11.1 rebounds per game with 3.7 assists per game while shooting 48.7-percent from the floor and 43.5-percent from beyond the arc. It was an incredible and inspiring run.
The only thing that might keep Vucevic from the All-Star Game at this point is the Magic’s sinking record. It is impossible to have an All-Star (save for Tracy McGrady getting voted in) from a team with a losing record.
To be sure, the Magic need Vucevic putting up these bonkers numbers from both inside and outside to have a chance to win. It is a lot of pressure.
Throughout his time in Orlando, Vucevic has been incredibly consistent. There is no denying how much the Magic rely on his 20 and 10 every night and try to fill in everything else around him.
He has taken his game up to another level this year. He scores 0.91 points per possession on post ups (he was at 0.82 last year on a lower frequency) and he averages a league-high 11.5 points per game on catch-and-shoot situations according to Second Spectrum with a stunning 59.9-percent effective field goal percentage.
Vucevic’s game has started to wane as the second quarter has begun. His poor performances against both the LA Clippers and Toronto Raptors kept the team from having any chance at winning.
Orlando needs Vucevic to be at his best at every moment of the game. That is a high bar for sure. But that is the burden of a star.
Watching the narrative on Vucevic change has been fascinating this season. Magic fans have come around to appreciating Vucevic and everything he has done for the team this year with the effort he has put in.
Somehow the team is asking a lot more from him than ever before. With all the injuries, a lot is falling on his shoulders to carry the team.
Will homecourt advantage matter?
The Orlando Magic’s playoff hopes are certainly slipping away. The team has lost 11 of its last 13 games and are looking disorganized and lost. The team is squandering key opportunities.
The schedule makers front-loaded the Magic’s schedule with advantageous games. Everyone should be wringing their hands and concerned over the second half of the season — the yet-unreleased part of the schedule). On paper, it is not going to be easy.
The Magic knew before the season they had to get off to a good start, survive the middle road trip in January and then feast on wins in the second quarter of the season.
Why? The Magic are playing 12 of their 18 games at the Amway Center.
If Orlando is going to make a playoff push, the team has to take advantage of its (sparse) home crowd and the fact being at home allows them to get some extra practice time and comfort in routine.
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The Magic have already squandered some of this opportunity. The team is 4-6 at home and lost two more games at home since the season turned to the second quarter. They went 2-2 in their first major homestand in the first quarter of the season and then went 1-3 during the team’s homestand last week.
That does not bode well for the team’s playoff hopes or their goal of defending the Amway Center.
But winning these games are vital if the team wants to do anything.
They are not facing all easy opponents either. The Orlando Magic have to face the Toronto Raptors and two against the Chicago Bulls this weekend. Both of those opponents are teams the Magic are directly competing with in the standings. These are must-win games to just prove legitimacy.
After the four-game West Coast road trip, the Orlando Magic return home for four more games the team should feel it can compete in against the New York Knicks, Golden State Warriors and Detroit Pistons.
The Magic just have to hope they can hold on until then and through then and then take advantage of these moments.
If they are not able to do that, things could get very dark very quickly for the team. . .
What is the Orlando Magic’s point of pain?
But ultimately what every Orlando Magic fan is talking about when it comes to this team is the future.
The team’s most important developmental players in Jonathan Isaac and Markelle Fultz are on the shelf with torn ACLs. They are done for the year and the team will need to wait for them to return to full health. Even next season will be spent getting them back to full speed.
The team is heading for a transition one way or the other.
By the standings, the Magic are still very much in the playoff race. The team (rightfully) is not giving up on that goal and is pushing to play better and stay in the race. It is still early in the season and there is still time to get everything right.
Everything just has to click into place.
That is not looking good. There are few signs — other than the Magic’s history under Steve Clifford — the team is going to get things right. And, yes, that yet-unreleased second-half schedule figures to be a bear.
The Magic might well make the decision organizationally that it is time to reset the team a bit. Aaron Gordon’s now reportedly monthlong absence after spraining his ankle very well might tip the Magic over the edge.
For now, Orlando is certainly still going to push to win and to try to compete for the playoffs. That goal is still too close to give up on. It would not make sense to do anything drastic without a thought of winning involved in it.
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But there comes a point of pain where the incentives a team faces shift. There comes a point when the team’s goals change from going all out to win to starting to set up the team’s future.
There is not much the Magic can do to their rotation to fit this. Cole Anthony is already playing major minutes and his role will surely increase with Aaron Gordon out. Chuma Okeke is set to return from his injury soon and he should retain a spot in the rotation.
About the only thing the Magic can do is play Mohamed Bamba over Khem Birch. That point where the Magic should do this is coming soon. But while the team is trying to win Birch is probably the better option. That shift is coming down the chain.
The real change that might happen when the Magic pass the point of pain is what they look for in the trade market.
Falling too far out of the playoff race will almost assuredly mean the team will trade Evan Fournier before his contract expires. It might change what kind of deals the Magic are willing to accept on other players.
Already, and especially after Gordon’s injury, the sharks are starting to circle the Magic. There are plenty of teams trying to predict a Magic firesale and seeing if they could get some of the team’s veterans on the cheap.
Orlando probably is not going that far. The team most likely views this season as an injury anomaly. The Magic most likely feel they can make some shifts to the roster to promote younger players into bigger roles but can return to the playoff picture next year with added depth and a high draft pick.
The point of pain is quickly approaching. And that is quickly becoming the all-consuming storyline for the next month.