The Orlando Magic appear near the end of their bout with health and safety protocols.
Only two players remain in protocols for now — center Robin Lopez and guard Markelle Fultz. Lopez has been in and out of the rotation all season. And Fultz is still recovering from his torn ACL and going through his rehab. He is practicing with the team but is not slated to come back to games yet.
But the Magic are starting to be whole again.
Wednesday, for the first time since Dec. 12, the Magic had their normal post-Jalen Suggs injury starting lineup of Cole Anthony, Gary Harris, Franz Wagner, Wendell Carter and Mo Bamba together.
That is a span of 10 games, where the Magic went 2-8. In that time, Orlando dealt with the throes of the league’s health and safety protocols and leaned heavily on players signed to emergency 10-day contracts.
The Orlando Magic are coming out the other end of the pandemic and appear to be healthy again. In the meantime, their offense was simplified and they started to improve.
The team started those players eight times in the course of the nine games they have been part of the team. And, as everyone has pointed out, the Magic lead the league in minutes played by players on these hardship contracts. Not to mention lead the league by a wide margin in games lost to injury.
The absences and the influx of new players gave the Magic a chance to reset themselves.
They had to simplify everything with so many new players entering the fold and being relied upon to play. Considering how much the Magic were struggling to that point in the season, a bit of a restart was probably a good thing.
While the Magic are still struggling to put wins together, aesthetically it is pretty clear the Magic are playing a lot better on both ends of the floor. And particularly offensively, the team is starting to find something.
The whole pace, space and the pass things? Sure, there are hiccups, but the results would also suggest the Magic are finding a groove offensively with several players stepping up in the interim to carry the team.
Something is indeed different.
"“I think the biggest thing is that the resiliency and understanding of what we need to do in order to get things done,” coach Jamahl Mosley said before Wednesday’s loss to the Philadelphia 76ers. “Guys who were able to step in at these moments, they were able to jump right into what we were doing because we were keeping it simple.“Understanding what we wanted offensively, being able to move the basketball. One thing that turned up was our pace. We started playing a little bit faster, get the ball over halfcourt a little bit quicker and make the right plays and the simple plays.”"
Since the Magic first started dealing with the COVID outbreak within the team, they have an offensive rating of 104.9 points per 100 possessions and a pace of 97.8 possessions per 48 minutes.
The team’s offense is an improvement over their 103.0 offensive rating for the season but down in terms of possessions per 48 minutes from 98.7. That measure of pace is not how the team measures pace, of course. It is more about the ability to get into the offense.
The Magic averaged 9.7 fastbreak points per game during this time, the same as their average. Orlando is still struggling to get transition opportunities, another indicator of pace.
But even there, it is easy to see how much the team’s tempo has increased.
Lineups have been shuffled significantly in the last two weeks, but half of the team’s top-10 most-used lineups in the last few weeks had above-team-average offensive ratings and four of them were better than 110 points per 100 possessions.
Notably too, the worst of these offensive lineups were groups with the starters playing alongside Tim Frazier or Mychal Mulder.
That shows just how critical a point guard is to orchestrating this more freelance offense. And why Cole Anthony makes such a big impact — the team had a 116.7 offensive rating with Anthony on the floor in Wednesday’s loss to the Philadelphia 76ers.
The starting group in Wednesday’s game had a 150.0 offensive rating in 10 minutes played together (they also gave up 126.1 points per 100 possessions, and in 10 minutes that actually is a fairly close margin).
Most of these samples with any of these lineups are hardly enough to draw a conclusion.
The overall results though show a team that has taken some steps up offensively even without some key players in the lineup. Especially some key offensive players.
In the meantime, Franz Wagner, Gary Harris and Terrence Ross have all found their scoring grooves.
Wagner cemented his Rookie of the Month campaign, averaging 20.8 points per game while shooting a 49.7-percent effective field goal percentage. Ross led the team (outside of Cole Anthony’s two-game cameo) with 22.0 points per game in his three games played during this timespan.
Harris continued his revival with 17.8 points per game with a 56.1-percent effective field goal percentage. He made 40.3-percent of his shots from beyond the arc.
All of these are important steps for the Magic as they continue to build and improve. Getting back to full health will help the team find some stability. And it will help them build off the good things they have done in the last few weeks.
The Magic’s offense, despite improved numbers, certainly needs its full complement of players. Anthony is still the biggest impactor offensively for this team.
The Magic’s offense functions a whole lot better with Cole Anthony on the floor — along with Wendell Carter and Franz Wagner. Having those guys back will provide a boost. Finding a backup point guard and some depth to run the team will also help continue this offensive improvement.