The Orlando Magic’s 98-88 defeat to the Portland Trail Blazers made for some miserable viewing.
Aside from a few positive moments here and there from Jalen Suggs and the Wagner brothers, it will comfortably go down as one of the worst Magic performances of the season — and there have been plenty of bad ones along the way.
A 10-point gap might not suggest it was as bad as some of the blowout losses the team has experienced this season, but offensively this was as poor as it has been.
The Magic could get nothing going on offense all game long. They shot just 37.8 percent from the field and 25 percent from three, going through large stretches of creating no good looks and failing to hit the shots that were.
Their 86.3 offensive rating in the game was the second-worst of the season — only beaten by the horrid shooting performance against the Boston Celtics in November.
No one expected this season to be successful in the conventional sense of the word. It is not about the team’s record.
Success for the Magic was all about how much better the team got as the season progressed, and whether there were signs of this team developing into one which could eventually compete.
A lack of shot creation and shooting on the Orlando Magic roster has been evident in the team’s recent struggles.
It is, of course, still very early days for this youthful team. Suggs and Franz Wagner are still rookies, Cole Anthony is only in his second season and Wendell Carter is still finding his feet on the team following a mixed spell with the Chicago Bulls.
And we still have not seen what this team will look like with Markelle Fultz and Jonathan Isaac involved either. There are plenty of avenues for the offense to improve.
But recent weeks have shown that this team seriously lacks offensive creativity and guys that can create their own shot. This isn’t some groundbreaking development and has been a theme throughout the whole year, but has become more obvious as players have started to struggle.
This includes Cole Anthony, whose jump shot improvements and ability to make difficult shots off the dribble made this offense look a lot better than it actually is. Paired with Franz Wagner’s scoring, it felt like the Magic had a chance to win games when those two were playing near their best.
But neither have been since the start of 2022.
Anthony is shooting just 32.4-percent from the field this month, likely due to the fact he is still not completely healthy after injuring both of his ankles. Meanwhile, Franz Wagner is shooting just 18.2-percent from three in January. And no one else has stepped up.
Their struggles have served as a harsh reminder of just how little offensive firepower this team has. A dip from one, or both, demonstrates just how deep this team’s problems run, and their early-season successes made the offensive problems seem less worse than they actually are.
But the depth of these issues is clear to see now. To put things in perspective, the Magic managed to score just 88 points against the league’s second-worst defense in Portland — which gives up 114.2 points per 100 possessions according to NBA.com.
Yikes.
Internal development will of course be key to the Magic’s improvement. It is highly likely that players like Cole Anthony, Jalen Suggs, Franz Wagner and Wendell Carter will all get better with Orlando and the offensive woes will ease over time.
But even with a fully healthy roster, including with Markelle Fultz and Jonathan Isaac back, there have to be questions asked about where the shot creation and reliable shooting is going to come from throughout the team. There is going to have to be some pretty remarkable internal improvement for this offense to perform at the level of one which can compete at the highest level.
And this is even getting to things before considering that Orlando is likely to trade one or both of Gary Harris and Terrence Ross by the Feb. 10 trade deadline.
The Magic have to build some offensive creation themselves and add some shooting to surround them in the offseason and the rest of the season.
Suggs has shown more of an ability to get inside and finish since his return but has shown little promise shooting from deep. Fultz’s shooting problems are well documented. Isaac’s quality is primarily on defense. Chuma Okeke, once considered a potential 3-and-D option, looks to have gone backward this year with his shooting. The list goes on and on.
This team, just like under Steve Clifford, remains defense-oriented. There is a foundation for a strong defense there, particularly when Isaac returns, but the lack of scoring has been concerning. And it makes building that defense that much harder.
The Magic’s last rebuild failed because the front office did not address the offensive weaknesses on the roster adequately enough and had nowhere near the level of shooting needed to compete. That cannot be allowed to happen again.
Clearly, this team is very much still in rebuild mode. Losing to get high draft odds is not necessarily a bad thing at this point if it means landing a shooting big man like Paolo Banchero, Chet Holmgren or Jabari Smith Jr., all of whom could go a long way to answering the team’s offensive issues.
This year’s draft was always going to be key in the effort to rebuild the team into one which can challenge for a title.
Adding a player who can grow into an offensive superstar would be the preferred way forward given Orlando has not traditionally been viewed as a big free-agent destination. But there are no guarantees the Magic will get the lottery luck or make the right pick.
Much of the existing team’s potential is fixed on what it can do defensively. The team just does not look like it has the offensive ceiling needed to truly compete especially when it comes to shooting the basketball, as the loss to Portland showed.
It is still early days and there is plenty of time for things to get better, but adding more shot creation and consistent shooting via the draft or by other means is a must if this team is to get better in the future.