The Orlando Magic could feel the desperation of the moment.
They were scrambling to slow down Luka Doncic, abandoning plans of defending him straight up to try to get the ball out of his hands. That, of course, starts the chain reaction that inevitably ends with a 3-pointer in the corner for Dorian Finney-Smith.
The Mavericks had taken the lead midway through the third quarter and did not really let go. It only took a few ill-timed possessions for them to build a solid lead and for the Magic to be climbing up the hill.
For a veteran team, this may not have been something to worry about. A five-point deficit should be nothing to be worried about. That is still a game that can be won.
But these are the games the Magic are not winning. The points where the team still has to make its most growth and its most important growth. The place where the team is still going through its growing pains on a night-to-night basis.
The end of the game takes greater focus and greater execution. The excitable, young Magic do not have that poise.
The Orlando Magic dropped their fifth close game of the season as they continued to struggle in the fourth quarter and continue to go through late-game growing pains.
Orlando still does not know how to finish. The Magic again floundered in the fourth quarter, scoring 23 points and shooting 9 for 21 from the floor and 2 for 9 from beyond the arc. The team had a 100.0 offensive rating in the quarter.
All the while the Mavericks were the ones executing freely, making the shots and putting their foot in the ground. Or enough to beat the Magic in a 114-105 victory at American Airlines Center.
After all was said and done, the game came down to those critical final 12 minutes. It was here where things came down to making and missing shots and executing and getting a good shot at the right moment.
Games turn on little things. This is what the Magic are learning very quickly.
Whether Orlando gets back into a game with a chance to win or has to fight to stay within striking distance comes down to razor-thin margins. But that is what decides wins and losses.
For an Orlando team that is still young and still struggling to learn how to win and finish off games, that kind of close game changes everything. This is the learning moment the Magic are hoping to gain with every outing. These are the experiences the Magic have not had consistently and are struggling most to execute.
Like so many things, the Magic can feel so tantalizingly close.
They are frustratingly knocking on the door of turning a corner. All of Sunday’s game felt that way — from hitting eight 3-pointers in the first half to the 11-point lead the team took midway through the second quarter as it batted back Dallas’ efforts to get back until the team could not.
"“It’s always going to be a learning lesson,” coach Jamahl Mosley said after Sunday’s loss. “I think these guys are understanding and trying to figure out what it is we need to do down the stretch. When we need to put on our foot on the gas and when we need to be smarter with some of our decisions. I think they are doing an unbelievable job of competing for 48 minutes. That’s what we’ve asked them to do and they continue to grow there.”"
The second half was a back-and-forth battle until the Magic made a critical error.
Paolo Banchero’s flagrant foul for not giving Tim Hardaway Jr. space to land on a 3-pointer. That gave Dallas a four-point possession and a three-point lead the team would never give up.
That is a mini-mistake a team cannot make in a game of narrow margins. The Magic fell behind by six points before the end of the quarter and was climbing uphill.
None of that should be insurmountable. The Magic still had their shot to win. But their overall struggles in the fourth quarter persisted. And it feels like the mountain the Magic are climbing is extra tall.
In the early part of the season, the Magic have the second-worst net rating in the fourth quarter at -17.4 points per 100 possessions (98.2 offensive rating/115.7 defensive rating). That is a lot of difficulty in the fourth quarter as the team lost leads against the Detroit Pistons and Atlanta Hawks early in the season and dug a too-deep hole against the Cleveland Cavaliers and New York Knicks.
Never did the Magic get blown out. The team thinks to some degree that is progress. They might have lost this and plenty of other games already played this year by 18-20 points. They might have let fully go of the rope.
That is not happening. But the team is still facing the same result and some important lessons.
The team is 0-5 in clutch situations, games within five points in the final five minutes. They have put themselves in the game in five of their seven games so far this season. But they still have yet to get over the hump and win.
Orlando has a -85.4 net rating with a 70.6 offensive rating in these clutch moments. That suggests this is a team that is pressing and struggling to execute in “winning time” and these most important moments of the game.
Orlando is staying in the game and giving itself a chance to win these games. It is giving the team the opportunity to wrestle with how it can fight back and win games. It is giving itself the chance to play meaningfully close games and go through those struggles, pressure and, in this case, failure.
The Magic are doing enough to make enough shots and close a 10-point lead back down to five or six. They make their opponents think about things.
Even down 10 with a little less than three minutes to play, Orlando fought back, making it a four-point game on a Paolo Banchero turnaround jumper. The Mavericks made the big shot, stretching the lead back to seven on a three from Dorian Finney-Smith.
The Magic are not giving up. That is. . . something. Maybe.
"“We gave ourselves a chance down the stretch,” Wendell Carter said after Sunday’s loss. “I feel like we had some mental lapses, especially on the defensive end. Sometimes on the offensive end we were a little too stagnant. It’s a good thing in my opinion is the fact that we are in these games rather than last year there were games we were not in down the stretch. This is a perfect opportunity for us as a group to learn how to win games. Eventually, we will start pulling out these games that are close down the stretch.”"
Orlando though knows that it is not actually anything. There is no close in the NBA and the zero-sum result of an NBA game. There are only wins and losses.
The Magic are still learning how to win. That is something no one can really teach. The team just has to execute and pull out the games in the end.
It comes down to the little plays — making shots and getting stops at key moments, taking the right shot to prevent a fast break and not turning the ball over. It is all those things that only feel important because of when they happen and what branches off of those.
Right now, the Magic consistently make the wrong decisions at key moments. And so they are learning the fourth quarter is different.
Right now, it is the biggest area the Magic have to improve.