Wednesday was spent by Orlando Magic fans in a state of disbelief and shock.
The team had a 15-point in the third quarter only to see that reduced to three points by the end of the quarter. Coach Jamahl Mosley opted to send out his three key players in Wendell Carter, Paolo Banchero and Franz Wagner to start the fourth looking to stabilize the team and perhaps put the game away.
They appeared to do that in going up by 11 off a Carter three-pointer from the top of the key off a Banchero drive. This is the kind of attention the Magic hope a player like Banchero can give and gave them a basic paint touch and kick-out three, the exact kind of shot they were looking for.
To that point in the fourth quarter, the Magic made 7 of 11 shots with three assists and led the quarter 16-8. It felt like the Magic were going to wrap up their second win of the season.
That is obviously not how things went. The Thunder ended the game on a 23-4 run and zoomed past a tired Magic team for the surprise win.
The Orlando Magic again suffered a difficult late-game loss as the Oklahoma City Thunder took momentum and control and left the Magic struggling to keep up down the stretch.
In those final 7:26, the Magic showed all of their flaws. Their poor shooting was on display as they missed their final 11 shots including five 3-pointers. They turned the ball over with three of their 25 turnovers in that critical run.
Orlando remains the second-worst fourth-quarter team in the league with a net rating of -21.4 points per 100 possessions. Their offense craters to 95.4 points per 100 possessions.
Mosley pointed to the turnovers as the overarching problem for the team. And he is right about that. Orlando has been a high-turnover team all year — the team is 25th in the league with a 15.7-percent turnover rate.
Turnovers are an overarching problem for a young team. But so is the poor execution. Even with the Thunder hitting their share of tough shots, the Magic still should have found a way to stop the bleeding and get a win.
There are a lot of things to learn from Tuesday’s collapse.
While there are fair debates to be had about how the Magic set up their fourth quarter and how they balance their rotation and fair debates to have about what the Magic need to do to better put themselves in a position to win, the only thing that matters now is what the team can learn from this game and this defeat.
As painful as it is, the Magic will get a lot from breaking down the film and rewatching what happened in those final 7.5 minutes.
This is meant to be a season of learning. And so a loss like this only becomes meaningless if the team does not learn from these defeats and get better the next time they play with a lead late in the fourth quarter.
That is where the Magic sit now. And what we all have to do as we look for lessons from this crushing defeat.
It is time to break down the film to see where the Magic faltered.
What to learn from Orlando Magic’s collapse
A tale of three pull-ups — ORL 104, OKC 96, 6:20 4th
The Orlando Magic’s offense is based on the ability to get into the paint and kick out to the perimeter. The Magic have made working the ball around the horn for three-pointers one of their bell plays.
Yet, the Magic are struggling at this very important facet. And the team sits near the bottom of the league in assists so far this season. Orlando is 28th in the league with a 51.5-percent assist rate and 28th in the league with 19.9 assists per game.
Going deeper, according to data from Second Spectrum, the Magic are 25th in the league with 42.6 potential assists per game. Overall, Orlando is 29th in the league with 257.8 passes per game.
In other words, as much as the Magic are saying they are trying to pass the ball and move inside out, that is not what is happening for this team.
After ranking 29th in the league in isolation possessions last year, Orlando is currently 14th in the league with 7.9 isolation possessions per game. Paolo Banchero’s presence is certainly part of this so too is having to run Franz Wagner at point guard and what he has to do to break the defense.
The Magic have jumped from the fourth-fewest pull-up jump shots in the league last year (19.2 attempts per game at 32.2-percent shooting) to the seventh-most pull-up jump shots with 23.1 per game at 35.7 percent. That percentage is the sixth-worst.
The Magic’s offensive struggles start with the team taking this highly inefficient shot and stopping the ball from moving.
The clip above shows Franz Wagner shooting a pull-up three as the defense ducks underneath the screen midway through the shot clock. It is not a bad shot. But considering Wagner’s struggles from deep to start the season, you would like to see the team get a paint touch.
Meanwhile, Oklahoma City went to the other end and got a pull-up three from Luguentz Dort to cut the lead to eight. It was a tough shot the team can live with.
What it cannot live with is to get a second straight bad possession ending with Bol Bol settling for a jumper:
The Thunder are clearly still betting the Magic are not going to hit jumpers. They are struggling to shoot once again. Bol’s defender ducks under the screen and with eight seconds on the clock, Bol settles for the jumper.
These are the kinds of shots the Magic either need to make or pass on. The result matters here.
And after missing a jumper and seeing the lead begin to slip, Orlando has to do a better job forcing a paint touch and getting either a shot at the rim or a kick-out shot the team wants by playing inside-out.
So the Thunder’s run is building because the Magic are not touching the paint and taking the shots the Thunder want — duck-under pull-up jumpers. The ball is not moving particularly well.
It will only get worse.
What to learn from Orlando Magic’s collapse
Franz Wagner tries to create — ORL 104, OKC 102, 4:51 4th
One of the early storylines for the Orlando Magic this season is how the team has struggled to fill the point guard and playmaker minutes for this team. The injuries to Markelle Fultz, Cole Anthony and Jalen Suggs (do not worry, we will get to him) have left a huge gap.
Orlando was likely to increase the playmaking responsibilities for Franz Wagner. They were going to put the ball in his hands a whole lot more and let him make some mistakes as a creator and shot-taker. He has responded in kind with more field goal attempts and plenty of mistakes.
Wagner has been pretty good overall outside of his 3-point shooting. But there is obviously more he has to give with the role he happens to be playing.
Orlando likely did not want to see him doing it this much. And probably not in these pressure moments. This is where he is struggling most.
As the Magic were clinging to their lead, Wagner was making a lot of critical errors and missing a lot of shots as the ball struggled to move around.
The play above is a typical Wagner shot where he catches the ball in motion coming downhill. Wagner is usually pretty good at controlling his speed and weaving through the defense. But here he goes straight line drive and Shai Gilgeous-Alexander is able to get the block and ignite a fast break (he goes to the foul line to cut it to a four-point deficit).
The Thunder understood that Wagner is not a lead ball handler and they used one of their better defenders in Gilgeous-Alexander to increase the pressure on him. On the next possession, Gilgeous-Alexander was able to poke the ball from behind for a steal and a run-out dunk.
Another great play by a player playing very well right now.
Wagner turned around the next possession and seemed determined to go after Gilgeous-Alexander. He took a Dirk step back and missed with little ball movement as the Magic’s offense slowed to a crawl.
This is a makeable shot. The floor is decently spaced to give Wagner the room to get that shot off. But it is still an isolation move and lacks the ball movement the team wants.
At the end of the day, this is one of those make-or-miss shots. Wagner is capable of making that shot. If he makes it in that situation, the Magic go back up four and maybe exhale. But he misses that shot and the Thunder get a chance to tie the game (Gilgeous-Alexander would turn it over on the next possession).
This Magic team is still learning how to win games. And it is these decisions and plays that go a long way to deciding the final outcome.
This is not necessarily a bad shot. But in the context of the game, Orlando needs to get a basket to stop the bleeding. Getting all the way to the basket or creating some movement to get a better shot is what the Magic need here. Instead, the team falls short and is still trying to get its footing.
What to learn from Orlando Magic’s collapse
Killer turnovers and shot selection — OKC 109, ORL 106, 1:39 4th
At a certain point in this game, the momentum just tipped completely in the Oklahoma City Thunder’s favor. They had hit enough tough shots and the Orlando Magic were struggling to get their footing, you could start to see the team get tight.
It culminated really with the above questionable inbounds pass.
The ball is deflected, but it is still not clear what Jalen Suggs is trying to do. It results in a turnover that ends with Aleksej Pokusevski with a layup to give the Thunder a three-point lead.
Turnovers were indeed the big storyline throughout the game. Most of them were unforced turnovers like that one above or the team just being careless with the ball.
Orlando though had two turnovers in the final moments of the game. But it was not turnovers that did them in. Instead, it was bad shot selection that almost acted like turnovers to feed the Thunder’s fast break and build their confidence.
Orlando’s defense has had some very good moments when it is settled and able to get set up. As poor as the Magic have played offensively, their best setup defensively is to take smart shots and score some points to set up their defense.
That was a missing element throughout the Thunder’s comeback. Instead, Orlando was taking shots like this one:
The Magic are down three at this point. But they still have plenty of time to get back into the game.
Orlando is able to get a semi-transition play. But instead of attacking the basket, Jalen Suggs settles for a contested 3-pointer with the bigger Aleksej Pokusevski closing in on him.
This is quite simply a bad decision. And again, these late games turn on making or missing shots and these kinds of decisions.
The possession before this turned into a nice play where Paolo Banchero just missed a layup short. Maybe the Magic were gun-shy to attack — and the team was starting to miss a lot of shots short as fatigue was setting in for this group.
What is clear from watching these clips is something that Wendell Carter noted after Tuesday’s game. The Thunder were able to speed the Magic up. Orlando was not playing under control or with much poise. And that is evident in the decisions the team is making down the stretch.
The Magic were clearly staggered from the misses and the mistakes that caused their lead to evaporate. Oklahoma City was able to erase the lead fairly quickly, but Orlando never could pull itself together to stem the tide.
A lot of fans criticized Suggs individually for the team’s errors. And he deserves some blame. But Wagner also missed lots of opportunities to calm the team down, make some shots and play under control.
Once that boulder went downhill, there was no stopping it.
What to learn from Orlando Magic’s collapse
The finishing touch — OKC 116, ORL 108, Final
At the end of the day, all the Orlando Magic can do is tip their hat to the Oklahoma City Thunder and credit them for making the plays they needed to win the game. The Thunder took advantage of the Magic’s mistakes and lack of composure.
But they also hit some really tough shots against good defense. They made the plays and shots to win the game where the Magic could not match.
The play above was the beginning of the end with Shai Gilgeous-Alexander hitting a tough shot over Jalen Suggs and Bol Bol to begin to ice the game away.
The final score came from Lugentz Dort. With all the attention on Gilgeous-Alexander, three defender focus intently on him, allowing Dort to pop out to the three-point line unguarded and with a half-flare screen to prevent anyone from challenging him.
At a certain point, the Magic needed to create their own opportunities, but they forced their share of misses and mistakes too. Orlando just could not get a shot to go in on their end to get things moving back in the right direction.
If Orlando gets the Paolo Banchero lay-in to go in or one of Franz Wagner’s jumpers to go in, everything might well have been different.
If there is something important to learn it is that games turn on very few plays and very few moments. At least with how close the team is playing.
The Magic are struggling right now to make these winning plays that help build momentum to finish these games out. But these games are turning on one or two possessions and makes and misses.
It is easy to feel trepidation and nerves watching this team play. Add in fatigue and a Thunder team in complete control of the pace and it is no wonder how things ended up. The Magic needed a play and no one was able to give them one — note here too that Wendell Carter was the only to score during this stretch, albeit all from the free throw line, despite his 30 points in the game.
Orlando still has a lot to learn on how to close games.
In Tuesday’s loss, everything went wrong. There were multiple failures that just seemed to domino and build upon each other.
The tape does not show a team that was doing a ton of things wrong in the end. But it showed a team that looked a bit disorganized and flustered as momentum was building against it. It showed a team that was out of control and lacked the composure, ultimately, to win.