Orlando Magic take advantage of an opportunity to grow

Jalen Suggs made mistakes in the fourth quarter.

The whole team did. And it nearly cost them the game. As it has throughout the course of the season.

The Orlando Magic understand mistakes are part of the process for this young team. They are going to spend the year looking to learn and grow through experience. They want to see the team get better and experience growth. But it is still a process. There are undoubted hiccups in the process.

Hiccups like losing a 19-point lead on the road, struggling with fouls and turnovers yet again and finding themselves in a fight are going to happen. The question is always how does the team respond? How does the team learn from, accept and move forward from these mistakes?

What the Magic do not want to see is the team give into those errors. They want the team to accept and learn from those mistakes but to get back into the game and focus on the next play. It is about that focus and moving on to the next play.

Opportunities to win present themselves all the time. The question for the Magic is whether they will take those opportunities.

The Orlando Magic made miscues throughout the game against the Chicago Bulls. But this team has shown an ability to refocus and push past mistakes to give itself a chance to win.

Suggs, like many of his teammates, made those mistakes throughout the fourth quarter. Their grip on the lead had slipped. They could have easily wallowed in the pit of their mistakes and let them grow and compound.

That has proven not to be this team’s makeup. If there is one thing the Magic have shown in their first 15 or so games, it is that they will make errors but rarely stay with them. They keep grinding and trying to find a way even if they do not have the answers — from either personnel or from experience.

And so it was that an opportunity came to close the game out through all the miscues that led up to it. All that mattered was this moment.

Jalen Suggs made a mistake trying to drive wildly into the lane and throwing up a contested layup that sparked a fast break leading to Javonte Green dunking the Bulls ahead by four points with less than a minute to go. Everything seemed lost.

But after Suggs got to the foul line and cut the lead to two, the Bulls still had to make their free throws. Nikola Vucevic missed his two shots. The door was left open. And the ball found itself with Suggs once again.

The mistakes that came before for this team were irrelevant. There was only this chance and opportunity in front of them. This is the only play that mattered. All anybody would remember from this game.

Everything that came before was not in their mind. Suggs had only scoring in his head.

And so he dug his shoulder into Ayo Dosumnu to create some space, stepped back behind the 3-point line as Dosumnu staggered back and drained a 3-pointer with about four seconds left, giving the Magic a 108-107 victory.

This play was, in a nutshell, exactly the kind of growth the Magic wanted to see this year.

This is exactly what the team meant, or partially what the team meant, from trumpeting “leveling up” all offseason long. They wanted to be able to focus on the next play and the play in front of them, pushing aside mistakes and focusing on the task at hand.

This was a game the Magic surely lost last year. Orlando has given away plenty of leads this year and have seemingly found the resolve to keep fighting. That is not something the team would have done last year. That is a sure sign of growth for this team.

"“It’s good to come out here with my guys and just hoop,” Suggs said after Friday’s game. “Everything that happened and didn’t happen last year. Forgetting all of it, learning from it, getting better to come out this year where I can play with supreme confidence, have fun on the court with my guys. We all can go in the right direction and I think that’s where we’re headed.”"

It is something that has been consistent from this Magic team throughout the season. But it has rarely led to the kind of tangible progress and results the team hoped for. It almost did not in this game too.

But an opportunity presented itself. The Bulls left the door open. And after so many times being the one that got punished for mistakes that gave teams the chance to win, the Magic were the ones to take advantage.

That still takes skill and confidence to do. Especially with everything that had happened before it in the game.

This has become part of the growing character of this team.

"“That’s the fight of this team,” coach Jamahl Mosley said after Friday’s game. “We talked about in the huddle, just winning the possessions, winning the huddle whatever that looks like. It’s obviously a 48-minute game. You’ve got to play until that buzzer goes off. Our guys continue to stay the course, executing down the stretch in those last 40 seconds.”"

That is where the Magic have shown the most growth this season. It has not completely translated to wins yet. But the team responds to its mistakes much better. It does not let them fester or grow, consuming them and taking them fully out of the game. They are able to get back to the play.

Their execution as leads mount still is a bit of a struggle. The Magic are not an even team yet. They still have a lot to improve upon to limit the mistakes in the first place.

But the Magic are making progress. How they responded to close their game against the Bulls was a sure sign of how much growth the team has ultimately made.