3 thoughts on the Orlando Magic after one-quarter of season

To say it has been a bumpy ride for the Orlando Magic through one-quarter of the season would be an understatement. A campaign that promised so much, quickly revealed itself to be one already defined by injuries. And an inevitable sink to the bottom of the standings.

With Jonathan Isaac and Markelle Fultz yet to make an appearance (Fultz is set to debut Wednesday to open the second quarter of the season), and pretty much every other key player having missed some form of time on the treatment table, it is hard to gauge where this team is truly at.

It has rarely looked seamless, although there are encouraging signs to be taken from the fact that some of the team’s wins have come against better opponents and that Orlando has played 14 “clutch” games this season, the third-most in the NBA (albeit at 3-11).

There is a whole lot to get through here after 21 games played, so let’s take stock of what has happened, and where the Orlando Magic could be headed.

Sunday night’s loss to the Philadelphia 76ers represented a new low, with the Magic losing 133-103. In truth, that game was over before halftime, and coach Jamahl Mosley will have been extremely concerned by the lack of effort shown by the players who did manage to suit up.

The Magic lost Terrence Ross to illness and Mo Bamba to injury throughout the game, but that is no excuse. The guys on the court (with the exception of the suddenly important Moe Wagner) played with no urgency, and failed to grasp the opportunity to have a bigger role on this decimated rotation moving forward.

Monday night’s loss to the Brooklyn Nets was better, with Kevin Durant needing to pour in a monstrous 45 points to carve out a 109-102 win for his team. That will be of scant consolation to the Magic though, as they find themselves already with a mountain to climb if they hope to contest for a play-in spot by the time spring rolls around.

3 thoughts on the Orlando Magic’s first quarter

3. Is Jamahl Mosley under more pressure than we think?

Up to this point, coach Jamahl Mosley has gotten a free pass because this young team was growing together and responding to him on a personal level.

Mosley appears to be a well-liked individual who is clear in his vision for the organization. Now in his second season, it is still too early to talk about potentially canning the first-time head coach.

But a conversation that does need to be had is how Mosley still does not seem to have a clear idea of what he wants from his players. The sheer volume of injuries is never going to help, and it would be unfair to truly question if he is the right man for this roster until everybody is healthy again.

But in the awful loss to the Philadelphia 76ers, Mosley looked like a coach out of ideas.

There was a period early in the second quarter where he appeared to give a smaller lineup a go, with Paolo Banchero and Moe Wagner as the bigs on the court. They rattled off seven quick points, before 76ers head coach Doc Rivers figured out what to do, reacted accordingly and saw his side erase those scores.

Moments where Mosley has reacted to what is happening in a game and coming out on the right side have been few and far between during his tenure in charge.

Even now it is unclear if he trusts a player like R.J. Hampton, or is using him simply because he has no choice. There seems to be no rhyme or reason as to why Caleb Houstan and Admiral Schofield enter the game.

There is a fair amount of experimenting going on with such a young team. And there is something for the organization to learn even in its failures this season. But the Magic still want to win and grow toward winning, right?

Mosley charged his team to level up and while injuries have hampered those plans, it is hard to say the team has taken that step forward.

One-quarter of the way through, the Magic rank in the bottom 10 in defensive rating (27th, 115.1), offensive rating (24th, 109.5) and 3-point shooting percentage (21st, 33.9 percent). They sit 19th in rebounding at 43.3, despite having jumbo bigs like Bol Bol and Mo Bamba on the roster, as well as the currently injured Wendell Carter.

You could even make the case Mosley’s big win of this season, starting Bol and Carter Jr. together, came out of necessity more than anything else.

We will have to wait and see what happens once bodies start coming back into the rotation, but this is not a portion of the season that coach Mosley will want to repeat again.

3 thoughts on the Orlando Magic’s first quarter

2. The next quarter will be worse

The trend of negativity continues because there is every reason to believe that the next quarter of the season is going to be even worse for the Magic. If that sounds like a poor stance to take, then consider these two facts that may change your mind.

The first is that, as great as it will be to have Markelle Fultz and Jonathan Isaac back (eye that homestand at the end of December for his much-anticipated return), they cannot simply be inserted into this group seamlessly to make the rotation better. They are going to help sooner rather than later, especially Markelle Fultz in a bare backcourt, but does coach Jamahl Mosley sacrifice some Bol Bol minutes to get Jonathan Isaac involved? A risk, considering Bol has been their most important player this season.

Bamba is having his best year with the franchise and seems to have found his place. Uprooting him to accommodate Isaac is risky.

There will be moments of respite where the defensive rating especially improves with these players coming back because of their sheer talent on that end, but this is a puzzle that will be complex to put together properly.

On an even more daunting note, by the time the Magic have played their next 21 games, they will be three games into a five-game West coast road trip. Before that, they will see the Toronto Raptors and Atlanta Hawks three times, the Boston Celtics twice and the Milwaukee Bucks. Two of those Celtics games, as well as a Hawks game and finally a tilt against the Houston Rockets, will come as part of a four-game road trip just before Christmas.

The Magic ironically have a tendency to play better away from home, but you have to admit this is running the gauntlet. The final three games before the second portion of the season wrap-up will be away to the now red-hot Golden State Warriors, Portland Trail Blazers and Utah Jazz.

Taking a look at the schedule, there are games against the Cleveland Cavaliers and L.A. Clippers in there as well. All of which is to say, the Magic will struggle to add five wins to the 5-16 record they already have during this period.

At that point, calls to tank will be growing by the hour. Maybe the Magic knew this and are doing their work early before they put the focus back on winning to close the season.

3 thoughts on the Orlando Magic’s first quarter

1. This is still the best rebuild yet

Despite all of this, it is not all doom and gloom in Orlando.

There are plenty of reasons to be thankful, and this is clearly the best rebuild the organization have had in the decade-plus they have been trying to get it right.

Paolo Banchero is a star in the making. And Franz Wagner is having an excellent sophomore season. If nothing else, the recent injury to Wendell Carter has shown us how valuable he is to the Orlando Magic.

That is a strong trio to start to build any contending team with, and although we keep talking about the injuries, it has sadly become the defining feature of the organization right now. Jalen Suggs has been much improved in year two, while Cole Anthony is sorely missed in the rotation.

Terrence Ross has smiled through all of the adversity and is an excellent veteran leader for this group. Both he and Gary Harris have trade value around the league, and if the Magic decide to go in a different direction, they have the flexibility on their roster to do so.

They have their own lottery pick next year, as well as one coming to them from the Chicago Bulls.

Hard as it can be to think about as the losses pile up, they have come a long way from the days of Nikola Vucevic, Evan Fournier and Aaron Gordon. They have nailed recent draft picks like Wagner and even Banchero (remember the talk that they were going to draft Jabari Smith Jr. over him?), and won the Vucevic trade.

We have picked apart coach Mosley some here, but he is a young coach who will be given more time to get this right. It will be a big boost to him when some of the aforementioned players are able to suit up again.

Offensively this team has a star in Banchero, and is a much better watch on that end than they used to be. This season will get worse, but the best is yet to come for the Magic.