The NBA season is in its final sprint.
The trade deadline and All-Star Break are in the rearview mirror and the focus is wholly on the basketball. Or mostly on the basketball.
The culmination of the long NBA season is finally coming into focus. The playoffs and the chase for a championship are on the horizon. Everything around the league is about to ratchet up in its intensity.
That includes for the Orlando Magic.
Even though the Magic currently sit at the 13th seed in the Eastern Conference, they find themselves squarely in the Play-In chase, even if on the periphery of it. They are only 3.5 games back of the Washington Wizards for the 10th seed and a spot in the Play-In Tournament.
With 21 games left in the season, this is more than doable if the Magic can just get better in a couple of key areas that they struggle in.
The Orlando Magic find themselves playing meaningful games after the All-Star Break as they stare down a real chance to make a Play-In push if they can get their game right.
The Magic need to improve on three main parts of their team in order to have a real fighting chance at getting an opportunity at some playoff basketball: Their scoring, their rebounding and their turnovers.
All these are normal struggles for a young team learning and finding their way in the NBA, but the Magic need to overcome these struggles to prepare for their bright future.
To get to a play-in spot will be difficult. But it is not impossible. It is also the well-needed competitive gameplay the Magic need a taste of, and there is a recipe to achieve it.
3 Keys for Orlando Magic’s Play-In push
Shooting and Moving the ball
The Orlando Magic score the third-fewest amount of points in the league and have the sixth-worst offensive rating. That might have to do with their abysmal three-point shooting and passing.
Once again, the Magic are a bottom-five team in 3-pointers made per game (10.7 per game) and bottom 10 in three-point percentage (22nd at 34.8 percent).
Orlando is the only team in the NBA without a player who makes at least two 3-pointers per game. And Franz Wagner is tied for 95th-most three-pointers per game as the team’s leader. Gary Harris does not qualify due to lack of games (he makes 1.9 per game anyway).
This is partially due to their lack of attempts.
The Magic attempt the fourth-fewest threes per game at just more than 30 per game and make just more than 10. They are also the only team that does not have a player who attempts at least five threes per game. Wagner, again, leads the team in attempts per game at 4.5 which is tied for 100th in the league.
In a league that is more reliant on 3-point shooting than ever before, this just is not the area the Magic try to attack. This creates quite an uphill climb for the team’s offense.
The Magic need to create more open shots, take more threes and, most importantly, make more threes.
One way to fix this is to improve their ball movement.
The Magic make the fourth fewest passes per game in the NBA. And they record the fourth-fewest assists per game. Paolo Banchero leads the team in assists with 3.6 per game which is 66th in the NBA. Markelle Fultz (5.5 assists per game) and Cole Anthony (4.1 per game) do not qualify for NBA leaderboards yet.
But it highlights how much the Magic can struggle to move the ball.
The Magic get stuck in a lot of isolation situations and do a lot of one on one scoring. This is not necessarily a bad thing, but this means fewer threes taken and when they do take threes they are mostly contested.
It is hard to score the ball this way.
They need to keep the ball moving, stop over-dribbling, and get shooters open. More off-ball screens, and more off-ball movement is necessary as well. The Magic lost two of their best three-point shooters by percentage in Terrence Ross, R.J. Hampton and Mo Bamba, so this second half of the season is very important for their shooters to step up.
Paolo Banchero specifically needs to step up.
He is shooting a team-worst 27.7 percent from three. He is only a rookie but he needs to start hitting his threes or take fewer of them. A lot of the offense goes through him, so he needs not to settle for as many threes and create more threes for his teammates.
If the Magic can turn around their shooting struggles from deep they will have a great chance at the play-in.
3 Keys for Orlando Magic’s Play-In push
Rebounding
The Orlando Magic have made some significant strides defensively. They are eighth in the league in defensive rating since Dec. 7. But there has been an underlying weakness.
The Magic are not the strongest rebounding team. And that has even borne out as they have made their turnaround.
Orlando is 20th in total rebounding at 42.8 per game and 12th in defensive rebound rate at 72.4 percent. These numbers are quite disappointing considering the Magic’s defensive identity. And the team has gotten itself into trouble with its rebounding.
The Magic start an extra big lineup that includes Markelle Fultz, Franz Wagner, Paolo Banchero and Wendell Carter. The team will often include other big men in their lineups like Jonathan Isaac, Moe Wagner and Bol Bol. With a tall and lengthy lineup like this, they should be out-rebounding most teams.
Instead, the Magic seem to be a middle-of-the-pack team when it comes to rebounding. And opponents score 13.1 second-chance points per game against them, eighth in the league. Yet, each one of these miscues seems to sting with the Magic’s low-possession style.
With Orlando’s lack of scoring, the team has to secure rebounds on both sides of the ball to make up for. And being middle of the pack is not good enough cover.
They have the 10th worst defensive box-out percentage on defense. This means their young talent wants to get out and run the floor. That works when you are securing rebounds. With the lack of rebounds, they get and the size they have everybody needs to box out and crash the boards.
Carter is averaging the fewest amount of rebounds per game since joining the Magic. He has struggled on the interior some, especially playing alongside forwards like Banchero and Wagner who prefer to play on the wings. Banchero especially has had his struggles on the glass, averaging only 6.6 per game.
Like the Magic’s scoring, they need to be a rebounding team by committee. They often rely on Cole Anthony to fly in from the wings and support the efforts on the glass.
With the trade to get rid of Mo Bamba, Moe Wagner will be the main backup center, and he has even started 14 games. He is only averaging 4.7 rebounds per game, which is not going to cut it. If the Magic want to succeed in with him playing big minutes as a starting or backup center he has to crash the boards.
Getting more rebounds can start more transition opportunities and help the Magic up their lackluster offense that struggles in half-court settings.
One thing that can help is bettering their defensive rotations. They tend to get out of place going for blocks and playing help defense. Bol is one of the players who struggle a lot with this. As a team leader in blocks, he goes for a lot of blocks and contests.
This is great but it puts him out of position to recover and get rebounds and leaves the paint wide open sometimes for the other teams’ bigs to crash. The same problem goes on the other side of the court.
All the starters besides Fultz really like to shoot the ball, and the bigs clear the lane for Fultz a lot of the time as well. This is good for shooting but it means all of the biggest players are on the perimeter and they are in no position to get an offensive rebound.
If the Magic can rebound just a little better in this post-all-star part of the season, they can make up for their struggling offense and be in a great position to make the play-in.
3 Keys for Orlando Magic’s Play-In push
Turnovers and Transition defense
Besides shooting, the biggest struggle for young teams is turning the ball over. And the Orlando Magic have fallen victim to this. The Magic average the sixth-most turnovers in the league at 15.1 per game and feature the fifth-worst turnover rate in the league at 15.2 percent.
This is hurting them more than anything else.
With a struggling offense, the Magic need to make sure they are holding the other team to a low score in order to be in games. The Magic give up nearly 15 fast break points per game which is the eighth-most in the league.
This is due to carelessness and poor decision-making. They can not be giving up this many fast break points with their low-scoring offense. The Magic’s opponents average just less than eight steals per game which is the seventh-most in the league, and those are just forced turnovers.
The Magic have four players who average at least 4.0 turnovers per game. Those four players are Markelle Fultz, Franz Wagner, Paolo Banchero and Wendell Carter. They represent the four players who touch the ball the most and who the offense goes through the most.
And Jalen Suggs is right on the cusp of being a fifth at 1.9 per game.
This is normal and expected for a young team. But it is also something to figure out. If the Magic are going to take a step up in the standings, they need to limit their mistakes, especially at critical moments in games.
If they are going to be frequent ball handlers, they can not give the ball away as often as they do.
The Magic rely on them to score and run their offense, so they can not afford for those players to be coughing it up.
Fewer turnovers mean more possessions for potential points, which the Magic need more than anything. It also means fewer easy bucket opportunities for the other teams. These struggles go back to ball movement.
The Magic average the ninth-highest turnover frequency when isolating, so the more they swing the ball and do not let the offense get stagnate, the fewer turnovers they will have.
It is nearly impossible to win games when you are giving the ball away so frequently.
The Magic can help their offensive struggles tons if they stop giving the ball away, this is the main factor in making a push for the play-in.
With time running out on the season, the Magic need to get things together rather quickly. They have had two-thirds of the season to see what has not worked and what they are doing wrong.
The Magic are young, learning and excited to have a chance at some playoff basketball, so they should be hungry to turn this around. The Post All-Star Break is when a lot of teams turn it around, so why not the Magic?
The East is very close and a small win streak could put the Magic in a great position.
They are only behind the Indiana Pacers, Chicago Bulls and Washington Wizards for a play-in spot. These are struggling teams with lots of injuries. Nobody has pulled away and firmly put the spot out of reach for the Magic.
Orlando controls its own destiny and has the ability to put itself in a good spot to make the play-in with sharper play.