After practice on Wednesday and shootaround Thursday morning, coach Jamahl Mosley repeated the same message: For the Orlando Magic to break out of their funk, they needed to start with their execution and focus on the beginning of games.
The team needed to set the tone. They at least needed to stay above water.
It helped that Mosley had direct examples to point to. The Memphis Grizzlies opened up large leads with 36 and 40 points in the first quarter of their last two games. The Charlotte Hornets scored 38 in the opening quarter of a blowout win in late December.
It was a perfect example to get the team to fix one of its biggest recent issues.
From the moment Brandon Miller banked in a three to beat the shot clock, it felt like it was not going to be their night. LaMelo Ball followed with a step-back three. The Hornets' three-point barrage was on.
The Magic's heads drooped. Their energy waned. And that dream of a hot start disappeared quickly. So too did the chances to win and any semblance of this team's professed identity and goals.
"Action vs. words. It is easy to say. Hard to do," Mosley said after Thursday's game. "You have to have the mindset of I'm going to do whatever it takes to get this thing done. I can easily say we're going to come out, go out and be aggressive and then you miss two shots and you stop guarding . . . and you stop getting back. Those are all actionable items. Those are things that are in our control. You have to control the controllables every single night. That's our attitude and our effort. That's part of it, too."
The Magic had no answer. They did not heed that call to start strong. They found themselves scrambling and struggling to keep pace. And that deficit only grew in a 124-97 defeat at Kia Center.
It finally boiled over as Mosley publicly challenged his team.
The Magic are "deep in the mud" right now, as Moe Wagner put it in the locker room after the game. And the only way out is to identify the issues and begin to climb out together.
An "unacceptable" effort
It was quite simply an unacceptable effort as the Orlando Magic dropped all of their defensive principles and ideas quickly in the defeat.
The Charlotte Hornets made nine of their 14 threes in the first quarter and scored 35 points for a 15-point lead. The message to start strong fell on deaf ears or on ears.
Orlando's offense again went into the tank, and it again took the defense down with it.
The Magic trailed by 21 at the half and could only get within 19 in the third quarter before trailing by 30 entering the fourth quarter. It was all predictable and all frustrating.
The Magic were given the blueprint and told exactly what the biggest issue was entering the game. The coach primed the media to watch for one specific issue. And the team failed to live up to its lofty standards once again.
The Magic know what their issues are. Their unwillingness to address them and fix them remains the big problem. They cannot seem to stop this train of inconsistency that is threatening to bury all of their hopes for the season.
"I think it's coming in prepared and coming in with a plan," Paolo Banchero said after Thursday's loss. "When you see something trending in a certain way, you have to change something, you have to figure it out, you have to fix it and come up with a plan or something. I don't think we've done that yet and it's showed."
The fixes have not been apparent.
The problems for the Magic all start with themselves. And they are not going anywhere until they resolve their own issues.
Known problems, finding solutions
But that gets back to the heart of the problem.
It is so much easier to identify what the problems are. Everyone on this team is smart enough and eager enough to win to know that something is off. Most of the frustration is in not finding solutions.
Just like it is easy to say that there is a problem, it is easy to say the team is not pulling together. Not fully, at least.
That is not assuming there is division. Desmond Bane said in the locker room after the game that there are no players being selfish or intentionally derailing the team. Things just have not clicked into place. Everyone's intentions are pure.
Like so many other things, it is easy to identify that there is an issue and more difficult to correct it.
"I don't think we've been on the same page much this year," Paolo Banchero said after Thursday's loss. "I think it has shown up in the way we've played. It's shown up in the inconsistencies throughout the season. It's frustrating. The guys in the locker room, we want to win. You can't say you want to win and not do anything to make it happen."
That is still the heart of the matter. The Magic know what they want, but the action is not following those words.
This moment of crisis will pass. The Magic will meet on Friday to review film, and try to see where they can improve. They will have a chance to put this to bed on Saturday in a big game against the Cleveland Cavaliers. The gift of the NBA is that there is always another game.
But it has been hard for the Magic to shake this inconsistency. They know it. They feel it.
The solutions are surprisingly simple if they can just hear the call.
"We've just got to be better, flat out," Desmond Bane said in the locker room after Thursday's game. "I've got to be better. We've all got to be better if we want to be the team we want to be."
The question is whether they will do something about it.