When the Orlando Magic's schedule came out, everyone saw opportunity to open the season.
The Magic would open the year with three home games for the first time in franchise history. It felt like a chance to make a major statement to pen the season.
It felt like an opportunity to establish good habits and build momentum before the longest road trip of the season -- a still manageable five-game trip.
Hopes of the Magic racing out to the front of the Eastern Conference and gaining confidence were thrown out the window this weekend.
Friday's fourth-quarter collapse against the Atlanta Hawks showed cracks in the armor for this Orlando Magic team.
Those cracks became a gaping hole in Saturday's loss to the Chicago Bulls. The Magic never found any offensive rhythm and posted a 90.7 offensive rating.
Those days were supposed to be behind this team. The offense has regressed in each of the team's three games.
Orlando now will not have the comforts of home to figure things out. If they are going to look like the team they imagined, they will have to do it on the road.
"Just got to figure out what works for us," Paolo Banchero said after Saturday's loss to the Bulls. "I think at times it looks clunky out there. We just have to figure out what we're trying to do."
The Magic lost this opportunity at home -- like they did when they went 1-6 on a homestand last February. The question now is whether the team can find itself again on the road.
There is no choice. If this team is going to come together and overcome the issues that have plagued them, they will have to do it on the road.
Off-kilter on offense
Everyone expected there would be some hiccups for the Orlando Magic as they learned to play together and added pace ot their offense. This was not simply plug and play.
Things have been slower to come together than anticipated.
The only thing consistent about the team's three games has been turnovers.
The Magic are 25th in the league with a 17.7 percent turnover rate and had more than 20 total turnovers in the past two games.
Those turnovers are a product of the team still getting on the same page. There certainly has been miscommunication and coach Jamahl Mosley is still experimenting with rotations and lineups. The team has not settled on its playing groups and is still searching for what works.
Some of those miscues are expected at this time but still something to work through.
"I think it's OK to have mistakes at this point of the season," Franz Wagner said after Saturday's game. "No team is perfect right now. It's OK to not play perfectly or have every habit set in stone yet. Our overall vibe and energy level wasn't good enough. I think there is no excuse for that."
These turnovers are also a product of the team's increased pace. That was a focus throughout training camp.
After being last in pace last year, the Magic have found themselves sixth in pace at 107.0 possessions per 48 minutes. That has translated into an improvement in fast break scoring at 16.0 points per game. But it is still an area the team can improve.
The offense is, as Banchero put it, still kind of clunky. The offense is struggling to get on the same page. The ball struggles to move around the horn, and the Magic end up settling for a lot of isolations.
Orlando is 29th in the league with 18.7 assists per game through these first three games. The team is 20th with 285.3 passes per game (they were 19th with 279.3 per game last year), 18th in secondary assists with 2.7 per game.
But they are 27th in the league with just 40.7 potential assists per game (they were 23rd with 44.9 per game last year). The Orlando Magic had only 35 potential assists in the loss to the Chicago Bulls.
The team does not quite trust what it is running or trust where each other will be. Much of this gets resolved through repetition and practice.
But that is the problem with being on the road. There is less time to hit the court. Orlando will need to use the road to come together and gain their repos on the court.
Together on the road
The first big road trip of the season is always a challenge. For the first time, the group is together and has no one to rely on but each other.
The Orlando Magic, even when they have made the playoffs the last two years, have struggled on the road, going 18-23 and 19-22 in the past two seasons. That first road trip last year saw the team go 0-5 last year, thanks in part to Paolo Banchero's injury in the first game of that trip against the Chicago Bulls.
There is time to recover from a poor start. This trip was going to be vital regardless of how those first three games went.
It feels even bigger now thanks to the struggles of the last two games.
"I think just getting a taste of the road environment," Anthony Black said after Saturday's loss. "Playing away from home is good. It's an area we struggled in the last couple of years. Just looking to come together. We're going to spend a lot of time together, figure this thing out and get back in the win column."
This year the road trip feels even more important because the Magic did not start off with two wins as they did the past two years. They need to get on the same page. Perhaps some forced time together in the hotel and on the road will help them talk through the issues and find their identity again.
These next five games then -- at Philadelphia on Monday, at Detroit on Wednesday, a back-to-back at Charlotte on Thursday, at Washington on Saturday and at Atlanta on Nov. 4 -- are critical in this team's development.
They have no choice but to band together and find themselves. Coming home after a poor road trip now would put the team well behind the 8-ball. And leave it that much more difficult to find their fit an identity as they get deeper into the season.