3 reasons the Orlando Magic lost their Playoff series
3 reasons the Orlando Magic lost their Playoff series
3. Shooting Woes
Everything the Orlando Magic need to improve stats with their shooting. There is no getting around that.
Orlando was ranked only 24th in the league shooting 35.2 percent from three and 29th in the league with 31.3 attempts per game.
The Magic knew when they got to the Playoffs that teams would try to force them to shoot. And that is what the Cleveland Cavaliers did.
Orlando made only 30.9 percent of their 33.3 3-point attempts per game. It was not just that the Magic missed those attempts, but they took a lot more than they did in the regular season. Of note, the Magic made just 26.9 percent of their threes at Rocket Mortgage FieldHouse.
On top of all of that, Orlando made only 30.5 percent of the team's 16.9 three-pointers when opponents were six or more feet away according to NBA.com's tracking data.
The team's shooting just betrayed them.
"Obviously reflecting back, you look at shooting," coach Jamahl Mosley said at exit interviews. "There are some aspects that we'll look at. Being able to dissect it a little bit more this offseason will be important. Obviously last night, you are still looking at that and thinking about certain things you could have done differently. Right now, that is one of the aspects that we'll look into. For the most part, it's going to be a long evaluation process in the summer of what we'll need to do to get better."
There is a reason why so much of the Magic's offseason attention is already on finding shooters. It is the biggest need the team can fill.
That was abundantly clear with how difficult the Magic found it to score in the paint. The Cavs did an excellent job walling the paint and challenging shots at the rim.
After scoring 51.8 points in the paint per game during the regular season, the Magic scored only 37.7 in the playoffs (the second-fewest in the league). Orlando made only 12.8 field goals per game on 51.5 percent shooting in the restricted area in the playoffs after making 18.9 field goals per game and 65.5 percent shooting in the regular season.
Orlando lost one of its key ways to attack and score. And a big part of that lies with the inability to space the floor and be a consistent threat from the outside. The lanes to get to the basket and work around rim-protecting bigs like Evan Mobley and Jarrett Allen were not there for much of the series.