With five minutes to play in the second quarter, Kentavious Caldwell-Pope drained a three from the corner to give the Orlando Magic an eight-point lead. The Orlando Magic were not at full tilt, but they seemed to get the message from Sunday's big win. They were taking it to the Houston Rockets.
Then the misses started. The Rockets sat in a 2-3 zone to disrupt the Magic's rhythm, inviting them to keep firing from three. Orlando played into Houston's hands over and over again.
The familiar weakness had returned.
Orlando missed five consecutive threes to end the second quarter, giving up a 20-8 run to trail by four at the half on a Fred VanVleet three from just past midcourt. Orlando missed nine straight threes overall, adding four more in the third quarter. That flipped the game in the Rockets' favor.
Overall, Orlando went 3 for 20 from three after that make from Caldwell-Pope. The team finished 9 for 35 (25.7 percent). That is a stat line and percentage that has become all too familiar during this frustrating season.
It almost does not matter that the Rockets were not much better from three. They were able to sustain a consistent offensive force and hit timely shots, stringing them together to pull away and hang on for a 116-108 victory.
Orlando can do many things right. But shooting remains the missing ingredient. It remains the story that prevents the team from realizing its potential. It remains this roster's fatal flaw.
And there is no coming out of this deep malaise this team has faced without shooting. There also seems to be few answers.
"We put in the work," Cory Joseph said after Wednesday's loss. "Everybody in the NBA, especially this team, we're in the gym shooting. When the look is there, you have to shoot it with confidence. When you put in the work, you have to stand by that. Nobody is shooting to miss. We have to do things to shift the defense and get as good a look as we can get. But we just have to shoot it with confidence."
A season's worth of struggles
The Orlando Magic's poor shooting is well-documented.
They are shooting 31.0 percent from three this season, the worst percentage in the league by more than two percentage points. They are the worst 3-point shooting team the league has seen in over a decade.
There is still no working around it. The Magic have to make threes and make shots.
The Magic are 15-7 when they shoot better than 35 percent from three. They are 9-26 when they shoot worse than 30 percent from three. It is pretty telling what 3-point shooting can do for them.
That is what Kentavious Caldwell-Pope has started to provide more of lately. He shot 2 of 8 from three, making two of his first three before going cold through the second and third quarters. At least he was willing to fire from three. Caldwell-Pope is now shooting 41.4 percent from three in March.
That is at least something. And Orlando got multiple 3-pointers from Franz Wagner (2 for 5), Paolo Banchero (3 for 8) and Cory Joseph (2 for 6) too.
The sums are not adding up to the whole. And the percentages are not good enough. In the end, the poor 3-point shooting leads to too many mistakes elsewhere. Orlando has been unable to reel teams in consistently.
"I thought we got some really good looks," Franz Wagner said after Wednesday's loss. "It's unusual to play so much zone obviously. They play a unique zone as well. Some possessions stalled us out but a lot of possessions we just missed shots.
"Just keep stepping into shots with confidence. At the same time, I think we can play better defense in the third quarter and at the start of games.. I wish I had a great explanation for why we aren't doing it."
The Houston Rockets slapped a 2-3 zone on the Orlando Magic, enabling them to crowd drivers and force turnovers—Wagner had six of the team's 12—and force them to rely on this key weakness. Orlando never recovered from three.
It is hard to be an elite defensive team with an offense as anemic as the Magic have had. And eventually it catches up with them.
It caught up with them once again in the third quarter. The Rockets outscored the Magic 32-20. Orlando made only 7 of 21 and one of nine 3-pointers. Houston made 12 of 23 (52.2 percent) shots in the quarter and 4 of 11 3-pointers.
It was again not that the Rockets made so many more threes. They were just 11 for 35 for the game. It was when those threes happened. They were backbreakers during a point when he Magic were struggling to score, helping the Rockets build a double-digit deficit.
"I think there was just a couple of stretches where we weren't locked in," Goga Bitadze said after Wednesday's loss. "We started well then they beat us to 50/50 balls, they got some offensive rebounds. We have to understand that it's a 48-minute game. We have to be locked in for 48 minutes."
Everything, it seems goes back to the team's shooting. Their prolonged shooting droughts and their reputation as such a poor shooting team prevent them from finding a different way to attack. The team is either hitting everything or finding a congested lane that makes it difficult to score.
Positive signs
The Orlando Magic never stopped fighting though. That remains a positive sign, if a hollow one.
They crept to within seven points with a minute to play. But the margin for error was too small. The Magic could not afford to miss and ran out of steam to make this game a true threat.
They needed the shot making to carry them through. The team is having to keep the faith. There is nothing else to do.
"I think if we weren't getting the shots it would be something different," coach Jamahl Mosley said after Wednesday's loss. "We got the shots in Minnesota. We got the shots in New Orleans. We got the shots the last time we played against them. We're getting the shots. Your ability to focus on the process and what you do and how you work and understanding what you do in these moments. The more we focus on the process of what we're getting, you have to stick to that and trust your work and know they are going to drop at some point."
There is something to that.
The Magic have five players shooting better than 40 percent—all on more than 2.0 attempts per game—in March. That includes Kentavious Caldwell-Pope and his 41.4 percent shooting this month and Paolo Banchero hitting 40.4 percent on more than 6.0 attempts per game.
Orlando has shot better even on the road trip. The Magic shot better than 35 percent in four of the five games, shooting 8 for 32 in the loss to the Rockets. Perhaps Wednesday's game is the new outlier. Perhaps the team will bounce back again Friday.
Orlando snapped back to attention to score 60 points in the paint, including 24 in the fourth quarter when the team made its late push. The Magic did a lot of things to put themselves back in a position to win.
What cost them Wednesday was the lack of shooting and how that affected everything else. It put them in too deep a hole once again.
It has been the story of this season and the greatest need the Magic must fill this offseason.