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Magic's Home-Heavy Portion of Schedule Begins Friday

Josh Cohen
Digital News Manager

By John DentonDec. 18, 2014

ORLANDO – After opening the home portion of their regular-season schedule with Oct. 30 and Nov. 1 games, the Orlando Magic set out on the kind of long and winding journey that only a travel agent or a frequent flyer program could love.

For the better part of the last seven weeks, Magic coaches and players have lived out of suitcases, racked up more air time than a gray-headed pilot and have been in Orlando so infrequently that they might need a GPS to find home. And even when they were back in Orlando – for seven one-game ``home stands,’’ mind you – the Magic usually were only home long enough to dump the dirty laundry, ``quickly kiss the wife and kids,’’ as power forward Channing Frye cracked and repack for the next multi-city jaunt.

It’s been 47 days since the Magic faced Toronto back on Nov. 1, and over that lengthy stretch the team hasn’t played consecutive games at the Amway Center. Including the season-opener in New Orleans on Oct. 28, Orlando has played 19 of its 28 games away from home – far-and-away the most road games in the NBA. To put that into perspective, the next most road games played by any other team is 15 by San Antonio, Golden State, Chicago and Milwaukee. The Celtics, who pulled away from the road-weary Magic late on Wednesday in Boston, are tied with Washington for the fewest road games in the NBA at nine.

How bizarre has this home/road discrepancy been for the Magic? Let Orlando’s Jacque Vaughn, who has spent 16 of the past 17 years in the NBA as either a player, an assistant coach or a head coach, lend some perspective.

``It’s the most intriguing schedule I’ve been around when you mention the fact of us not having home/home games for awhile, basically since the first game of the year,’’ said Vaughn, choosing his words rather carefully. ``We’ve been tested and we’ve been able to pretty much stay afloat. At the same time, we’ve been able to get better while also taking some lumps along the way.’’

Some relief might finally be coming the way of the Magic (10-18) what with consecutive home games finally coming on Friday (against the Utah Jazz) and Sunday (against the Philadelphia 76ers). In fact, the team is slated to not only be home for the Christmas holiday, but it will also avoid having to go on the road again until heading to Charlotte late on Dec. 26. Games at the Amway Center against Boston (Tuesday) and LeBron James’ Cleveland Cavaliers (next Friday) also loom on the nine-day stay in Central Florida.

``It will be great to be in Orlando the next (nine) days, be in the warm weather and it will be nice to be home because I have a lot of stuff to catch up on,’’ Magic center Nikola Vucevic said with a smile. ``But this is part of the job that we do (with the travelling). A lot of teams go through it and the Spurs go through it every year (with an extended road trip because of a rodeo occupying their home arena). I do think that it’s helped us.’’

Road worriers last season, Orlando’s difficult early schedule forced the team to become road warriors so far this season. Already, Orlando has seven wins away from home – three more than all of last season. The Magic’s seven victories outside of Orlando is tied for the third-most road wins in the East and is equal to the total for the East-leading Toronto Raptors.

Orlando’s first road win of the season came on a buzzer-beater by Tobias Harris in Philadelphia on Nov. 5. The Magic thumped the Knicks in Madison Square Garden, toppled former Orlando coach Stan Van Gundy in suburban Detroit and pulled off the third-largest comeback in franchise history (23 points) in Charlotte on Nov. 21. And not long after outlasting the Suns in Phoenix, Orlando beat Utah and Sacramento on Dec. 5-6 – the first road wins on consecutive nights in nearly two years.

``I think we’ve played pretty good basketball on the road,’’ said Magic guard Evan Fournier, who is having a breakout season in his first year in Orlando. ``We’ve still had to keep playing through a lot of stuff like injuries, being a young team and being one that doesn’t have a lot of respect around the league. But we’re getting better, we’re playing hard and we’re fighting. We have some big road wins to be proud of.’’

In addition to playing the league’s most arduous road schedule, Orlando’s home schedule has been anything but easy. Of the nine games the Magic have played at the Amway Center, eight have been against teams with winning records and seven of those games have come against teams that made the playoffs last season. The Magic have already hosted both the Western Conference leader (Golden State) and the East leader (Toronto). The highlight of the three home victories came last Saturday when Harris hit a game-winning shot to sink the rival Atlanta Hawks.

Vaughn is hopeful that finally having a string of games at home – and a stretch longer than 48 hours in the home city – will re-energize the Magic.

``Hopefully we can go home and focus on the task at hand,’’ Vaughn said following Wednesday’s road loss in Boston. ``We have to protect our home floor and at the same time we’ve got to get better in some areas that will give us a chance to do so.’’

With the Magic having eight new faces on the roster, they knew that developing chemistry quickly would be a big key to finding success this season. Vucevic and Fournier – best friends and nearly inseparable buddies on the road – feel that all of the time in hotels, busses and cramped visiting locker rooms forced the team to bond closer together.

``I think it’s helped us a lot because it’s forced us to hang out and get to know each other off the court and see how everybody is. I think it’s been good for our team chemistry and it’s helped us grow,’’ said Vucevic, Orlando’s second-leading scorer (18.3 ppg.) and its leading rebounder (11.6 rpg.). ``It’s hard to win, in general, in this league and it’s really hard to win on the road. With all of the travelling, being in hotels and never feeling comfortable, it adds up. But I think it was good for us. I think we’ve been pretty good on the road. If you look at our record from last year to this year, we’ve done a much better job on the road. It helped us to find out a lot about each other and learn how to focus for tough road games better.’’

When the Magic first convened for training camp in October, Vaughn warned the team of the difficult schedule ahead and the need to come together quickly. He vowed then that the team would not use fatigue or road weariness as excuses for not playing well away from home and he’s stuck to that mantra. That vow, he believes, has made the Magic a mentally tougher team.

``That’s the most important thing – for us to not make excuses and we’ve been able to do that,’’ Vaughn said. ``We’ve been able to fight through injuries, fight through the schedule and pretty much continue to get better as a team. The goal was to get better as a team and looking back week-by-week and we’re doing that.’’
The focus now is on winning at home. Finally, at long last, the schedule is about to turn in favor of the Magic with a bevy of home games. Every NBA team plays 41 home games and 41 road games, and road-heavy start will be followed up with a spree of home games to even out the ledger.

From Dec. 30 to March 8, the Magic will play 19 of 30 games in Orlando. And February could be a time for Orlando to make a big surge what with the squad playing 10 of 12 games at the Amway Center from Feb. 6 through March 8.

Playing so many games on the road early on was good for the Magic in terms of building chemistry, Fournier said. Later, when the team will be home for long stretches, it will position the Magic to make a big-time push, the third-year guard stressed.

``Chemistry is built on the road when you get big wins. And later during the season we’re going to have lots of games at home, so we just have to take advantage of that,’’ he said. ``All of the travelling has been bad, but I think it’s actually going to be good for us later.’’

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