TORONTO – The Orlando Magic trudged into Scotiabank Arena on Sunday afternoon very much the same way that they somberly staggered out of it back in April – frustrated with their shaky shooting and puzzled by a sputtering offense.
Orlando was ousted from the first round of the NBA playoffs last spring by the eventual champion Toronto Raptors largely because of an offense that shot just 38.8 percent overall and only 29.9 percent from 3-point range in the five-game series.
The Magic (1-1) returned 12 players and approximately 86 percent of the minutes played from last season’s playoff team and vowed to have learned valuable lessons that would help them going forward. However, through two games of this season – admittedly, a very small sample size – the Magic are still struggling to generate scoring sprees and enough points to pull away from foes.
Maybe the most troubling aspect to ranking 28th in scoring (96.5 points per game), 27th in offensive rating (95.1 points per 100 possessions), 30th in field goal percentage (38.9 percent) and 30th in 3-point accuracy (23 percent) is the fact that Orlando has mostly been unable to knock down open shots in its opening win over Cleveland and Saturday’s 103-99 loss in Atlanta.
``Advanced analytics had us at 117 (points), so we got good shots (on Saturday in Atlanta),’’ said head coach Steve Clifford, whose Magic face the defending champion Raptors (2-0) on Monday (tip time: 7:30 p.m., TV: Fox Sports Florida). ``With the advanced analytics for our offense on (Saturday) night that means it would have been reasonable for us to have 117 points with those quality of shots.’’
The law of averages usually dictates that the Magic’s open shots will eventually start to fall over a long season, but that realization has done little to quell the frustration thus far.
``It’s normal to think that (the offense is lagging early in the season), but at the end of the day a lot of us have been doing this a long time now and we’ve got to be able to make those shots,’’ said Magic center Nikola Vucevic after Orlando shot 35.4 percent overall and 16.1 percent from 3-point range in Saturday’s 103-99 loss in Atlanta. ``Sometimes with the offense, you can have an off night, but (on Saturday) it was everybody on the team who couldn’t get anything going offensively. I feel like if we make some of those shots, that would have given us a good chance.’’
The Magic have gotten mostly good chances so far, but for whatever reason they have been unable to convert. Even in situations where the closest defender is more than 6 feet away, the Magic have mostly misfired on attempts from longer than 10 feet away from the rim. In those specific situations, Orlando has made just six of 39 shots (15.4 percent) with most of them being beyond the 3-point line (six of 36, 16.7 percent).
``We just weren’t making shots. We were getting decent looks and they just weren’t going down,’’ said Magic forward Aaron Gordon, whose rough ending to the preseason has carried over to the season where he is six of 18 overall and two of six from 3-point range in two games. ``We’re all pro players and we’ve got to make shots. We’ll get it clicking. We want to get it going as early as we can. We’ll get it going.’’
Evan Fournier, who made eight of 18 shots and just one of six 3-point shots on Saturday, got a little bit of justification for one of the misses on Saturday night. The NBA’s two-minute report stated that Atlanta guard Trae Young should have been whistled for a foul after making contact with Fournier’s head on a 3-point try with 1:21 remaining and the game tied at 99. That proved to be little solace to Fournier, who is trying to keep Orlando’s early struggles in perspective.
``It’s Game 2 and we’re not going to overreact because it’s a loss against a (Hawks) team that played well,’’ said Fournier, who is 15 of 31 overall and three of 10 from 3-point range in two games. ``We just didn’t make the shots toward the end. There’s definitely stuff, like rebounding, that we could have done better. But we’re not going to kill ourselves because we lost that game. But, of course, we’re going to learn from it.’’
Newcomer Markelle Fultz has had a host of those opportunities as defenders have gone ``under’’ on screens, daring him to shoot from the perimeter. He’s made just two of 11 tries when considered to be wide open, but he did confidently drill two 3-pointers in Saturday’s loss. Others such as Vucevic (zero for four), Jonathan Isaac (zero of four), Aaron Gordon (zero for two) and Michael Carter-Williams (zero for two) have also struggled to connect when they’ve gotten wide-open looks.
Fultz, who was four of 18 from 3-point range in his first two NBA seasons while he battled through a Thoracic Outlet Syndrome injury in his right shoulder, drilled a 20-footer seconds after checking into Saturday’s game. Minutes later, he drilled two 3-pointers from the left wing and confidently swished two free throws. He said his confidence is higher than ever because of how he prepared himself for this season.
``I put in a lot of work in terms of repetition and getting a lot of shots up so that I could be prepared for moments like that,’’ Fultz said of his 3-point shooting on Saturday. ``I know people are going to go `under’ (on screens), so I’m going to have to knock the shots down to make them guard me. I definitely shot all my shots with confidence and I felt good. Like I said, it was only a matter of time until they started falling. A few fell (on Saturday) and I’m just going to keep shooting.’’
Orlando struggled defensively with point guard D.J. Augustin on the floor on Saturday, especially in the first half, and Clifford closed the game with Carter-Williams and then Fultz at the point.
Terrence Ross and Fournier, usually two of the team’s most reliable shooters from the perimeter, have been unable to bail out the offense when they’ve seen tight coverage. In situations where the closest defender is 2-4 feet away, Ross has made just one of nine shots so far, while Fournier has connected on only one of seven attempts. Their struggles played a big part in the Magic going zero of seven from the 3-point line in Saturday’s fourth quarter.
A similar thing happened last spring in the playoffs against defensive ace Kawhi Leonard and the Toronto Raptors. The Magic won Game 1 when Augustin buried a 3-pointer in the closing seconds, but Toronto responded by winning the next four to capture the series.
Over those five games, Orlando shot just 38.8 percent from the floor and hit on only 29.9 percent of its 3-point shots. Shaking free from Toronto’s lengthy and athletic defense proved to be a problem in that series and they hit just eight of 29 tries from beyond the 3-point line when being tightly contested (within 2 to 4 feet).
``What I told (Magic forward) Amile (Jefferson), when we were walking through the hallway, it felt like we were back in the playoffs,’’ Fournier said. ``Good memories, but also a learning experience because we lost 4-1. We learned a lot from it, and I personally learned a lot from it. And that’s definitely fresh in our minds because we’re about to play the Raptors.’’
The Magic’s playoff numbers against those Raptors were down from the regular season when they surged to 11thin the NBA in 3-point shooting (35.6 percent) and 18thin field goal percentage (45.4 percent). A strong closing kick that saw the Magic go 22-9 over the final 2 ½ months featured Orlando shooting 46.6 percent from the floor (14thin the NBA) and 37 percent from 3-point range (10th) while churning out 112.5 points per 100 possessions (eighth).
Orlando might need to reach those offensive numbers on Monday in order to defeat a Toronto team that has hardly missed a beat despite the free-agency defections of Danny Green (Los Angeles Lakers) and Leonard (L.A. Clippers). The Raptors unveiled their championship banner on Tuesday and then outlasted New Orleans in overtime behind Pascal Siakam’s 34 points, 18 rebounds and five assists. Toronto did fall narrowly in Boston on Friday, but it responded on Saturday by limiting Chicago to just 29.9 percent shooting in a 108-84 win.
The Magic will have their work cut out against the Raptors’ defense, but a good place for them to start will be simply knocking down the wide-open shots that come when they use good player and ball movement to create clean looks.
``We got good shots (on Saturday) and now we’ve just got to make them,’’ Ross said. ``You’re not going to make any shots if you don’t take them, so we’ve just got to keep taking them.
``We learned about the intensity needed and how to prepare and what it takes to beat a successful team, especially after we got to play against the team that won the championship,’’ Ross added, referring to the Raptors last spring. ``To go against that kind of intensity, it helped us.’’
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