By John DentonDec. 10, 2014
ORLANDO – Playing some of their best basketball of the season, but still searching for a signature win against an upper-echelon team, the Orlando Magic looked poised to take down the star-studded Washington Wizards on Wednesday and claim their relevancy to the rest of the basketball world.
Then, the final 98 seconds of Wednesday night’s game transpired. It’s a stretch of basketball that went horribly wrong for the home-standing Magic and one that will assuredly haunt them well into Thursday, Friday and possibly beyond.
Inexplicably, everything went wrong for the Magic over the tense final moments, while Washington converted all of the key plays in a closing 7-0 run – none of them bigger than Bradley Beal’s game-winning lob at the horn – so that the Wizards could escape with a shocking 91-89 defeat of Orlando.
Washington (15-6) got some big-time shots from all-star point guard John Wall (21 points, 11 assists and six rebounds) and it executed perfectly on a looping lob pass that Beal finished at the rim over Magic guard Victor Oladipo.
Despite Washington’s clutch play, the final result had a sickening, give-away feel to it for the Magic (9-15). Orlando missed its final three shots, didn’t score over those final 98 seconds and yielded seven straight points. All of those lapses helped to end the Magic’s winning streak at two games and it ruined a perfectly good chance to beat Washington for the first time since March 29, 2013. When it was over – and when Beal shocked the Magic and the 16,081 inside the Amway Center with his winning layup – Orlando was left to try and stomach giving away a game it led by five points with 56 seconds to play.
``It hurts when you outplay them pretty much the whole game,’’ said Magic rookie Elfrid Payton, who had 12 points, six rebounds and four assists. ``We’ve just got to execute down the stretch and make plays down the stretch. We just had to make plays and we didn’t make them.’’
Orlando played well down the stretch in wins against Phoenix, Utah and Sacramento, but this crushing result very much resembled Orlando’s late meltdown a week earlier in Oakland against red-hot Golden State. But whereas Orlando blew an 11-point lead and lost when Golden State got scorching hot from beyond the 3-point stripe, this defeat had the feeling of one being squandered away.
Too often, Orlando had chances to put the game away – when Tobias Harris was whistled for a questionable charge call with 36.7 seconds remaining; and when Oladipo missed a layup with 22 seconds left and he misfired on a jumper with eight-tenths of a second remaining. The Magic left themselves in a vulnerable position where the 6-foot-5 Beal could get behind the defense and beat them with a beautifully designed play and pass.
``It’s a tough one to take and it’s a bad loss for us,’’ said Harris, who had 15 points and six rebounds. ``We pretty much handed them the game in the last two minutes. It’s disappointing.
``Everybody in this locker room is disappointed and upset with the way we lost the game today,’’ Harris continued. ``You can’t get that one back. It’s over with and you’ve got to grow from it.’’
Several minutes after the game, Oladipo sat at his locker and stared blankly ahead. Partially in shock and partially frustrated, Oladipo replayed how the frantic finish ruined an otherwise strong showing for the Magic. Oladipo scored 17 points, grabbed six rebounds and handed out three assists, but none of it mattered to him when he missed the last two shots that would have put Orlando ahead and he got beat by Beal to the bucket.
``It’s tough, but credit them because they played well and we have to keep growing and get better,’’ Oladipo said dejectedly. ``I’ve just got to finish (on those last two shots). Put me in that situation again. It is what it is, but I was just trying to be aggressive. Both plays were drawn up for me and it wasn’t like I was trying to do my own thing. I’ve got to finish and I’d put the ball in my hands again. I feel like I’m going to finish down the stretch and I don’t lose any confidence.’’
Washington, which has beaten Orlando three times this season and seven straight times over the past two seasons, got 12 points and six rebounds from Nene. Beal (nine points) had just one field goal over the final three quarters of the game and it proved to be the game-winner.
``I was the first option for the lob toward the rim,’’ Beal said. ``The next option was to pop back toward the ball and try to get one up. (The lob) worked out in our favor. It was just a great screen at the elbow (of the lane) and I didn’t really even see (Andre Miller) throw the ball. I just see the ball in the air and I just ended up jumping in the air.’’
Rather than focus so much on the final play, Magic coach Jacque Vaughn said he was more frustrated by the sequence of plays where the Magic could have extended their 89-84 lead down the stretch.
``You don’t take any possession for granted,’’ Vaughn said. ``I think we were up three with 30-some-odd seconds to go in the game. We didn’t take advantage of the possession. We will watch film and learn from those possessions. That’s what I mean – there are plenty of other opportunities in the course of the game that could have put us up in a better position not to count on someone else to make a mistake.’’
Orlando has made big strides on the road this season, winning seven times already – three more than all of last season away from home. But the Magic have struggled at home against some of the league’s best competition. At 2-6 at the Amway Center, Orlando had dropped home games to playoff teams such as Washington (twice), Golden State, Miami, Toronto and the Los Angeles Clippers. To be considered among the better teams in the East – something the Magic looked capable of last week while winning in Phoenix and pushing Golden State to the limit – they know that they must find a way to close out games such as ones like Wednesday where they led 89-84 with less than a minute remaining.
``It hurts because this is one we should have had – kind of similar to the Golden State game,’’ Payton said. ``We’ve just got to keep getting better at closing games out.’’
Prior to Wednesday’s game, Washington had won the last six meetings between the two Southeast Division rivals. That included two games this season – a 105-98 decision in Orlando on Oct. 30 and a 98-93 result in Washington on Nov. 15. This one seemed to belong to the Magic most of the second half before a furious, final rally by the Wizards.
The Magic were without standout center Nikola Vucevic for a fifth straight game because of a back sprain. The Magic’s leading rebounder and second-leading scorer injured his back nearly a month ago, played through the pain and then reinjured himself last week. He said on Tuesday that his back is making progress following several rehabilitation sessions, but clearly he is not ready to play yet.
Kyle O’Quinn, who entered the game shooting 60.4 percent from the floor, started in place of Vucevic and had 10 points, six rebounds and four assists, but made only four of 15 shots. Dewayne Dedmon had six points, seven rebounds and a spectacular alley-oop lob from Payton, but he was pulled up to faceguard the in-bounder on the final play – clearing the way for Washington to throw a lob toward the rim.
Orlando came into Wednesday’s game tied for the NBA lead in games played (23) and the far-and-away leader in road games (16). Remarkably, Orlando is back on the road for three of the next four games, starting Friday night in Atlanta. The Magic will host the Hawks at the Amway Center on Saturday before playing in Toronto (Monday) and Boston (Wednesday) early next week.
Orlando had one of its best third-quarter performances of the season to spring to a 75-67 lead by the start of the fourth quarter. The Magic could do no wrong in the period, making 12 of 18 shots and four 3-pointers.
Oladipo nearly accounted for half of Orlando’s 31 points in the third quarter by scoring nine points and handing out two assists – both of which resulted in Magic 3-pointers. And Payton played well in relief of Oladipo, contributing a nifty up-and-under floater and a 40-foot alley-oop pass to reserve center Dedmon.
None of it mattered, though, when Orlando simply came unglued down the stretch, missing all three of its shots, turning the ball over and yielding Beal’s game-winner in the final 98 seconds.
``Washington is a top team in the East and they are playing some of the best basketball in the NBA and for us to have that game and let it slip away it’s extremely disappointing,’’ Harris said. ``We’ve just got to be mentally stronger, learn from this and get back going again.’’