LOS ANGELES – In many ways, the Orlando Magic’s uneven performance in Friday’s loss to the Minnesota Timberwolves – one in which they scored 68 first-half points and 35 in the second – was a microcosm of a topsy-turvy season some are still trying to fully figure out.
Twice this season, the Magic have looked to be on a slippery slope while dropping four games in a row, and twice they responded to the skids with some of their best basketball of the season. Many of their best wins have come on the heels of some of their worst losses, leaving players, coaches and front-office staff wondering what to make of a team that has occasionally looked to be the equal of some of the best teams in the league and occasionally looked to be the puzzling equal of some of the dregs.
For every impressive win by the Magic (17-21) against Boston, Toronto, San Antonio, Philadelphia, Miami and the Los Angeles Lakers (twice), there have been humbling defeats to Phoenix (9-31), Chicago (10-29) and Washington (15-24). The Magic have displayed plenty of mental and physical toughness by winning in some of the league’s most hostile environments, but they have also curiously lost seven times by 24 or more points in other forgettable nights.
Sometimes, the Magic’s wildly inconsistent nature even appears in the guts of the same game. Take, for example, Friday in Minnesota, when the Magic shot 76.4 percent and led by 19 points in the game’s first 18 minutes only to shoot 29.6 percent and get outscored by 36 points over the final 30 minutes. While having such chaotic swings and losing 120-103 early in the season might have been understandable – even forgivable – Magic coach Steve Clifford said late Friday that his squad needs to decide quickly what kind of team it wants to be this season.
``Thirty-eight games in now, we’re going to get to the point where we’ve got to be all the way in,’’ said Clifford, whose Magic face the Clippers (22-16) in Los Angeles on Sunday afternoon (3:30 p.m. ET). ``I just told (the players) in (the locker room) – and this isn’t negative – we’re not that team (that can show up and win). If we’re not right, we’re not going to win many nights. We have to play well, we have to be committed defensively and be a ball-movement, inside-out team. That’s when we play well, and we’ve proven we can play against better teams when we do that. When we don’t, we just don’t have enough.’’
Clifford and long-time Magic stalwarts such as Nikola Vucevic, Evan Fournier and Aaron Gordon understand fully that the margin between winning and losing is often paper-thin and if their offense or defense is off, it severely impacts the odds of winning. Clifford pointed, again, to Friday’s game when the Magic had 13 first-quarter assists and just 15 the rest of the way. Also, there was a stretch over the final six minutes of the first half – when the Timberwolves cut the Magic’s lead from 19 points to four – where Orlando had either zero or one pass on 12 of its 17 possessions. Unacceptable for how the Magic need to play, Clifford said.
Vucevic alluded to as much in Friday’s somber locker room in Minnesota, stressing that the Magic don’t have one superstar player who is going to bail them out on nights when their focus or execution aren’t sharp.
``None of us are going to become Kevin Durant overnight or Steph Curry overnight or James Harden,’’ said Vucevic, who continues to be baffled about how the Magic tend to go away from what works for them offensively from time to time. ``The only way we win and be efficient is if we all play together, a lot of us score in double figures and we share the ball.’’
Clifford, a 19-year veteran of the NBA game, said the Magic’s consistency troubles are common among teams not among the upper-crust of the league. Playing consistently at a high level, after all, is a talent that only a few teams have, Clifford stressed. In this instance, the Magic are still a squad struggling for an identity that they can carry from game-to-game and sometimes even half-to-half.
``I would say this: That’s every team and (consistency) is the whole key to the NBA,’’ Clifford said of teams that battle issues with being up and down following practice on Saturday at USC in Los Angeles. ``Every team in all 30 cities this year, the players will always say, `We’re good enough to beat everybody,’ and they are, but the whole key, again, is to find a way to play that fits your personnel and fits into winning in the league. Then, it’s about, `how many nights can you do that?’
``There won’t be a team in our league who doesn’t have terrific wins this year,’’ Clifford continued. ``People say to me, `Aw, (the Magic) have proven they can do it!’ No, you’ve proven you can do it for one night. The key is to do it 55 or 56 times so that you give yourself a chance. That’s what this league is all about.’’
Fournier, who is in his fifth season in Orlando, said he believes it deep in his soul that the Magic have the talent, toughness and togetherness to make the playoffs this season in the pedestrian Eastern Conference. However, Fournier said that when the Magic play like they did on Friday, they are ``blowing it’’ and could wind up like the previous six Orlando squads that all missed the postseason.
``This game was ours to take. When you’re up 20 on the road, you should be winning those games,’’ fumed Fournier, who was a lone offensive bright spot in the second half and finished with 21 points. ``It’s really about us and how we play and (Friday) it was bad.
``Quite frankly, (the inconsistency) is disappointing,’’ Fournier added. ``If we want to be a playoff team, we have to take games like (Friday’s), for sure.’’
Dead ahead for the Magic is a Clippers team that has given them fits for the past five years. The Clippers have beaten Orlando 10 straight times – five of those losses coming in Los Angeles.
Back on Nov. 2, the Clippers inflicted some pain on the Magic in Orlando by handing them an unsightly 120-95 loss that was their fourth defeat in a row. Fitting with how their roller-coaster ride of a season has gone, Orlando rebounded from that defeat and won impressively in San Antonio two nights later. That victory started a 7-2 stretch that showed off the team’s massive potential.
Even if the Magic do respond well again and find a way to defeat the Clippers, Fournier said he won’t be surprised, but also that it won’t completely take away the sting of Friday’s mid-game collapse. Until the team can grow to the point where the focus is the same from night to night and the resolve is strong all game, it will likely continue to be maddingly inconsistent.
``I mean I’m not worried about us and I know that we will respond the right way (on Sunday), but it’s not going to change the fact that we dropped one here (in Minnesota),’’ said Fournier, whose Magic are three games into an arduous six-game, 11-night road trip that will have them playing in all four U.S. time zones for the first time in the 30-year history of the franchise.
``I have confidence that we’re going to play a good ball game against the Clippers, but it’s too late (to erase Friday’s loss to Minnesota),’’ he added. ``We’ve to grow, grow up after games like this, for sure.’’
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