DETROIT - The Orlando Magic, winners of six straight and 17 of their last 24 games, have already won 12 more games this season than in 2017-18, when they finished with 25 victories.
With seven games remaining on their schedule, the Magic have a chance to make one of the biggest jumps by any NBA team from one year to the next throughout this decade.
The biggest win improvement Orlando has made in its franchise history occurred in 1992-93 when it won 20 more games than the prior season. Of course, the addition of Shaquille O’Neal – the No. 1 overall draft pick in 1992 and one of the greatest players in NBA history – had a lot to do with that sizable win increase.
The Magic’s second best improvement came in 2004-05, Dwight Howard’s rookie year, when Orlando won 15 more games than the prior season.
This year’s team, however, didn’t add a player of Shaq or Dwight’s caliber last offseason. What they did do, though, was hire a proven head coach in Steve Clifford, bring back hungry, determined veterans and acquire key role players who fit in Clifford’s highly organized system.
What will make this year’s win jump even more impressive is if the Magic qualify for the playoffs, something neither the 1992-93 or 2004-05 teams accomplished.
Maybe it shouldn’t come as much of a surprise that the Magic have made significant progress this season, considering Clifford has been known to turn teams around rather quickly.
In his first season as head coach in Charlotte, Clifford guided the Bobcats to a 22-win improvement. They were 21-61 in 2012-13 with Mike Dunlap at the helm and then finished 43-39 the very next year with Clifford, earning the No. 7 seed in the East playoffs.
Something similar transpired in 2015-16 when Charlotte advanced to the postseason again, finishing with 48 wins, 15 more than the prior season.
The team that increased their win total the most from one year to the next this decade is the Thunder, who went 50-32 in 2009-10 a season after finishing with just 23 victories in 2008-09.
The Bucks, a few years later, went 41-41 in 2014-15 after going a league-worst 15-67 the prior year.
The Cavs, although not surprising after LeBron James decided to return to Cleveland in 2014, also had a big jump that season, winning 20 more games than the prior year. The Hawks, who met the Cavs in the conference finals after winning 60 games that regular season, made a 22-victory improvement. The champions that year, the Warriors, won 16 additional games.
Last season, the 76ers – behind the emergence of Joel Embiid and a splendid rookie campaign from Ben Simmons – made a 24-win jump.
The most substantial win increase of all time came in 2007-08 when the Celtics, the champs that season, won 42 more games. That wasn’t necessarily a huge shock, though, considering Boston acquired Kevin Garnett and Ray Allen in two separate trades that prior summer.
The Spurs after drafting Tim Duncan and getting David Robinson back from injury won 56 games in 1997-98, 36 more than the previous year. They accomplished something similar several years earlier when their win total went from 21 in 1988-89 to 56 in 1989-90, the season Robinson arrived.
Below is a table that shows the best win improvements so far this decade (2010-2018), excluding the 2011-12 shortened season.