By John Denton
Feb. 11, 2017
DALLAS – To simply lose, as the Orlando Magic did on Thursday in gut-wrenching, buzzer-beating fashion, was one thing. But to get shredded the way they did on Saturday, going down without much fight at all, speaks to the deeper issues the franchise faces now with its broken and dispirited roster.
Carved up defensively from inside and outside and unable to offer up much of a response at all, Orlando was forced to take one of its worst whippings of the season on Saturday at Dallas’ American Airlines Center. And when the 112-80 loss to the scrappy Dallas Mavericks was complete, Orlando’s players were left to try and digest a fifth loss by at least 30 points and another season sinking into the abyss.
``The performance that we put out there (Saturday) was an embarrassment,’’ said center Nikola Vucevic, the longest-tenured Magic player on the roster. ``We should all be ashamed of ourselves to play the way we did (Saturday). Effort-wise, the type of basketball and the way we play, it’s just very bad.’’
Clearly, the break for the NBA All-Star Game – Feb. 16-22 – can’t get here soon enough for the reeling Magic (20-36). Frank Vogel, who got five teams to the playoffs in 5 ½ seasons as the head coach of the Indiana Pacers, has his work cut out for him in trying to keep his first Orlando team invested in the days, weeks and months ahead if the team can’t soon reverse lopsided losses that are coming in rapid-fire succession.
``It’s bad, man, and it’s shocking,’’ said Magic guard Evan Fournier, who scored 12 of his 14 points in the first half. ``I guess we’ve just got to play with more heart and pride. Because teams are not going to feel bad for us. People are just going to go at you every night and if we don’t change our mindset, then it’s just going to be the same thing every night.’’
Orlando lost its fourth straight game and the 18th in the last 23 games to slowly sink out of the playoff hunt in a season where it hoped to be contenders. Even more puzzling is the fact that Orlando has dropped 11 games this season by 20-or-more points and five by 30-or-more.
``I think the overall deficit takes the wind out of your sails,’’ said Vogel, who witnessed his Magic fall behind by as much as 26 points in the first half and trail by 37 in the second. ``We’ve seen our guys give in, this group give in, in those situations and we did it (on Saturday). It’s unacceptable and we’ve got to get back to the drawing board.’’
A good place to start would be the 3-point line where the Magic are getting badly outscored almost nightly. Already playing with a paper-thin margin, the Magic saw more lopsided numbers from the 3-point arc – totals that are proving to be deadly for a team clinging to life.
By the time the Magic hit their first 3-pointer on Saturday – a step-back shot by C.J. Watson with 10:21 to play in the third quarter – Dallas had already drilled 11 shots from beyond the arc. That obscene, 33-point edge from 3-point land early in the game helped the suddenly surging Mavericks turn Saturday’s game into a laugher – only Orlando had nothing at all to chuckle about.
The Magic were hardly even competitive after missing all nine of their 3-point shots in the first half and misfiring on 18 of the first 19 3-point shots. Making matters worse, the Mavs connected on 13 of their first 23 tries to break the game open. For the game, Orlando had three threes, while Dallas made 17 for a 42-point edge from the all-important arc.
``They really got hot by the end of the first quarter, but they have good spacing and good shooters,’’ Fournier said. ``The problem is you’ve got to be able to bounce back. The problem is not them making threes; it’s what we do after to bounce back and adjust. They’re going to make some, but again we had nothing.’’
In a sadistic statistic that Magic fans can only chuckle about these days, the three mostly meaningless 3-pointers made on Saturday extended the franchise’s record of games with at least one three to 794.
Orlando was coming off a gut-wrenching 112-111 loss to Philadelphia on Thursday, and it showed in how easily its spirit was broken on Saturday. The Magic led by as much as seven in the first five minutes, but soon fell behind and saw the deficit swell to as much as 26 by halftime and 37 in the second half.
Vogel, who has already juggled the starting lineup nearly a dozen times, hinted at more changes coming.
``Keep juggling (the lineup) and trying to get better at the fundamentals that we know lead to winning basketball,’’ Vogel said. ``And then bring effort, the toughness and the intelligence to what we’re doing out there. None of that is good enough (now) with the way that we’re playing.
Bright spots were difficult to find for a broken Magic team. Vucevic grabbed 10 rebounds, while Bismack Biyombo scored 15 points and grabbed seven rebounds off the Magic’s bench. Second-year swingman Mario Hezonja made his second straight start, but missed his first five 3-point shots and finished with just seven points in 35 minutes on three-of-11 shooting.
Wesley Matthews made seven of 10 shots and all four of his 3-point shots and finished with 20 points and six assists for Dallas. Future Hall of Famer, Dirk Nowitzki needed just 2 ½ quarters of work to 14 points and six rebounds.
Said Dallas coach Rick Carlisle: ``We caught them on an off shooting night. They had some shots that missed and we did what we had to do. We were able to build an early lead and we kept building it.’’
Orlando was without Aaron Gordon – its best defender all season – for a second straight game on Saturday.
For weeks, Vogel has pointed to NBA teams that have turned around their seasons with mid-season hot streaks following slow starts, hoping it would inspire the Magic. Philadelphia is one of those teams, stringing together 10 wins in a 13-game stretch in January. Another is the Miami Heat, which has improbably won 13 games in a row despite starting the season 11-30. Dallas is the third team that has started to put things together of late, winning eight of its last 11 games after Saturday’s rout.
Coincidentally, the Magic are in a three-game stretch of playing the Sixers (this past Thursday), the Mavericks (Saturday) and the Heat (Monday in Miami). All three foes help to ram home Vogel’s point that anything is possible during a NBA season – even for a team that has had a highly disappointing start to a season that was supposed to end in a playoff berth.
``That’s what we’re preaching right now and it absolutely can be done,’’ Vogel said recently of a potential Magic turnaround. ``I had a team in Indiana a couple of years ago when Paul George was out and we were four or five games out of the playoffs the entire year and we won eight or nine of our last 10 and we got ourselves a tie with the eighth seed. We ended up not making it because of a tiebreaker.
``We’re going to stay in this fight,’’ Vogel said, getting back to his Magic. ``There’s still a lot of basketball to be played. We’ll take it one game at a time and try to get back into this thing.’’
There simply wasn’t enough fight from the Magic over the final three quarters on Saturday. Already down 26 at intermission, the Magic were outscored 23-17 in the third period to see the deficit swell to as much as 37 before the fourth period even rolled around.
As has been the trend of late, Orlando briefly had a glimmer of hope with a strong start. It led 14-7 in the game’s first five minutes, prompting a timeout from Carlisle. But Dallas quickly flipped the script on the game, outscoring the Magic 22-9 over the final seven minutes of the period to grab a 29-23 lead.
Incredibly, things would get much, much worse in a lopsided, 32-12 second quarter. The 32-point defeat tied for the worst of the season for a Magic team that also lost 112-80 in Chicago on Nov. 7.
``There are a lot of reasons, but this is not the way to talk about them – in the media. It will be addressed when it’s the right time to do it,’’ Vucevic said. ``I honestly don’t know (if it can be reversed). There’s a lot of stuff that’s been going on since the beginning of the (season). We’ll see, but it’s tough to say now because it’s only going worse and worse. It’s hard to find something positive right now.’’
Vogel, a coach with a proven track record of success in the NBA, vowed he will continue to tinker and continue to push the team to play with more heart and fight. He isn’t about to give up on a roster loaded with veteran talent and promising young players.
``We can’t worry about our opponents. We have to worry about playing at a higher level on both ends,’’ Vogel said. ``You get down and you’ve got to respond. The bench has come in the last two games and created big deficits. We went away from (the reserves) because it didn’t work and we went to the starters and that didn’t work. That (starting) group is not a good fit, so we’ve got to shuffle the deck again and figure it out again.’’
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