The Orlando Magic are down bad right now. A four-game losing streak and three dispiriting losses since Paolo Banchero’s injury have everyone questioning the direction the team is going.
The Magic have the two lowest scoring games of the NBA season in their last two outings. They made only 5 of 34 3-pointers in their last game against the Oklahoma City Thunder and have shot worse than 20 percent from three in each of the last two games.
Orlando is 29th in the league in offensive rating for the season thanks to these poor offensive performances in the last week.
It is easy to begin thinking the worst after this performance. But Goga Bitadze spoke calmly after Monday’s game and asked everyone not to worry. It is a long season. The team will be fine. They are still a playoff team.
There are major issues to resolve – and major issues to resolve beyond Paolo Banchero’s injury – but the season is still unbelievably young. And the Eastern Conference is obliging the team. The East race has not settled how anyone expected in the early part of the season.
That is a reason to relax. The Magic are falling in the standings, but they are not losing ground. The best teams are not asserting themselves yet and there are plenty of things in the standings today that are not likely to last.
Besides the Cleveland Cavaliers and Boston Celtics, no team in the East is currently above .500. But surprisingly in the early standings, the Brooklyn Nets are 4-4, the Chicago Bulls are 3-4 and even the Detroit Pistons are 3-5, the same as the Orlando Magic. Meanwhile, the Milwaukee Bucks and Philadelphia 76ers are sitting at 1-6 and 1-5.
Nobody is expecting these teams to last. Many teams are still figuring themselves out and schedule variance – like the Magic’s five road games against just two home games – still stand out.
The point is that nobody expects the standings to look like they do today by the end of the season. But this is still a point in the race where teams can create a margin for error. The team that goes on a winning streak will be the team that gets in the driver’s seat for homecourt advantage in the Eastern Conference.
It is still far too early to look at the standings. But the Magic are on a four-game losing streak to get to 3-5 and sit in eighth place but a game back of the 3-3 Miami Heat for third in the East.
The point is, that this is the time of the year when teams can make mistakes. There is a softer cushion.
But the fact the Eastern Conference has not settled itself yet. The Magic are among those teams expected to be in the Playoffs who are falling short in the early part of the season.
There is still a lot of time to make up ground. And the fact nobody is running away from the Magic is giving them some grace to make these mistakes and find themselves without Paolo Banchero.
That will surely change. The early part of the season is always a bit chaotic. Eventually, teams will settle into who they will be. Perhaps Orlando is closer to the version it has been in the last three games without Banchero than what we expected throughout the season.
But the East is being the East. It is not running away from the Magic in these hard times.
