The Orlando Magic walked into Denver on Jan. 5, 2024, bruised and battered during their West Coast road trip. Franz Wagner had sprained his ankle the last game against the Sacramento Kings, leaving Paolo Banchero to take on almost the entire scoring load.
The Magic were down to nine healthy bodies with Wendell Carter still out with knee tendinitis and Goga Bitadze. They were throwing together lineups they had never seen and even trying two-way player Trevelin Queen.
What transpired that evening was perhaps the best win of the Magic’s 2024 regular season, a stunning 122-120 victory behind Banchero’s 32-10-11 triple-double. It was a sign of all this team could accomplish.
But it was just the beginning of their troubles. Illness ravaged the team throughout late January and Orlando sunk down the standings, falling to 23-22 at one point and sitting in eighth in the East.
At least they still had a fully healthy Banchero and Jalen Suggs to carry the team. That is not the case as the Nuggets rolled into Orlando on Sunday for a fairly comfortable 113-100 win.
The Magic were down to nine healthy players again, but none of the spirit and intensity they saw at Ball Arena.
But there is also noticeably not the same frantic searching either. The team knows why it is down right now – its massive list of injuries and a team that seems to be running on fumes waiting for reinforcements. They also know that there is recovery from this valley.
They were here last year. Despite the frustrations of the moment, the team knows it can and will recover.
“I think you have to zoom out in these circumstances understanding where you are on in the standings, where you are with what’s going on with the team, helping them understand the right perspective,” coach Jamahl Mosley said. “We’re getting healthy bodies back soon. And so, yes, it’s three [losses] in a row and I’m not making excuses, nor am I happy about it. But at the end of the day, you have to zoom out because you can’t make one game pile on to 10.”
The Magic were 23-21 last year too, losing 16 of 25 games after their nine-game win streak. They fell to eighth in the East, 4.5 games back of the fourth-place Cavaliers and 3.5 games behind the fifth seed they would eventually finish.
Today, the Magic have lost 14 of their last 22 games and sit in seventh place at 23-21. They are 2.5 games behind the Bucks for fourth and only a half-game ahead of the Heat for seventh.
This is not where the Magic wanted to be. They promised to avoid losing the random games in January. And yet here they are again, perhaps because of something beyond their control.
The important thing though is they fought back last year. There is no reason to think they cannot do it again.
“We’ve got a group of a lot of resilient guys,” Wendell Carter said. “We’ve been through this before. No one wants to go through it. It’s human nature having lulls and the injuries don’t help either. We never want to look at it as an excuse. We have to find a way to bounce back and find our way back into the winning column.”
They went from 23-21 to 47-35. A similar 24-14 run still feels possible as this team gets healthier. The schedule is still set up for their success – the third-easiest schedule remaining in the league by opponent win percentage and by Positive Residual’s analytics.
Playing a team like the Toronto Raptors rather than the Denver Nuggets, Boston Celtics or Milwaukee Bucks will give them a chance to breathe and find their way again. The Magic are still 13-3 against opponents with records below .500. There is still a lot of opportunity ahead of this Magic team.
Nobody is panicking. They have been here before. And the only way is forward.
