On the final possessions of the Orlando Magic’s 102-99 loss to the Chicago Bulls, they showed everything that could make them one of the elite teams in the Eastern Conference and what could ultimately hold them back in the end.
Trailing by two points after a quick Paolo Banchero basket, the Magic needed to get the ball back. Their swarming defense forced the Bulls to call a timeout. On Chicago’s second attempt, Jalen Suggs met Patrick Williams as he came back to the ball and stripped him of the ball, knocking it out of bounds.
This is the Magic’s defense at its best – chaotic and disruptive. It gets after everyone and pushes and prods them into mistakes. It gives the Magic a chance.
But the Magic are still a work in progress.
With the team’s chance to win, the Magic struggled to get a good shot this time. Jalen Suggs nearly turned the ball over before the team reset to an opportunity for Paolo Banchero. But the Bulls doubled him and forced the ball out of his hands. Suggs tried driving to the foul line but could only settle for a turnaround shot.
It was the cap to a disappointing 12-point quarter. A deafening statement of how far the Magic still have to go on the offensive end despite clear strides.
“I think we settled too much, myself included in the second half, settling for too many jumpers as a team, not attacking the paint,” Banchero said. “To their credit, they did a good job walling off and plugging the gaps in the second half.”
That fourth quarter stands out among the frustrations in Wednesday’s loss. But it speaks to how inconsistent the team has been.
Banchero was right to say the team became stagnant and started to settle for shots on the perimeter rather than attacking the basket. That is what the team has done all year.
The Magic have increased their 3-point volume, taking 42.8 3-point attempts per game his season, the sixth-most in the league. But that has come at a cost.
One of the few things Orlando did well offensively was score in the paint, ranking eighth with 51.8 points in the paint per game. This year though, the Magic are averaging 40.0 points in the paint per game, good for 27th.
The team has sacrificed its desire to pressure the rim to take more threes. When the Magic make them as they did early in the game, it covers a lot of mistakes. When they do not, the offense can look stagnant.
And that even puts the defense in a bind.
Coach Jamahl Mosley pointed most to the middle two quarters when the Bulls scored 34 points in the second and third quarters. That is not the defense the Magic are trying to play. And there have been far too many of those.
Teams are trying to push the pace on the Magic. And with more 3-point misses, come long rebounds that lead to fast breaks even when the Magic are not turning the ball over.
The offense always affects the defense. And while the defense still has things to tighten up, a struggling offense is not helping the Magic make that breakthrough.
Everything is a work in progress. Wednesday’s game was proof of that.
The offense that struggled so much in the fourth quarter was unstoppable in the first quarter. The defense that was so dominant in the fourth quarter (and first quarter) struggled in the middle quarters, giving up 34 points in each quarter.
Orlando is still in many ways trying to figure out who it is and build consistency to be the team it wants to be. Until then, the Magic are going to struggle.
