Why The Orlando Magic Suddenly Suck

After showing real signs of progress, the Orlando Magic have regressed horribly. What happened?

After a solid start to the season in which the Orlando Magic were floating above .500 for a while, they’ve come crashing back down to earth since the turn of the year. So much so, in fact, that their season has effectively bottomed out, and another trip to the lottery seems likely this summer.

It’s not that it wasn’t supposed to be this way, this is still a young and up-and-coming team. However the expectation was that, with a new head coach in Scott Skiles in place, the team would at least be competitive every night.

That had largely been the case throughout the early stages of the season, although during their game against the Toronto Raptors in London a few weeks back, it did look like they threw in the towel when the game was still there to take.

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Before their win against the Boston Celtics, the team had lost eight straight games, the worst mark in the Eastern Conference at the time. While it’s nice to steady the ship, that win doesn’t mask the deep flaws that have appeared for this team. Even worse, it’s unclear exactly how to make them go away.

What exactly went wrong? Why did this team suddenly seem to fall off a cliff when they were playing better defensively and appeared to have found a way to make all of their pieces fit together? More worrying–is it an indication that this rebuilding job that at one point looked promising has actually peaked early and unsuccessfully with this group of players?

That may be the case, but the simple reality is that the Eastern Conference is more competitive than many felt it would be this season. Teams like the Celtics, Indiana Pacers, Miami Heat and even New York Knicks are all vastly improved on last season.

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Add that to the contending teams in East (Cleveland Cavaliers, Toronto Raptors, Chicago Bulls, Atlanta Hawks) and it’s easy to see why the Magic have faded away.

The best teams in the conference are as good, if not better, than they were last season. The real problem for Orlando though is that the teams around them have also improved at an accelerated rate.

Why this may not seem concerning, really it just goes to show how far away the Magic stlll are from contending in the East, even if at times earlier in the season it looked like they’d get back there sooner rather than later.

The lack of a star player is becoming more and more apparent as well. It’s no coincidence that two of the aforementioned teams who also didn’t make the playoffs last season (Pacers and Celtics) both now have All-Stars (Paul George and Isaiah Thomas). As a result, both currently occupy postseason positions.

Nobody from within the Magic’s ranks looks like they’re about to take that next step. Victor Oladipo shows up in a big way every so often. But he hasn’t done it consistently enough to believe he’s about to break through to that next level. Aaron Gordon shows flashes occasionally, but as a second-year player it’s unfair to expect him to suddenly be the solution to this team’s star player woes.

Tobias Harris may yet fill that role, and after signing a four-year deal last summer, he shows up and does whatever is needed to help his team win on a nightly basis. Sadly, what he’s doing just isn’t enough for the team right now, although that is not all on his shoulders (having career-high numbers in rebounding, 7.1, and assists, 2.1, this season).

The most worrying development of all here is how center Nikola Vucevic appears to be moving away from what makes him such a fantastic offensive big man in this league. He’s never been a big fan of contact, and he lacks in many areas on the defensive end. But this year he’s been determined to expand his game away from the rim, as he’s taken more jump shots than ever before.

While that’s a nice skill to have, Vucevic hasn’t been very good at consistently scoring these lower percentage looks. Twenty-nine percent of his shots have come from 16-23 feet this year, a crazy high number when you consider his elite footwork often affords him space to get clean shots off around the basket.

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It’s like he figured out how to be a walking double-double, got bored of his nightly success playing the game a certain way, and decided to mix things up.

It’s baffling at times to see him settle for these shots, as even though he can make them, they’re just not the guaranteed two points he usually gives this team when he’s closer to the basket. Despite briefly leading the league in three-point shooting earlier in the campaign, the Magic now rank 14th in that category, shooting 35.5 percent.

That’s still around the league average, but further proof that they’ve dropped off having started relatively strong.

If one moment sums up this team’s fortunes since the turn of the year however, it can be found in their recent loss to the Celtics. Harris hit a three near the end of the third quarter to keep the trailing Magic within touching distance of their opponents. Only they then switched off, allowing Evan Turner to score two points before the quarter ended.

That’s how it’s been for this team for much of the year. They finally figured out how to not only stay in tight games, but pull out some wins as well. Sadly, it looks as if they then took this information for granted, going through the motions of trying to win a game rather than focusing on what it takes to get a W, leading to what we saw against Boston.

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With better competition, no star player, some puzzling shot selection by their most consistent player and a complacency in trying to win games, it’s not wonder this team has slipped, and slipped badly. They look like they’re going to continue hemorrhaging games for the foreseeable future. What that means is another summer vacation that will begin sooner than the fans would have liked.