Orlando Magic: 5 ways it has gone wrong for this team

5. Increased schedule difficulty

Although the Magic’s start to the season was surprisingly good, there’s no escaping that their schedule to begin the year gave them a great chance of being successful.

They may have caught some teams off guard with what they were able to do, particularly offensively, but they also played teams at the right time as well.

They opened their campaign at home to a Miami Heat team they were desperate to defeat, and they did 116-109. They then went to Brooklyn and lost to the Nets, but would avenge that defeat less than a week later (and really should have won both of those games).

Beating the Cleveland Cavaliers rightly raised a few eyebrows for all the right reasons, but they started the season extremely slow, dropping games to a few opponents they should have beaten.

The same could also be said of the San Antonio Spurs, although the flip side of that is just how well the Magic played on the night. The team also defeated a New York Knicks outfit that was missing Kristaps Porzingis as well.

None of this is designed to discredit what the Magic have done in any way (they also went to New Orleans and Memphis and won is this period too), things just broke their way to start the season.

Now in the midst of their second road trip, and with visits from the Golden State Warriors and Oklahoma City Thunder to start December, reality has come back into the picture.