ORLANDO, Fla. — The Orlando Magic will enter their All-Star break with a winning record, but they have lost their mojo.
Wednesday night offered more proof of that.
Playing at home against a Milwaukee Bucks squad that was without injured star Giannis Antetokounmpo and injured starting point guard Ryan Rollins, the Magic provided a clunker of a performance in a season increasingly and alarmingly full of them, losing 116-108.
“Just got out-toughed the whole game, both ends, and we lost a game we shouldn’t have lost,” guard Anthony Black said.
After a daring, all-in offseason trade to add sharpshooter Desmond Bane, few teams entered the season with expectations as high as the Magic’s. Team officials hoped Bane would provide the 3-point shooting and scoring the team lacked and would combine with emerging stars Paolo Banchero and Franz Wagner and defensive ace Jalen Suggs to lift Orlando. Securing home-court advantage in the first round of the playoffs seemed like a reasonable goal in the depleted Eastern Conference.
Bane has been good, and he was good again Wednesday, scoring 31 points.
It’s Banchero, Wagner and Suggs who have been the concern, for varying reasons. They have combined to miss 55 games, with Wagner only recently returning from a high-ankle sprain he suffered in early December and aggravated last month. Perhaps Wagner will give Orlando the boost it needs once the team’s medical staff lifts his minutes restriction.
Banchero is the larger worry. Although he piled up impressive stats in January, averaging 24.6 points, 9.2 rebounds and 5.4 assists, he was not close to the dominant presence he needed to be during Wagner’s and Suggs’ recoveries.
Banchero’s 10-game absence from mid-November to early December because of a groin strain deprived him of his rhythm and some of his conditioning, but he has looked oddly detached at times since then. When the Magic defeated the Bucks on Monday, he went 0-for-4 from the field during 17 first-half minutes. During Wednesday’s loss, he finished with 17 points on 5-of-16 shooting, although that could be explained away by a jammed finger on his shooting hand.
Bad performances happen, even for former No. 1 picks.
But it also appears that Banchero does not have much faith in Orlando’s offensive system. Asked Wednesday by The Athletic whether the Magic are playing to their potential on offense in the half court, Banchero answered: “I think our record answers that question, honestly. I’m not going to sit here and harp on the problems with our offense or what I think is wrong with our offense. But I don’t think anyone would say that it’s where it should be or could be.”
The Magic offense entered Wednesday ranked 23rd in the NBA in points per half-court possession, according to the advanced analytics website Cleaning the Glass, which omits statistics compiled in garbage time and excludes long-distance heaves at the ends of quarters.
Three-point shooting and floor spacing once again have emerged as major problems, even though Bane has made 37 percent of his 3-point attempts. As a whole, Orlando ranks 29th in 3-point shooting percentage, making only 34.2 percent of its attempts overall and, through Tuesday, only 35.9 percent of its wide-open 3-point attempts.
The Magic have endured offensive droughts in the previous two seasons and significant injuries last season, and yet they still ranked as one of the league’s best defensive teams. But this season, the defense has emerged as a concern. Orlando now ranks 14th in defensive efficiency, according to NBA.com, a far cry from finishing third in that category in 2023-24 and second last season.
Wagner and Suggs are the team’s two best defenders, and their injuries this season have played a role in the drop-off. But they missed many games last year, too, and the Magic overcame those absences, though Bane isn’t as strong a defender as the player he replaced, Kentavious Caldwell-Pope.
A superb defense has been the hallmark of Jamahl Mosley’s Orlando Magic teams. But the defense has slipped this season. (Mike Watters / Imagn Images)
The struggles on offense have clearly played a role in Orlando’s defensive decline this season.
“(It’s) human nature,” center Wendell Carter Jr. said. “It’s an offensive-driven league. Everybody wants to do good offensively, including myself, and sometimes we fall into that aspect of when it’s not going our way offensively, we allow it to affect our effort. We allow it to affect our defense. We allow it to affect us getting back (on defense after we miss shots). And that’s something, as a fairly young team, that we have to do a better job of, including myself.”
Coach Jamahl Mosley, who has earned a reputation as a coach who maximizes his team’s talents and effort, has spent substantial portions of this season stressing the need for his team to regain its defensive identity.
The Magic had won three consecutive games entering Wednesday, with the defense playing relatively well. There’s an asterisk, however. One of those wins came against the woeful Brooklyn Nets. Another came against the Utah Jazz, who led 94-87 after three quarters and then, in a blatant tanking maneuver, sat starters Lauri Markkanen, Jaren Jackson Jr. and Jusuf Nurkic for the entire fourth quarter.
On Feb. 5, in response to a direct question, Magic president of basketball operations Jeff Weltman told local reporters that Mosley’s job will be safe for the rest of the season.
But it’s fair to wonder whether Weltman will reassess that stance. The team’s West Coast trip immediately after the break — with games against the Sacramento Kings, Phoenix Suns, LA Clippers and Los Angeles Lakers — will be crucial for the team, and perhaps for Mosley.
Orlando holds a 28-25 record, which places it seventh in the East, 1 1/2 games behind the sixth-place Philadelphia 76ers.
There’s still time for the Magic to leapfrog the Sixers and avoid the East Play-In.
“I think we’re fine,” Suggs said. “We know we went down early in the season. We went through our ups and downs and our adversities, as every team does, and this is where we are: 28-25, not even a horrible spot to be.”
Even accounting for injuries, though, the Magic have been a disappointment. Not too long ago, they were a team that was more than the sum of its parts. They’re less than the sum of their parts right now.