Magic Must 'Snap Back to Reality' to Find Themselves on Road Trip

The Orlando Magic tip off a five-game road trip Saturday that has the potential to make or break their postseason hopes. "We've got to get back to what we do and obviously know who we're playing," Franz Wagner said, "but I think if we take care of our stuff, I think we're in most games."

Orlando Magic guard Cole Anthony (50) drives to the basket past Chicago Bulls guard Tre Jones (30) in the first quarter at Kia Center. / Nathan Ray Seebeck-Imagn Images

MILWAUKEE – For the Orlando Magic, a seven-game homestand almost immediately out of the All-Star break presented an opportunity to get back on track.

However, only winning one of those contests while learning of Jalen Suggs' season-ending knee procedure was the right mix of insult and injury to squander the chance.

Now, the Magic will look to turn their recent skid on its head when it faces a Milwaukee Bucks team that's beaten them three times this season. Saturday night's meeting in Milwaukee is the first stop of a five-city road trip. To this point, Orlando has lost 19 of its 30 road games this season.

"We have to fight our way out of this funk," Magic coach Jamahl Mosley said Thursday. "So, our ability to go on the road, regroup, reset our mind and what we need to do to band together and... continue to fight. Because in this league, it can turn fast one way or the other, and I think our guys ... will understand exactly what we need to do in order to turn that."

That process began Saturday morning at Marquette University's practice facility, where Orlando's focus at shootaround was getting back to the basics of who they are.

"Everybody was locked in," Franz Wagner said at Saturday's session. "We've got to get back to what we do and obviously know who we're playing, but I think if we take care of our stuff, I think we're in most games."

The fourth-year forward is right. Despite not having the results to show for it, Orlando has been in plenty of recent contests. Five of the six losses on the losing home stand came down to the wire, including three straight that were decided by two points or less to close it.

While reasoning some of the inability to pull out victories is late-game execution related, Wagner told reporters in the postgame locker room Thursday that the Magic's issues relate to losing their standard of play.

"Completely agree," guard Cole Anthony told Magic on SI at shootaround. "We'll have a one- or two-minute bad stretch where we might have mental lapses or stuff, but I just think that our issue is that we let that turn into five-, six-, seven-, eight-, nine-, 10-minute stretches where we're not playing our best basketball. This is a game of runs, and those dudes on the other team are getting paid 1-through-15 just like us. We've got to be able to snap back to reality and get back to what makes us great."

"It's something that we've got to find," Wendell Carter Jr. told Magic on SI. "We've lost it, for whatever [reason] it may be, on or off the court. I can't really speak for everyone. But it's something that, we've got to find a way, [and] if there's a will, there's a way. We have to get ourselves back to Magic basketball. We played Magic basketball for a very long time, and we know what each and every guy, top to bottom, is capable of."

For the Magic, that's playing iron-steady defense and letting it fuel their offense. Even without Suggs, the All-NBA Defensive guard last season, for nearly half of their games to this point, Orlando maintains the NBA's second-best defensive rating.

Not doing so led to the Magic's fifth straight loss, allowing 125 points Thursday versus Chicago in a performance Anthony astutely noted as uncharacteristic. With 18 games to play, the Magic are now six games below .500.

"We're desperate right now – probably a little too desperate, in my opinion," Carter said. "With some of those games we lost at home against Toronto and Chicago, [we were] looking for a break instead of just making a break for us. Sometimes, we all kind of fall into it, just hoping ... 'We want to win, we want to win' instead of going and taking it by any means necessary."

Understandably, some frustration has crept in where confidence used to reside. Orlando hasn't found itself in this situation by choice, but as Paolo Banchero said in Thursday's postgame locker room, the Magic now need a "huge turnaround" down the stretch for this season to look – or feel – like they thought it could.

Not all hope is lost, though. Orlando believes it can gain some traction with a couple of strung-together performances that are more representative of themselves from earlier this year.

It helps that, even in the midst of their malaise, the Magic are only a half-game behind Atlanta and full game behind Miami for the eighth or seventh seeds in the East.

"We're in the business of winning," Anthony said. "When that's not going right, everyone's going to kind of feel a little off – coaches, players, front office, everyone. It's one of those things where as easily as one bad loss or game can turn into a stretch of four or five like we're in now, one good win I think can turn into four or five wins."

"One win can definitely open up the floodgates for us, kind of get our confidence and swagger even higher," Carter said. "One win can do a lot for us right now."

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