The Magic’s
Magic look to build off opening victory over Heat
seasonopening win over the Heat this week was great, but now Orlando is looking ahead to the Nets tonight.
The Orlando Magic are having a moment. They won their season opener Wednesday night over one of their biggest rivals, the Miami Heat. The Magic hadn’t won the first game of a regular season since 2012.
But the Magic now have an opportunity to turn their current moment into real, longer-lasting momentum.
The Magic will play two of their next three games against one of the NBA’s rebuilding franchises, the Brooklyn Nets. Magic players and coaches would never say it outright, but for them to make an unlikely challenge for a playoff berth, they must win games against expected cellar dwellers such as the Nets, Atlanta Hawks, Chicago Bulls, Indiana Pacers and New York Knicks.
The Nets will host the Magic tonight at Barclays Center.
“This is a huge game for us,” point guard Elfrid Payton said before the Magic left Central Florida on Thursday afternoon.
“Brooklyn is very talented. They’re a very talented group. But we feel like if we can get this game, we’ll be taking another big
step. We want to get off to a good start every year. We definitely have a chance this year. We’re feeling good about what’s going on. We can’t lose games like tomorrow.”
The Magic have been down for so long — they haven’t reached the playoffs since the 2011-12 season — that they must take positives wherever they can find them.
Now, however, they can envision a potential 3-1 start to their season.
A win over the Nets on Friday, a loss to the defending Eastern Conference champion Cleveland Cavaliers on Saturday in Cleveland and a victory over the Nets at Amway Center on Tuesday would get the Magic to 3-1. For most franchises, that wouldn’t be anything to celebrate. But the Magic haven’t been two games above .500 since they carried a 20-18 record into Jan. 14, 2016.
Coach Frank Vogel doesn’t want his players to look too far ahead.
After all, his team lost to the Nets in Brooklyn on April 1. And the Magic employed the same starting lineup of Payton, Terrence Ross, Evan Fournier, Aaron Gordon and Nikola Vucevic that they almost certainly will use tonight.
The Nets will play without one of their best players, point guard Jeremy Lin, who ruptured the patella tendon in his right knee in Brooklyn’s 140-131 seasonopening loss to the Indiana Pacers.
So the Magic must take advantage of the opportunity.
“It’s another step,” Vogel said. “We’re 0-0 on the road this year. So we want to play .500 or better basketball on the road if we want to make the playoffs, and it starts with our game in Brooklyn. We can’t feel too good about this [victory over the Heat]. We’ve got to go in there hungry and fight like we did [against the Heat]. I was proud of the level of fight that we exhibited. And we’ve got to show that again in Brooklyn.”
The Magic led the Heat by 17 points with 10 minutes remaining in the fourth quarter but allowed the lead to dwindle to 105-103.
But Fournier made his next three shot attempts and assisted on a jumper by Vucevic to give the Magic a lift they desperately needed.
Just before Fournier’s decisive outburst, Payton gathered his teammates together and told them they weren’t about to lose yet another big fourth-quarter lead, like they had done so many times in previous years.
Payton regarded the win over the Heat as a growth opportunity.
Another opportunity is on the horizon.
It looms tonight in Brooklyn.