As the Orlando Magic
close out the last month of the NBA regular season, they stumble to the lowly Atlanta Hawks, 94-88.
ATLANTA — The Orlando Magic’s 54th loss of the season does not fall on one man.
Nikola Vucevic understands this, of course, but the circumstances are difficult to compute. His dreadful Easter Sunday résumé included making only three of 19 shots in a 94-88 road loss to the Atlanta Hawks.
In many ways, all the near misses, the in-and-out on the bunny layups and such reflect the frustration of a team that hasn’t been able to shoot straight all season.
Vucevic got no help from his teammates as Orlando made only 34.4 percent of its shots from the field.
“Everything that’s going on this season, having a tough year,” Vucevic said. “At times it shows up a little more. We’re humans and you miss some easy ones that go in and go out. It’s very frustrating. It’s an accumulation of things.”
It adds up to this: The jalopy is just about out of gas as the Magic close out the last month of the 2017-18 NBA regular season.
With six games to go, there are no mysteries here, no secrets revealed. The Magic (22-54) are a mish-mash of a bad team with not enough quality players but hoping to find some juice in the NBA Draft.
Lottery luck is all that the team is playing for these days.
Not that the Hawks (22-55) are much better. This was a matchup between two of the four worst teams in the NBA. The Hawks had just one fewer victory than the Magic going into the game, and for better or worse, any victory or loss can dramatically change a team’s
lottery odds.
The Magic improved theirs by scoring just 88 points, led by D.J. Augustin with 20 points in 37 minutes of play.
Otherwise, it was much ado about nothing, except for an encouraging careerhigh 15 points from rookie Jonathan Isaac.
“Guys are struggling right now,” coach Frank Vogel said. “Our main guys that are still playing are in slumps. We got a lot of good looks. They’re just not falling for us.”
The Hawks pushed their lead to 35-22 in the second quarter as the Magic continued to struggle with three key players out of the mix. Evan Fournier, Terrence Ross and Jonathon Simmons were inactive against the Hawks with various injuries.
Given lineup limitations, the Magic had a secondquarter offensively challenged grouping of Shelvin Mack, Mario Hezonja, Bismack Biyombo, Rodney Purvis and Khem Birch.
The Hawks increased their lead to 56-43 by halftime and led by as many as 15 before the Magic got some garbage points in the end to make the game appear closer in a perfunctory glance at the box score.
The Hawks snapped a five-game losing streak while Orlando lost its third consecutive game. It’s on to New York to try to make amends against the Knicks on Tuesday night.
“It’s very frustrating because I feel if I made not even half of my shots, some of them, things would have been different for us,” Vucevic said. “It was tough — a lot of good looks that I had that I usually make any day. It’s part of it. You go through stretches where your offense is not really working for you.”
Right now, not much of anything is working. Six games to go before the Magic turn to Lady Luck and ping-pong balls for a reversal of fortune.