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Nikola Vucevic’s on-the-court production is tied closely to the Magic’s success.
MILWAUKEE — As Nikola Vucevic goes, so go the Orlando Magic. Simplistic? Definitely. But it appears to be true. Going into Friday night’s game against the Milwaukee Bucks, the Magic held a 15-7 record in games Vucevic had scored at least 20 points.
The 15th victory occurred when the Magic defeated the Indiana Pacers 114-94 on Thursday.
Vucevic played a crucial role. He came off the bench and scored 24 points on 12-of-15 shooting.
He hadn’t played since March 4 because of a strained groin, making his scoring outburst even more impressive.
“It’s just a testament of how talented he is to be out for so long and be out and have a leg injury where he couldn’t run up and down the floor or do much at all, really,” Magic coach Scott
Skiles said. “With only a couple days of a little oneon-one and two-on-two to come into a game and be able to make shots like that? It just shows how skilled he is.”
Even Vucevic was surprised a bit by his shooting accuracy after the long layoff.
“The last couple of days, since I’ve been back on the court, I’ve been doing a lot of shooting,” Vucevic said. “So obviously that helps. But I just got in a good rhythm because I had a lot of good open looks. My teammates were able to find me on pick-and-pops, drive-and-kicks. And once I made a few, it makes it much easier. It was just, I think, all my shots really came off us playing really great team basketball.
“My biggest worry really was just kind of the rhythm and my conditioning. But the first half, I felt a little bit sluggish, a little bit slow out there, which was normal, which was what I was expecting. I was just trying to find my way, just get a feel of the game. In the second half, once I got in the game, I started feeling better and I just kept playing. I’m a confident player. I know what I can do on the court, and I try to stay within those limits.”
Skiles brought Vucevic off the bench against the Bucks, although Skiles and his assistant coaches had considered starting Vucevic at center.
“We’ve talked about it, but we’ve won three in a row now,” Skiles said before tipoff. “So there’s no reason to change anything.”
Feeling generous?
Evan Fournier sent out a pair of tweets Friday afternoon — one in French, one in English — in which he announced he was giving away 10 pairs of signed shoes. Fournier added he was going to pick 10 people randomly who had retweeted his tweets.
Within two and a half hours, Fournier’s original messages had been retweeted a total of 3,743 times. But the joke was on them. Around 3:30 in the afternoon, Fournier sent out another tweet in which he said the giveaway was an April Fools’ joke. Fournier wrote: “Ain’t nobody winning shoes today. April fools. Bye.”
Rare streak
In their three games leading into Friday, the Magic had beaten the Chicago Bulls by 22 points, the Brooklyn Nets by 34 points and the Pacers by 20 points.
“I don’t want to downplay it,” Skiles said. “The guys have played well the last few games. But it’s just a three-game stretch, a small sample size. We’ll have to see if we can keep it going and really end the season on a high note playing really good basketball. That’s what we’d like to do.
“We don’t want to look back when it’s over in a couple weeks and say, ‘Boy, we played great for three games, but then what happened?’ We want to be able to keep it going.”
The Magic had won three consecutive games by at least 20 points just two other times in franchise history, team officials said.
The last Orlando team to accomplish the feat was the franchise’s 2008-09 Eastern Conference championship team. From Dec. 22-27, 2008, the Magic defeated the Golden State Warriors by 32 points, the New Orleans Hornets by 20 points and the Minnesota Timberwolves by 24 points.
The 2001-02 Magic were the first team in franchise history to win three straight games by at least 20 points, winning games by 42 points, 28 points and 35 points. That Magic team finished the season with a 44-38 record and lost in the playoffs’ first round.