Bismack Biyombo
was forced to miss the Magic’s season opener — and the team welcomes his return tonight against the Pistons.
Of all the people who watched the Orlando Magic lose their season opener, perhaps no one felt more sick to his stomach than a 6-foot-9 man following the action on his big-screen TV.
A one-game NBA suspension forced Bismack Biyombo to monitor the game from his home. He liked most of the first half but hated seeing the Miami Heat dominate his teammates throughout the second half.
“I was screaming,” Biyombo said. “I was yelling.”
Orlando needed him throughout its 108-96 defeat. Miami players drove into the lane, encountered almost no resistance at the rim and scored 74 paint points. And when Miami missed a few shots at the hoop, Hassan Whiteside and others grabbed 16 offensive rebounds and scored 23 second-chance points.
Tonight, the Magic will face the Detroit Pistons and another dominant center, Andre Drummond, who tormented Orlando last season.
Biyombo will be available for that game, and the Magic are ecstatic to have him back.
The team signed him to a massive contract in July primarily because he can alter shots, intimidate drivers and collect re-
bounds. He also offers physicality, a trait his Magic teammates lacked throughout their matchup against the Heat.
Coach Frank Vogel started watching the game tape when he got home and continued to watch until he started to fall asleep.
Vogel agreed that his team missed Biyombo badly.
“But that’s no excuse,” Vogel said. “We should be able to win a game like that. If you’ve got a guy or two out and you’re playing at home, you’ve got to win those games.”
The Magic’s other major offseason acquisition, big man Serge Ibaka, didn’t make a significant impact on defense. Ibaka made the NBA All-Defensive first team three times during his Oklahoma City Thunder tenure. But on Wednesday night, there were sequences when he didn’t challenge shots at the rim. It’s unclear if he was trying to avoid foul trouble — he finished the game with three personals — but whatever the reason, he didn’t deter the Heat.
“If I have to block shots, I have to go block shots,” Ibaka said. “Last night, I didn’t do [the] best I can.”
According to Vogel, Ibaka had some strong moments but also missed some assignments.
“He was disappointed in himself by not making a couple of those plays,” Vogel said. “We want him to protect the rim. We want everybody to protect the rim, whether you’re a shotblocker or not. I don’t care if you’re a point guard. If you’re in that spot, you go and take a charge and protect the rim.”
Biyombo could have made a difference. Even during the preseason, Magic players grew accustomed to seeing him provide a jolt of energy off the bench.
“Just being a presence in the paint is huge,” shooting guard Evan Fournier said.
The league suspended Biyombo for accumulating a pair of Flagrant 1 fouls and a Flagrant 2 foul during the 2016 playoffs as a member of the Toronto Raptors. Because he reached the threshold of too many flagrant fouls in the same game that the Raptors were eliminated, he was forced to serve his suspension during his new team’s season opener.
Biyombo disagrees with that requirement, but he was powerless to do anything about it. Players serving a suspension cannot even attend the game.
After the final buzzer, Biyombo sent text messages to teammates he thought would be hardest hit by the loss.
“I can’t really say a lot because I don’t know the situation our guys were in yesterday,” Biyombo said. “But just me looking at it from the outside, I thought we could have done a much better job. But again it’s the first game of the season. Probably everybody was a little bit tight.
“What’s done is done. I cannot change that. I’ll learn from it. I’ll grow from it.”
The first chance will be against the Pistons.
That’s the beauty of the NBA: The next game almost always looms right around the corner.
Biyombo is eager to make up for lost time.