by Frank Quartarone August 19th 2020
In the first game of their NBA Eastern Conference playoff journey, the eighth seeded Orlando Magic shocked the basketball world by beating the top seed Milwaukee Bucks 122-110. Buoyed by 35 points from center Nikola Vucevic and timely threes from Evan Fournier, the Magic pulled off what most thought was impossible.
NBA pundits from Florida to California and beyond had the Bucks winning in four with each game a comfortable win. Surprisingly, the Magic bench led by Terrence Ross’s 18 points, thoroughly outplayed the Milwaukee bench. So the question is, can the Orlando Magic actually pull this off?
To be blunt, the Magic have virtually no chance of winning four games out of seven against the Milwaukee Bucks. Our good friends in Vegas have given the Bucks the best odds of any team to win it all, while the underdog Magic have the second worst just above the Brooklyn Nets. On top of that, this current iteration of the NBA team in Orlando is a hobbled one. The terrible injury to Jonathon Isaac substantially weakened the Magic defensively, especially in the low post. The Magic were able to overcome that in the first game, but do not be fooled into thinking it will happen throughout the series.
To those that aren’t familiar with the reigning NBA MVP, Giannis Antetokounmpo is the most ferocious post player since Shaquille O’Neal. With virtually nobody else on the roster to slow him down, Giannis will eat the Magic alive as he’s done all season. Along with scoring at will, Giannis will open up the floor for dribble drives from Bucks point guard Eric Bledsoe. One can also expect a steady diet of kick outs from said Bledsoe to open shooters like Kris Middleton, Wesley Mathews and, on occasion, Kyle Korver due to the Magic having to collapse through the middle to contend with Giannis.
To go with the Isaac injury, Orlando lost another top forward on August 5th. Aaron Gordon, the fourth leading scorer and second leading rebounder on the team, left the game against the Toronto Raptors with a hamstring injury. Gordon attempted a dunk when he was slapped on the arm by Toronto’s Kyle Lowry in a steal attempt. The left leg of Gordon got hyperextended in the air right before he came down hard clutching the back of his leg right away. Gordon missed the last four games of the season as well as Game 1 with the injury and is still doubtful for the other early games against the Bucks. Nonetheless, even with a healthy Gordon, the Magic would still have an immensely steep mountain to climb. Without him the mountain becomes virtually unscalable.
Before the Tuesday afternoon matchup, the Magic hadn’t even come close to beating the Bucks. The closest Orlando came to getting a W was the Dec. 9th matchup. The final score was Milwaukee 110, Orlando 101, and it wasn’t that close.The Bucks held a double-digit lead almost throughout and coasted to an easy win behind Giannis’s 32 points and 15 rebounds, to go along with eight assists from the big man. Magic forward Evan Fournier was a bright spot, leading the team that night with 26 points on 8-for-14 shooting, but the team was held to just 38% from the floor.
In fact the Magic as a team hadn’t shot better than 38% against Milwaukee in any game this season before the first game of the series. They finished Game 1 shooting 49.4%, an obviously huge improvement but can they sustain that pace the rest of the way?
Now, one could point out that all of the games except the last matchup came before the Magic offense started to click in February with the resurgence of Markelle Fultz. Unfortunately the Magic have only shown flashes of that offensive form since the restart. Fultz arrived late and looked like a player trying to find his conditioning as well as his game. As he has gotten comfortable, the Magic have looked better but the consistency hasn’t been there. The Magic as a team have put up some good offensive numbers here and there, it just hasn’t been on a nightly basis through the eight games.
Coming into the playoffs, Orlando only managed three wins of the eight played. One of those wins came against the disappointing New Orleans Pelicans on the last day of regular season play. A Pelicans team who themselves could only manage two bubble wins, was able to hang 127 points on Orlando, further emphasizing their defensive deficiencies. Now the Bucks didn’t exactly set the “bubble” on fire either, managing only three wins themselves, but once the Eastern Conference first overall seed was clinched, Giannis and some of the other starters were used sparingly to say the least.
In the three previous games Giannis played against Orlando, the stat line reads 26.3 points, 15.7 rebounds and 7.7 assists per game. In Game 1, he was even better with 31 points, 17 rebounds and 7 assists. Orlando has managed to get Giannis to turn it over fairly frequently at 4.7 per game, and that issue remained for Tuesday’s game with him turning it over five more times. Nonetheless, even with the turnovers, Giannis still had his way and that will undoubtedly continue to be the case. As Dan Patrick used to say during his ESPN days, you can’t stop him, you can only hope to contain him. The Magic were able to do neither this season against the reigning MVP.
The facts are these: the Magic would need a catastrophic injury to “The Greek Freak” and maybe even to Middleton to have a chance to get out of the first round. If Vucevic and Fournier have fantastic games and Fultz plays dynamite, the Magic do have a puncher’s chance to steal another game. Those things would have to be coupled with Ross averaging 18 points for the series and bad games from at least two Milwaukee starters and even then it would still take some luck.
Bottom line is Giannis is on a mission to attain the one thing on his resume he doesn’t yet have, an NBA Championship. The loss last season in the Eastern Conference Finals to the Raptors just further wetted the Bucks appetite to get it done. The reality of the situation is the Orlando Magic are still a mere speed bump on the Bucks’ path to the 2020 NBA Finals. Prediction for the rest of the series is the Bucks right the ship and win it five, ending a fun but trying season for the Magic.
