The Magic are coming off a 92-106 loss to the Pistons last night as they fell to 31-28 in what has been a subpar season for Orlando. After the game, Paolo Banchero spoke to the media, took some blame on himself, but also ended up calling out the Magic’s lack of adjustments at halftime.
“Just being more organized. Being able to communicate with each other about what we’re trying to do. Teams, a lot of times, adjust at halftime, and I think that’s why we struggled a lot in the second half because we didn’t really adjust to their adjustments,” said Banchero while criticizing the Magic’s lack of adjustments at halftime.
“So, that’s when we need to see how they’re playing us, and we just need to clearly communicate to each other what it is that we need to do, particularly offensively, to fight those runs and continue to play good basketball,” Banchero said after the game last night.
The Magic’s former All-Star finished the game with 24 points, 11 rebounds, two assists, and one steal while shooting 50% from the field (5-10) and 25% from beyond the arc (1-4).
Since adjustments in strategy primarily come under the coaching staff’s role, the media saw this as a shot at Magic’s coaching staff. Subsequently, Jamahl Mosley, the Magic’s head coach, spoke to the media in the afternoon today and addressed his comments.
“Yeah, I think the one adjustment that Detroit made last night, they just played a little harder. They got into the ball, they grabbed at it a little bit more, they clogged the paint a little bit more, and our decisions became slower because there were a lot of gaps.”
“There was no schematic adjustment that they made. It was more or less (along) the lines, they did turn up their defensive heat a lot more,” said Mosley, refuting the point made by Banchero.
“If you look at the third quarter, they had about two or three blocks at the rim. They turned us over. They built walls in transition,” Mosley further explained.
“As we were getting downhill in that first half, they were building a bigger wall than we were able to get downhill in those situations. And then they did a great job of getting downhill offensively after we had turned that basketball over, or they got a block at the rim,” concluded Mosley while breaking down what really caused the loss.
It seems as though some internal conflicts are coming to the surface for the Magic. Reports in early November suggested there’s a growing disconnect between Banchero and Mosley, and now the two are openly not on the same page about team strategy.
The Magic currently have 23 games left in the season before the playoffs. Thus, they may have a limited amount of time left to figure this out before the front office is forced to step in and make personnel changes on either end in the summer.
Whether or not this means trouble for Mosley and his staff is yet to be seen, but this surely raises a red flag on things needing to be fixed in Orlando.
