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By Megan Armstrong
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The Orlando Magic had the Detroit Pistons on the ropes.
The Pistons are the No. 1 seed in the Eastern Conference for these NBA playoffs, while the Magic needed the Play-In Tournament to sneak in the back door as the No. 8 seed. Over in the Western Conference, the top-seeded Oklahoma City Thunder swept the eighth-seeded Phoenix Suns, and the Pistons were expected to enjoy a similarly easy opening series.
Instead, the Magic took a 3-1 series lead and were the darlings of the first round. NBC's broadcast of Game 4 relayed that Orlando became the sixth 8-seed to hold a 3-1 lead over a 1-seed, with four of the previous five 8-seeds winning the series and advancing.
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But the issue was that, while winning, the Magic weren't playing particularly well. Orlando shot 32.6% from the field en route to winning Game 4, 94-88, which Keerthika Uthayakumar confirmed was the fifth-worst playoff field goal percentage by any team in the three-point era. To make matters more worrisome, they lost Franz Wagner, who had been shutting Cade Cunningham down defensively, for the rest of the series due to a calf strain suffered in Game 4.
Detroit stopped letting Orlando get away with poor form — epitomized by the Pistons' 24-point comeback to stave off elimination and win Game 6, 93-79. Orlando only mustered 19 second-half points on 4-of-37 shooting from the floor to allow Detroit to force a Game 7. It does not seem coincidental that the Magic's luck running out correlated with losing Franz Wagner to a calf strain in Game 4.
Then, the Magic let go of the rope entirely. They lost Game 7, 116-94, on Sunday and have to grapple all offseason with what could have been. A stunned Paolo Banchero started that process immediately after the game.
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"It's about winning habits," the 2022 No. 1 overall pick said during his postgame presser. "It's about just creating a winning environment every single day, from September to now."
Banchero stared blankly ahead before adding:
"We just gotta be better. We gotta be better. It doesn't start in April when the playoffs start. It starts in September, October, when we get everybody in the building, and you build habits. You create an environment where losing isn't acceptable. Losing in the first round is not acceptable. It's not good enough. That should be the attitude. It shouldn’t be comfortable in the building. It should be everybody on their Ps and Qs feeling pressure to be great because this result was not good enough. I think that’s the mindset that needs to be there from top to bottom."
Banchero's brutal honesty continued when asked whether the Magic have what's needed to reach the next level.
"I mean, I can't really answer that," he said. "I wanna say yes, but we haven't been out of the first round. So, if you're going off the last three years, the answer is no. The nice answer would be yes, but honestly speaking, I can't say we're good enough to be in the [NBA] Finals or Eastern [Conference] Finals because the last three years we've had the same result, so that's your answer."
This year was supposed to be different in Orlando.
The Magic were a popular preseason pick to contend in the East — a considerably weaker conference than the West, especially with the Boston Celtics and Indiana Pacers losing Jayson Tatum and Tyrese Haliburton, respectively, to torn Achilles. The Magic's blockbuster trade to acquire Desmond Bane signaled that they saw it the same way pundits did.
All parties were wrong. Wagner was limited to 34 games in the regular season, and Banchero's trajectory toward becoming one of the league's true stars stalled out. At times, Banchero and head coach Jamahl Mosley seemed to be on two completely different pages.
A week ago, it seemed as if Mosely had silenced all questions about his job security. Now, after a third straight first-round playoff exit, the Magic have more questions than answers about how to turn the page on another disappointing season.
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