Paolo Banchero<\/a> said that every night has a playoff-level game for them. The first test of urgency of the stretch run is in Milwaukee on Sunday against the Bucks on the second night of a back-to-back because good teams don\u2019t turn around and lose against struggling ones, even if they have a top-five player (Giannis Antetokounmpo).<\/p>\nKeep in mind that the defense does the most important thing better than any other team: limiting wide-open 3-pointers (16.1). This is a great foundation to work with yet, they should have some goals for the stretch run that include…\u00a0<\/p>\n
1. Rack up some quality wins<\/p>\n
It\u2019s not enough to whoop on the scrubs; they have to put some good teams on their r\u00e9sum\u00e9, and will have at least seven games left against top-shelf competition. Those outings, like Saturday\u2019s big-time win in Minnesota, are the ones that nurture a team\u2019s confidence and they\u2019ll need as much of it as possible since they\u2019ll go in presumably no higher than the fifth seed, meaning they will start on the road versus a favored opponent.<\/p>\n
Those seven outings are against the Cleveland Cavaliers (twice), Oklahoma City Thunder, Charlotte Hornets, Detroit Pistons, Boston Celtics and the Wolves. It\u2019s been an up-and-down season,\u00a0 but showing they can beat those teams might make opponents look at them as a team they don\u2019t want to see in a series.\u00a0<\/p>\n
2. More quality production from Tristan da Silva and the next step from Banchero<\/p>\n
da Silva’s done well as a spot starter and that role could return depending on the severity of Anthony Black\u2019s back injury. Regardless, his steady production in 3-point shooting is a tool that must continue because rivals will always want to slow down Banchero first. He\u2019s averaging 4.1 attempts, and logging the highest percentage on the team (39.4), which means he should get comfortable soon taking two or three more.\u00a0<\/p>\n
On top of that, Banchero has been playing well, but his accurcacy could be higher. He needs to be shooting north of 55 percent on attempts inside the arc since he may not ever turn into a good enough deep threat. Natrually, his job will be harder as more defenders hover in the area he wants to go to, but the biggest difference makers find a way. There are outings like Saturday’s when he is unstoppable, making 69.2 percent of two-point shots, and 90 percent at close range, and they leave one wondering why it’s not an everyday occurrence.<\/p>\n
3. Passing and open shots\u00a0<\/p>\n
The offense needs to get back to moving the ball at a high level so that Franz Wagner\u2019s comeback is seamless, plus he and others don\u2019t have to do too much off the dribble. It\u2019s an area that has dropped off over the last 10 games, and the danger in that is that guarding the dribble is easier than the pass. They should be able to make some tweaks without compromising some of the mismatch-hunting style that they used against Rudy Gobert on screen rolls on Saturday.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Additionally, the Magic take 20.5 wide-open triples per game, making roughly average efficiency (36.3 percent), and only 32.8 percent of open attempts. They can\u2019t misfire so many opportunities, and it\u2019s been one of their three biggest issues of the season. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Orlando Magic have 20 games left and are within reach of the sixth seed, which bypasses the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":183190,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[139,141,140],"class_list":{"0":"post-183189","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-orlando","8":"tag-orlando","9":"tag-orlando-headlines","10":"tag-orlando-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/183189","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=183189"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/183189\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/183190"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=183189"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=183189"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=183189"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}