During the fourth quarter of Friday’s game between Orlando and Philadelphia at Kia Center, the Magic shot 4 for 19 from the field, 4 for 11 in the paint and 0 for 7 from 3-point range.
Those shooting woes, combined with four turnovers, resulted in the 76ers outscoring Jamahl Mosley‘s squad 20-12 across the final 12 minutes of the game to secure a 103-91 victory.
It was just the latest fourth quarter for Orlando that saw the group fail to find success on the offensive end, ultimately leading to its downfall.
Across the last 12 games, during which the Magic have alternated between wins and losses, Orlando has won just five fourth quarters while being outscored in the other seven. In that stretch, the Magic averaged a league-low 21.3 points per fourth quarter while shooting a league-low 35.2% from the field in the final frame.
Why does this continue to happen?
“Going back and looking at the film, there’s a few reasons,” Mosley said when asked what he thinks is the reason behind the team’s recent fourth-quarter struggles. “Teams are turning up the heat defensively. So they’re not allowing you to execute.
“We got downhill, but we’ve got to come off the ball a little quicker,” he added. “That’s a big portion of it. Give credit [to the Sixers] for how they played physical, how they attacked the ball and how they got us to turn the ball over.”
It also hasn’t helped the Magic that they’ve been without forward Franz Wagner (left high ankle sprain) and guard Jalen Suggs (right knee MCL contusion) for a majority of that stretch. Orlando fell to 5-6 in games without them both this season.
That’s not to mention backup center Moe Wagner, who continues to rehab his left knee more than a year removed from tearing his ACL.
But the Magic aren’t ones to make excuses.
“We’ve just got to be more organized in fourth quarters,” big man Wendell Carter Jr. told the Orlando Sentinel in the locker room Friday night. “We were playing pretty good basketball [on] both sides of the ball the first three quarters. We’ve been playing really good defense, holding guys under their average in terms of as a team. You hold a team to 104, you give yourself a pretty good shot at winning that game. We’ve just got to do a better job of just figuring it out.
“We’ll go back to the drawing board, talk about it, talk some more about it,” he added. “And then, of course, getting guys back in the fold is going to help us a lot more too. … But at the end of the day, we’ve got to figure it out as a team and we’ve got to be better.”
Those injuries disrupt lineups and rotations as rookie Noah Penda learned in the hour leading up to tip-off against the Sixers. After second-year forward Tristan da Silva was ruled out not long before the game due to back spasms, the French forward found himself making his first-career start just two days after turning 21 years old.
Although Penda viewed it as a reward for the work he’s put in to be able to be ready to start in that type of squeeze, the rookie also understands the impact injuries can have on a team, especially as they pile up.
“Nobody’s going to be sorry for us, but there’s some proof to that,” Penda told the Sentinel. “You’ve got rotations that are constantly changing. You’ve got guys in, guys out. I know it’s part of the game but you’ve got to admit that sometimes it’s quite difficult to find a good rhythm in this league.
“But we have to have that next-man up mentality,” he added. “And everybody has to keep that same mentality and be ready every time we step on the court. We have to maintain that same level of intensity and focus throughout the whole game and don’t let those down moments that we have take us too much down.”
Regardless of the reasons that have to led Orlando’s recent problems in the fourth quarter, all of it has contributed to frustration in the Magic locker room, according to Mosley.
While the team has worked hard to remain afloat until it returns to full health, the roller-coaster of going back and forth between wins and losses for three weeks eventually takes a toll on Orlando’s psyche.
“Nobody likes to lose,” Mosley said. “Nobody’s happy about taking an L and the way in which we did it, not playing our style of basketball.”
But help could be on the way when the Pelicans (9-31) make their lone trip of the season to Kia Center on Sunday. New Orleans is 1-9 in its last 10 games but beat the Wizards in the nation’s capital on Friday.
While Franz Wagner and Suggs remain out for Sunday’s contest, Moe Wagner is set to make his long-awaited return to the court. Da Silva is considered questionable.
Magic upgrade status of center Moe Wagner more than year after injury
If the pattern continues, Orlando (21-18) could find a way to respond to its latest loss after it fell to eighth in the Eastern Conference entering Saturday’s slate of games.
“This group always does a heck of a job of bouncing back,” Mosley said. “The resiliency and that they understand exactly how we need to play from the beginning to the end, 48 of minutes of playing a certain style of basketball. And that’s what we’ve got to get to.
“That consistency is going to help as well as soon as we start to get bodies back,” he added. “That’ll help as well.”
Jason Beede can be reached at jbeede@orlandosentinel.com
Up next …
Magic vs. Pelicans
When: 3 p.m., Sunday, Kia Center
TV: FanDuel Sports Network Florida