At this point in the NBA regular season, most teams make clear their priorities for the season’s final stretch.
Some teams turn their attention to giving players at the end of their rotation more playing time and also focus on moving down the standings with the hopes of improving their draft lottery odds.
Others teams take the opposite approach: they push to move up the standings with the hopes of securing a spot in the play-in tournament/playoffs or better seeding for the playoffs.
The Orlando Magic have made it clear they’re among the teams taking the second approach.
“We know what we’re working toward,” guard Gary Harris told the Orlando Sentinel. “We’re building. We put ourselves in a position to continue to be in the race to make the play-in. Regardless if we make it or not, we know we want to be playing our best basketball this time of the year. Regardless of what happens this year, we know how good we can be. Our goal is the playoffs.”
With Friday’s 116-109 road victory over the Washington Wizards, the Magic have won five of their last seven games and are still eligible to make the play-in.
The Magic (33-44) are four games behind Chicago (37-40) for the No. 10 seed in the Eastern Conference entering Sunday’s home game against Detroit (16-61).
Orlando owns the season tiebreaker over Chicago, so that magic number is two — meaning the Magic will be eliminated from play-in contention with any combination of two Bulls wins or two Orlando losses.
Both teams have five games remaining.
The Nos. 7-10 seeds in each conference compete in the play-in tournament for the Nos. 7 and 8 spots in the playoffs.
The Magic still need to jump over Indiana (34-44) and the Wizards (34-43) in the standings before trying to catch the Bulls.
But Orlando is playing for more than just a potential play-in spot.
“It’s about teaching young men how to win basketball games,” coach Jamahl Mosley told the Sentinel. “And grow, get better, find their confidence and find their belief. That’s what this is about. I know where we are with the standings and play-in and they’re going to keep fighting for that, but even more so it builds something in ‘this is who we are,’ ‘this is who we’re going to be’ [and] ‘this is what we’re growing toward.’ They all believe and see that. That’s where it starts, with everything — the belief system that you’re capable of doing it in any circumstance.”
Harris understands how a late-season push can help a team for the following season.
During his fourth year with the Nuggets in 2018, Denver won 11 of 16 games to set up a matchup with Minnesota on the final day of the regular season, where the winner would advance to the playoffs and the loser wouldn’t.
The Timberwolves won, with the Nuggets finishing that season 46-36, but Denver came back the next season a better team — winning nine of the first 10 games of the season and being the West’s No. 2 seed in that season’s playoffs.
“These are all learning experiences,” Harris said. “That’s how we’re taking it. We’re learning how to win as a team. Sometimes you got to take some lumps. Sometimes you got to get close and not make it just to really understand the importance of each game, not just at the end of the season but throughout the whole season.”
The Magic have their own history of finishing a season strong but missing the playoffs, leading to better success the following year.
Orlando won 16 of the final 22 games of the 2005-06 season but missed the playoffs, finishing the year 36-46. The following season the Magic went 40-42 and made the playoffs by finishing 8th.
Playing in games with consequences down a season’s stretch can help younger teams learn what it takes to reach the next level of development.
That’s been the case for the Magic through the close games they’ve played over the last couple of months.
“Just realizing what it takes to be a really good team,” forward Franz Wagner said to the Sentinel. “High energy, intensity, how well you have to be connected as a group and how little things matter. That last point is the more important one — how important those details are in close games.”
Regardless of how this season ends, there’s a bigger-picture hope that it’ll help lead to more success down the line.
“We talk about it a little bit,” guard Markelle Fultz said. “We try to stay in the moment right now. I feel like a lot of teams and people try to put themselves in a box as far as what they’re trying to do next year or if they’re trying to get picks or whatever, but we’re doing a good job of staying in the moment and taking it one game at a time.”
This article first appeared on OrlandoSentinel.com. Email Khobi Price at [email protected] or follow him on Twitter at @khobi_price.
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