NEW YORK — On Dec. 6, the Orlando Magic enjoyed perhaps the most uplifting moment of their post-Dwight Howard era. The team defeated the Sacramento Kings to complete a 3-3 West Coast road trip and improve its overall record to 9-14. The Magic’s young nucleus appeared to be making significant strides.
A playoff push in the weak Eastern Conference seemed possible.
But that optimism dissipated. The Magic squandered one opportunity after another following that night in Sacramento. They lost home games to other rebuilding teams, and they struggled repeatedly to close out tight games in the fourth quarter.
“We had a point in the season where we could’ve really turned this thing around and made a playoff push,” Magic forward Tobias Harris said. “The East was so wide open that there were plenty of times this season we could have made that push, but we just didn’t, and it’s disappointing.”
A sense of frustration, relief and uncertainty will hover over the Magic when they conclude their season Wednesday night in Brooklyn.
The third year of their rebuilding project is about to end, and although several members of the team’s young nucleus have made individual improvements, the team as a whole hasn’t demonstrated definitively that it is any closer to respectability. The Magic are 25-56 and, regardless of whether they win or lose in their finale, will finish this season with the NBA’s fifth-worst record.
“We’ve got to get better individually in the summer and then we come back and try to put all that together to become a good team,” center Nik Vucevic said.
“It’s not going to be easy. It’s going to take a lot of work. It’s not just going to happen because one more year went by. We can’t have this type of season like we’ve had in the past three years. It’s no fun, and it takes a toll on you.”
The Magic’s season started to transform from promising to disastrous in mid-December. They lost winnable home games to the Utah Jazz on Dec. 19 and the Philadelphia 76ers on Dec. 21.
And from Dec. 30 through Feb. 4, the Magic lost 16 of 18 games and seemed to deteriorate. Believing the players had lost their confidence and weren’t playing to their potential, team officials fired coach Jacque Vaughn and replaced him on an interim basis with Vaughn’s lead assistant coach, James Borrego.
Borrego has provided a direction, a defensive focus and a consistency that many players felt was lacking under Vaughn. But after an early jolt of adrenaline, the Magic suffered a pair of gut-wrenching home losses — to the Chicago Bulls on Feb. 8 and to the Miami Heat on Feb. 25 — in which the Magic lost seemingly insurmountable leads late in the fourth quarter.
“Looking back on it, it’s tough,” guard Victor Oladipo said. “There’s a lot of different things that go into it, whether it was injuries or losing close games or not getting off to a start like we wanted to. But I feel like we’ve shown a lot of improvement this last second half of the year. I feel like we can catapult that into the summertime and into next year.”
The forthcoming coaching search will be crucial, but many league insiders think the Magic need to augment the roster for the team to make significant strides.
Those insiders believe the franchise must utilize free agency to add at least two in-their-prime veterans who can play on both sides of the ball. In addition to a general lack of experience, the Magic have glaring skill gaps on their roster. The team needs a power forward who can add grit to complement Vucevic’s finesse. It also needs a rim protector. And it also needs to add outside shooting.
Current Magic players think their team could’ve done better this season. What upsets them most is the feeling that they didn’t maximize their potential.
The Boston Celtics offer a sharp contrast. The Celtics arguably have less talent than the Magic, and the Celtics also traded away Rajon Rondo and Jeff Green during the season.
On Dec. 6 — the same day Orlando beat Sacramento — the Celtics held a 6-11 record. Since then, however, Boston has compiled a 32-31 record and has qualified for the playoffs.
“I just think if we were a little bit stronger mentally as a team we could’ve got over that barrier that we had,” Harris said. “There was a point of the season where we lost seven or eight in a row, I believe, and then we just couldn’t get over that hump. And I just think if we were just a little bit more mentally focused, we could’ve made that jump.
“Anybody could’ve made that jump in the East this year. It’s pretty much proof with Boston. They made the jump. I think it’s a lost opportunity for us.”
jrobbins@orlandosentinel.com. Read his blog at OrlandoSentinel.com/magicblog and follow him on Twitter at @JoshuaBRobbins.