Orlando Magic's Maturity, Poise Are Superpowers for Now and Later

Orlando Magic coach Jamahl Mosley often touts the players' honesty and accountability toward one another as guardrails for their success. How much they can remain calm in otherwise uncomfortable moments is tested from game to game.

Orlando Magic guard Kentavious Caldwell-Pope (3) embraces Orlando Magic guard Jalen Suggs (4) after scoring a basket against the Brooklyn Nets during the second half at Barclays Center. / John Jones-Imagn Images

NEW YORK — Even at 25 years young, Wendell Carter Jr. is a tenured NBA vet among his Orlando Magic teammates.

His seven-plus years of NBA experience in one of the league's youngest locker rooms mean his words carry weight. Playing for a team that encourages accountability, Carter is not shy to speak his mind.

So when Orlando survived a war of attrition against the Nets on Sunday, overcoming foul trouble and turnover issues to sweep the weekend in Brooklyn, Carter recognized a teachable moment.

"We did a poor job of complaining a lot as a team, in my opinion," Carter said Sunday. "If we want to be one of those physical teams, we can't be physical and complain. That's something I would take away from this game, is just continue to keep our composure no matter if the fouls are going for us or if they're not. I mean, they called 60 fouls tonight. We got a lot of foul calls for us, too."

This is the perspective of someone who has seen the other side of the struggle. Carter joined the Magic four years ago at the start of their rebuilding project. He endured seasons of 21, 22, and 34 wins before last season's 47-win breakthrough and a playoff berth.

With Jalen Suggs, Franz Wagner, and an on-the-mend Paolo Banchero at its core, the Magic expect to be key players in the Eastern Conference conversation for years to come. Possessing the ability to be real with one another works in their favor regarding those efforts.

Magic coach Jamahl Mosley often touts the team's poise and accountability toward one another as guardrails for their success. How much the players can remain calm in otherwise uncomfortable moments is tested from game to game.

On Sunday, Mosley credited his staff for doing a "tremendous" job of using stoppages to redirect the complaining that Carter saw and re-focus the players.

Sometimes, even Carter needs a veteran voice other than his own: "I definitely give a lot of credit to our vets in KCP (Kentavious Caldwell-Pope) and CoJo (Cory Joseph). They bring a sense of calmness when it comes to those situations."

They're not alone.

"As a group, when someone goes outside of our line, we do a really good job — not just those two, but everyone — just kind of pulling that person back in," Carter added. "Whether it's JSuggs, whether that's me, or that's Goga (Bitadze). We have a really good relationship where we're able to be real with one another and just tell each other, like, 'You're tripping right now, bro. It's just the first quarter. It's just the second quarter. We're winning still, there's no reason to be mad.' That's the beauty of our group."

The Magic's win on Sunday was their 12th in the last 13 games. They've managed all of this without leading scorer Banchero, who told Magic on SI and the Orlando Sentinel late Sunday that he just returned to light court action.

At 15-7, the Magic now have the league's fifth-best record. Getting here has required perseverance:

• Going toe to toe with the Lakers' LeBron James and Anthony Davis to win in Los Angeles on Franz Wagner's late three.
• Breaking away in Charlotte a week ago with a 37-point fourth quarter.
• Playing perhaps their best offensive games in wins over Chicago and Brooklyn.

In Friday's first game of the weekend doubleheader in Brooklyn, the Nets pushed back in the fourth quarter, but the Magic stayed on the same page and never relented.

"Not a perfect game tonight," Franz Wagner said Friday. "I feel like in previous years, we would've had a couple more turnovers and that little run they had in the fourth, they cut it maybe to 10 points, not just, whatever it was, 18 or something like that. I think those are moments of growth that are easy to forget after a game like this, but we gotta continue to have that poise in those moments."

And then came Sunday's tug of war. Mosley said Banchero urged the team during its film study to treat the two-game set with the Nets like a playoff series because there would be adjustments made from Game 1 to Game 2 to rectify specific areas of the attack.

The Nets started a bigger lineup, Mosley said, and played more aggressively. Yet the Magic prevailed.

Continuity is only worth keeping if it breeds success, and staying collected is a superpower Orlando has grown into, powered by years of enduring highs and lows together. And as more time passes, the Magic continues to understand how they harness it.

"The poise that these guys showed is just the mark of a team that continues to grow," Mosley said. "To be able to withstand whatever was happening throughout the game... says a lot about the growth of a team that understands what we're trying to accomplish.

"Again, our guys' poise and maturity in these moments is going to be great for us down the line because this is what we're going to continue to see," Mosley added. "We're not going to try to fight it. We're not going to avoid it. We're gonna play the way we play."

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