Lakers last faced the Magic<\/a> in February, they were in the midst of a slump where it seemed like their season was falling apart.<\/p>\nFast forward to a month later, the purple and gold have completely turned things around and are now in the midst of their longest winning streak of the season.<\/p>\n
A lot of this has to do with Luka Don\u010di\u0107\u2019s MVP surge as of late, the team coming into form and each player accepting their role. We\u2019re currently seeing the best version of this Lakers team.<\/p>\n
Orlando is currently on a three-game losing streak and determined to get back in the win column and stay afloat in the playoff race.<\/p>\n
So fans should expect the Magic to fight hard in this one. They\u2019re still waiting on Franz Wagner to get healthy, but that doesn\u2019t mean they can\u2019t beat the Lakers.<\/p>\n
It was Paolo Banchero who led the Magic against the Lakers last time. LA had no answer for his 36 points. It\u2019ll be interesting to see how this improved defense contains Banchero and other offensive threats like Desmond Bane and Wendell Carter Jr., if he suits up.<\/p>\n
It\u2019ll also be fascinating to see how the Magic come up with a game plan to not only contain Don\u010di\u0107 but also Austin Reaves and LeBron James.<\/p>\n
In their last meeting, the Lakers disappointingly allowed 15 second-chance points and 58 points in the paint to the Magic. They also lost the rebounding battle 47-39. Orlando is not a good 3-point shooting team, which is why they combat that with their presence inside the paint. The Lakers must be more impactful inside the paint if they want to win this one.<\/p>\n
Let\u2019s see if the Lakers can make it nine in a row against the Magic on Saturday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Lakers (45-25) aim to extend their winning streak with a victory over the Magic (38-31) on Saturday.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":670078,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3790],"tags":[7,4034,1698,300,4044,251,150,64012,4033,4043,6],"class_list":{"0":"post-670077","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-los-angeles-lakers","8":"tag-basketball","9":"tag-la","10":"tag-la-lakers","11":"tag-lakers","12":"tag-lalakers","13":"tag-los-angeles","14":"tag-los-angeles-lakers","15":"tag-los-angeles-lakers-discussion","16":"tag-losangeles","17":"tag-losangeleslakers","18":"tag-nba"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nba\/116265245964221165","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/670077","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=670077"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/670077\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/670078"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=670077"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=670077"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=670077"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}