In the final minutes of the Orlando Magic’s first home preseason match on Sunday, a comeback seemed inevitable.
After trailing by double digits to the San Antonio Spurs for most of the game, back-to-back 3-pointers from Terrence Ross and Mo Bamba injected life back into the crowd at Amway Center.
The crowd fully sprang to action one minute later when Bamba blocked a shot to set up Ross for another 3-pointer, slimming the deficit to four points.
Cole Anthony bounded down the court with barely two minutes left to play, hammering one of his signature dunks through the rim. Wendell Carter Jr. followed suit seconds later, hanging off the rim with a roar as he cut the lead to a single point.
But all of that hope died with a dismal squeak in the final seconds in the hands of rookie guard Jalen Suggs.
Down 1 point with 22 seconds to work, the Magic lined up ready to clinch their first win of the preseason. But Suggs stumbled to the court as he cut up the lane to make the game-winning play, fumbling the ball into opposing hands as the final buzzer rang out.
The Magic finished one point away from a win for the second time in the preseason, dropping a 101-100 loss to the Spurs.
“I loved our resilience,” coach Jamahl Mosley said. “There’s a point where we were down 18 and we battled back. We didn’t give in to being down and the fact that shots weren’t falling. We turned our defense up, got after them a little bit more and turned the pressure up a bit more.”
Shooting woes improved for the Magic but not enough to fend off their third straight preseason loss.
Ross led the Magic with 20 points.
Carter notched 9 points in the first quarter to fuel the Magic’s offense, but his presence dwindled in the rest of the game. He finished with 14 points.
The Magic averaged 38.2% from the field in their first pair of preseason games, making Sunday’s overall success rate of 46.3% a strong improvement. But they struggled to build a shooting rhythm to keep pace with the Spurs, who grabbed the lead in the first minute of play and never let it go.
The Magic were effective from 3-point range, making 44.4% of shots from behind the arc.
This efficiency came from across the roster rather than a single player. Ross, Bamba, Anthony and E’Twaun Moore each was 2-for-4 from long range, and Franz Wagner went 2-for-3.
“We were playing unselfish and trying to move it to the next man, to the next man, to the next man,” Mosley said. “I told them at the half — if you’re open, shoot the basketball.”
The home crowd helped change the tone of the night.
“I was sitting on the bench and when they made their run in the third quarter, I was like, ‘We need to start winning for these people,'” Suggs said. “They’re in the stands cheering, yelling, still screaming their hearts out for us. They were a huge factor in the run we made.”
The Magic will play their final preseason match against the Celtics on Wednesday before kicking off the regular season on Oct. 20.
This article first appeared on OrlandoSentinel.com. Email Julia Poe at jpoe@orlandosentinel.com.
