Your seventh-seeded Orlando Magic are in Denver on Friday for a date with the Nuggets, two teams whose seasons to date have looked like polar opposites.
As we know, the Magic came out flat across the first few weeks, stumbling to a 2-6 record and looking like lottery locks. Since then, however, they’ve seemingly turned a corner, emerging as one of the league’s most effective offenses over this recent stretch and rising to seventh overall in the Eastern Conference standings. Even when things are going poorly at the moment it still looks okay; the team’s last gasp loss to the conference-leading Raptors in their previous start is basically a textbook example of a moral victory (even though we don’t do those anymore).