ORLANDO, Fla. - This is when the Orlando Magic want to be playing their best basketball.
That's been coach Jamahl Mosley's M.O. ever since training camp. When the All-Star break came and went, and 26 games faced them in the campaign's final third, the Magic want late February, March and April to draw out the best out them.
Paolo Banchero thought Thursday's six-point win over the Atlanta Hawks wasn't their best game. Instead, the 2024 All-Star said Orlando played with energy and intensity, then made enough plays to get the win.
"But," Banchero continued, "there's a lot of stuff we can improve on."
After outlasting Atlanta, Orlando's next seven chances to do so come at the Kia Center - a building they've won 17 of 27 games in this season.
"I think coming home is going to be very important," Mosley said. "We always talk about how important our fans are to us and that energy in that building, what it creates, and what it provides for this group. We talk about taking care of home to give ourselves the opportunity on a nightly basis."
Jalen Suggs is already taking advantage of the home-court benefits.
As he continues nursing a left quad injury that's kept him out of the last 10 games, the fourth-year guard didn't travel for the one-game trip to Atlanta. Rather, he stayed back in Orlando to get treatment and attention at the AdventHealth Training Center.
"We have the best facility in the league and being able to get the right type of treatment, the right type of things there in that facility is going to be so important for him," Mosley said. "We're going right back there as well, anyway."
Both Orlando and the Memphis Grizzlies, the Magic's Friday visitor - will be on the second night of a back-to-back. But only Orlando will have the benefit of the home atmosphere behind them.
"Memphis is a really good team, so you know they're going to come in ready to play and they're going to present a pretty good challenge," Banchero said.
"The things we need to clean up, we'll be able to look at," Mosley said. "Our focus level should be up ... things that we need to clean up tonight, we'll be able to transfer that over [Friday night] vs. Memphis."
Their feedback loop must be quick.
The Magic enter Friday's contest at 28-29, good for seventh in the East. They trail 6th-place Detroit by two games for the final guaranteed playoff berth but have a one-game cushion over Miami in eighth.
"I think a lot of guys understand this is do-or-die right now," Wendell Carter Jr. said after Orlando's Thursday shootaround. "We want to win games [and] change the trajectory of our season. get back in that winning column, get back into playoff contention.
"Being a part of playoff basketball before, for my first time last season, and how fun it is, the crowd being all into it ... you want to get back to that."
The Magic host the Grizzlies at the Kia Center on Friday, Feb. 20, at 7 p.m.