1 Key stat shows how the Trail Blazers can beat the Orlando Magic

The Portland Trail Blazers are coming off three straight losses—none of which contained any particularly positive takeaways—as they host the Orlando Magic Tuesday at Moda Center.

Portland has now lost seven of its last nine games.

A win over the Houston Rockets on Dec. 17 gave the Blazers a promising 17-13 record. Less than a month later, the team sits one game under .500 at 19-20.

On the surface, there are plenty of reasons to be optimistic about the struggling Magic making the long trek west. But when digging deeper, there’s a season-long trend that should give Portland fans even more hope that Tuesday is the night this (hopefully) mini-losing streak comes to an end.

The Trail Blazers have feasted on bad defenses

It’s not like Portland has been a shining example of good NBA defense (the team is 16th in defensive rating), but things could be worse.

And that’s where the positivity stems from.

The bottom five teams in the league in terms of defensive rating are, in descending order: the Charlotte Hornets, Utah Jazz, Rockets, Detroit Pistons, and San Antonio Spurs.

The Blazers are 8-1 against those teams.

Extend that to the bottom 10 teams in terms of defensive rating and Portland is 11-6.

The only team among that group of 10 that Damian Lillard and co. haven’t faced yet? The Orlando Magic.

The most glaring issue so far for Portland this season has been turnovers. The Trail Blazers are 26th in the league in that category, averaging nearly 16 giveaways per game. They’re also 24th in the league in opponent points off said turnovers and 25th in fast break points allowed.

This is also a team that plays at one of the NBA’s slowest paces. Add all that up and you get a group that simply can’t make up for a blatant amount of nightly mistakes. That is unless they play against one of the worst defenses in the league.

Despite having a legitimate young core to build around, the Magic are a bottom-five team in the NBA. They’re 27th in scoring and 25th in defense. No amount of Paolo Banchero highlights will help Orlando play winning basketball this season.

So yes, catching a bad young team from the southeast on a west coast road trip seems like an obvious cure to Portland’s ills. But when looking at what truly ails the Blazers, this Magic team seems to be the best prescription possible.