Losing hasn’t been a stranger for the Orlando Magic.

At 18-53 entering Friday for the league’s second-worst record, they’ve had plenty of moments where they’ve gone back to the locker room postgame feeling the sting of defeat.

But the last two home losses to the Brooklyn Nets Tuesday and Detroit Pistons Thursday, in which they gave up a combined 284 points, have stung differently. Especially for a Magic team that preaches it wants to be known for their defense and showed improvement on that end from the beginning of 2022 until this week.

“We’re going to keep pouring into our guys and help them grow,” Mosley said. “These losses sting. And you want it to sting. They understand how it hurts, but we also understand we get back to work the next day.”

Coming into the year, the Magic were expected to lose and be toward the bottom of the standings by the end of the season.

It comes with being in the early phase of a rebuild, having a roster full of lesser experienced players and prioritizing the development of those younger players.

The Pistons are in a similar place as the Magic, which was why there was so much outside noise about tanking — a team doing less than everything it can to win — heading into Thursday.

But the process of how the Magic play is still important even when a loss further helps their draft lottery odds.

“You got to believe in the big picture that eventually it’ll translate and every possession matters,” Moe Wagner said. “There’s no such thing as garbage time. We’ve got to prove ourselves every night. It’s about us and we got to keep building. We didn’t do it the right way [Thursday].”

Despite the accumulation of the defeats over the season and the Magic’s defensive edge slipping his week, they remained adamant that nobody in the locker room has become comfortable with losing.

“I don’t think anybody in the locker room is going home and is like ‘[Thursday] was a normal day at the office,” Franz Wagner said. “Guys have enough character to take pride in that and for all of us to come back the next day to work on stuff.”

With 11 games left and a home matchup against the Oklahoma City Thunder, who are also rebuilding, on Sunday, the message from Mosley and his coaching staff remains the same as it has all season.

“We do the work,” Mosley said. “Whether that’s a two-point loss, a 25-point loss, a five-point win — we come in the next day and put in the work. These are the times this team has shown to be resilient. We’ll continue to do that.”

This article first appeared on OrlandoSentinel.com. Email Khobi Price at [email protected] or follow him on Twitter at @khobi_price.

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