By John Denton
March 3, 2015
ORLANDO – Upset that he was unable to do more in the second half of the Orlando Magic’s loss to Charlotte on Sunday night, standout forward Tobias Harris hurriedly dressed after the game and left the locker room in a huff.
And things didn’t get much better once Harris retreated to his suburban Orlando home for a postgame film session. He stewed around for hours, replaying how he scored 12 points in the first half, but managed just one free throw over the final 24 minutes of an ugly 98-83 loss. And when Harris went to bed, sleeping – peacefully, at least – was pretty much out of the question as he said that he tossed and turned for hours.
This is who Tobias Harris is – he cares, he has high expectations for himself, he’s upset when the Magic don’t win and he’s typically moody when he personally doesn’t play well. And he makes no apologies for it. Harris is all about basketball – all of the time – and when it doesn’t go well it affects every fiber of his being.
``I try to put it aside, but that’s tough for me. (Basketball) is all that I do. I don’t have (a wife) or kids and when I go home from a game, I’m usually glued to the TV and watching the game again,’’ Harris said unapologetically. ``Some people say that I need to take a break and relax a little bit, but basketball is all that I know. This is what I’ve grown up doing and when I call my mother and my father, they talk to me about the game. It’s just embedded in me and it’s pretty much all I care about.’’
One of the unquestioned leaders of the Magic (19-42) both in the locker room and on the floor, Harris has had a lot to think about of late. A restricted free agent who knows that both his financial future and his future in Orlando could be riding on his success this season, Harris has had to endure an up and down couple of months. Injuries to his left ankle and right knee have caused him to have to stop and start of late, and the lack of a rhythm has sapped some of the effectiveness from his game.
Orlando knows that it needs to get Harris on track if it wants to win Wednesday night at the Amway Center against the Phoenix Suns. The Magic won in Phoenix on Nov. 30 in a game where Harris scored 21 points, grabbed eight rebounds and had a critical fourth-quarter basket when the Suns were making a late charge. For the season, Harris is averaging 16.9 points, 6.5 rebounds and 2.0 assists while shooting 46 percent from the floor and 37.1 percent from the 3-point line.
``We’ll continue to go to him, we believe in him and we trust him. Hopefully we can get him off to some better starts,’’ Magic interim coach James Borrego said. ``Partly, with him, it’s health because he had that knee (injury). He makes us a different team, especially offensively, because we can post him, he can score off the bounce and in transition. So we need him to play well.’’
Harris had a career year in the works early on, averaging 18 points and several other career highs across the board in the Magic’s first 37 games. But he slipped on a wet spot on the Staples Center floor on Jan. 9, and things haven’t been the same for the 6-foot-9, 235-pound forward since. He missed five games with the ankle injury and then there was the bizarre five-game stint where he was used off the bench by since-disposed head coach Jacque Vaughn. Since the ankle injury, Harris has averaged just 14 points a game while shooting 43 percent from the floor and 29.1 percent from the 3-point line – numbers that have caused his scoring average – once at a career-best 18.9 points a game – to tumble to 16.9 points per game.
In his six games played under Borrego, Harris has averaged 15.5 points a game, but he’s topped 20 points just once. He pumped in 34 points on an emotional night that grandfather Lt. Col. John Mulzac – he formerly of the famed Tuskegee Airmen – was buried, helping the Magic break a 10-game losing streak and aiding Borrego in getting his first head coaching victory.
The past two games have been downright bizarre for Harris. He had 12 points in the first half on Friday – play that helped Orlando wipe out an early 16-point deficit and take the lead by halftime. However, Harris had just one basket – a 3-pointer with 2 minutes to play – in the second half of that defeat.
Then, on Sunday against the Hornets, Harris seemed to be back in his rhythm, hustling his way on the fastbreak to 12 first-half points again. However, just minutes into the second half Harris collided with teammate Victor Oladipo while running back on defense and he ended up missing all six of his shots over the final 24 minutes.
``They crowded me a little, but after I watched the film pretty much every shot of the second half was in the basket and bounced out. They were all good looks, I thought,’’ said Harris, who bruised his knee on the collision. ``The collision with Vic took a little bit of a toll on me and I could feel that I wasn’t getting too much lift. So shots that were right there, I needed that extra inch (of lift on his jump shot) and those would have been in. (Injuries) are just part of the game and part of a NBA season. When you go hard out there and you give it your all, something is bound to happen. But I’m not too focused on (individual success). I’m just trying to win games for our team and figure out what is the best way from my own game to help us win games.’’
Following a third straight Magic loss and a third game where he didn’t play up to his own high standards, Harris was irate with himself on Sunday night following the defeat to Charlotte. Teammates, coaches and family members have told him that he shouldn’t take losses so hard, but Harris said that kind of talk simply doesn’t resonate with him. When the Magic win, he’s as gregarious and fun-loving as any player. But when they lose, it bothers Harris and that’s the way he thinks it should be with all of the other players around him.
``That’s just way that I’m wired. Sometimes maybe it can be a fault for me because I take the (losses) too hard,’’ the player nicknamed ``All Business’’ at an early age because of his no-nonsense approach to basketball. ``I’ll think about the Charlotte game and the way that we played as a team all the way up until (Wednesday night) when we play our next game. For us as a team, if we can get everybody to have that demeanor where they hate to lose, I think we’d be better as a team. That’s where we all need to get.’’
Harris said that the uncertainty over his future has no role in his struggles over the last two months. Harris, who has averaged 12.3 points and 5.5 rebounds over his four seasons in the NBA, will be a restricted free agent on July 1 – meaning he will be free to sign an offer sheet with any team, but the Magic have the right to match the deal and retain the versatile 22-year-old forward. He said that he has tried to remind himself all season to only worry about what he can control and that the success of the Magic – more so than his own production – will ultimately determine his fate.
``I just play the game the best that I can and all that I can control is today and where I am,’’ Harris said with conviction. ``My whole thing is trying to help our team. I want to win and I want to win more than anybody.
``And when we lose games, it’s hard for me to sleep at night or watch the film. Helping this team get better has been my biggest focus,’’ he continued. ``We all need to be on the same page and we should be super upset when we lose. We shouldn’t be losing a lot of these games. It’s been frustrating for me because we shouldn’t be losing like we have. All I can do is keep coming to work every day and exerting myself to help us get to the point where we want to be as a team.’’
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