No team, no matter how talented they are, can win every game in a single season. There are nights where shots don't fall, the ball doesn't move well or the defense can't buy a stop, no matter how well they might appear to defend.

For the Orlando Magic, those performances are beginning to pile up, and it's not just one that's killing them: it's all three. Wednesday night's loss to the Philadelphia 76ers once again highlighted all of those issues.

Coming in losers of seven of their previous eight, some believed that Wednesday night's game was a "must win" for the Magic if they wanted to begin to turn things around. Early on, it appeared as though the Magic might've found something in practice or film to help them turn things around and plug up the hole on a quickly sinking ship.

That ended abruptly, however, with the Magic going away from what worked from them in the open half quarter: moving the ball. Elfrid Payton, who was playing in just his third game following an ankle injury, had his way with the Sixers defense early, getting into the paint at will, opening up passing lanes to find open teammates. While shots weren't falling, it was refreshing to once again see the Magic do something they helped them to the best offensive rating in the Eastern Conference last month.

After Payton was removed, that stopped, with Magic players looking to do it all on their own, forcing shots and ending up with poor look after poor look. It was puzzling why they just stopped moving the ball.

Aaron Gordon, who is quickly pushing for a spot in the starting lineup, claimed that the second unit just wasn't ready to play, citing the Sixers 11-0 run once the reserves came in. Gordon later added that he believes the team's issues come down to execution. "It's still trusting each other and just really putting it all together; not letting out team fracture."

A clearly frustrated Scott Skiles said that he believed that the early shots led to frustration for his group. "Yeah, but I mean, we all come to work," said Skiles. "What is all of us could come to work and say 'hey boss, I'm frustrated today, I don't feel like doing it.' If that's all we can muster mentally, then it's not going to look good for us the rest of the year. Out goal right now should simply be to win a game"

Despite his team not doing many things well, Skiles was, at the very least, pleased with how his team moved the ball early. The ball movement, which led to good looks and open shots on many possessions, gave the team a chance before it all fell apart oh so quickly.

On top of them stopping the ball movement and missing shots, the Magic weren't able to get anything going on the defensive end. They couldn't string together consecutive stops, and when they did, they'd turn the ball over right away, giving the Sixers a chance to milk more clock. At one point when they were able to get the lead down to four, they played strong defense for 18 seconds, before ultimately sagging off Isaiah Cannon at the three-point line, allowing him a wide open shot to seal the game for the visitors.

"We couldn't get consecutive stops," said a down Tobias Harris. "If you can't do that, it's tough. We weren't able and that was pretty much the name of the game tonight."

"Our defense has been poor and tonight it was poor. We couldn't really dig down and get stops as a team. We couldn't get consecutive stops and that what hurt us," Harris later added.

Some of their struggles on the defensive end can also be traced back to poor play on the offensive end, according to coach Skiles. While these struggles have correlation to both ends, it also brings forth why the Magic were able to be such a strong offensive team in December, despite their defense beginning to slip.

Needless to say, the Magic have a lot of work to do on both ends if they want to turn things around. Their most pressing issues is figuring it out on the defensive end. Their inability to string together stops, along with stopping penetration has to come to the forefront if they want to return to their winning ways of earlier in the season.

"We have to find a way," said Harris. That's never been more true than now for a Magic team in complete tailspin.