ORLANDO, Fla. _ The Orlando Magic just cannot catch a break.
In their first game since they traded power forward Serge Ibaka for swingman Terrence Ross and a draft pick, they couldn't even put Ross on the court.
Ross was required to sit out because the league did not finalize the trade before tipoff.
Ross probably wouldn't have made a difference anyway _ not with the way his new team played.
Undone by turnovers and subpar shooting, the Magic fell to the San Antonio Spurs, 107-79, Wednesday night at Amway Center in their final game before the All-Star break.
The game was emblematic of much of the Magic's season so far. The loss was their 23rd defeat by double digits and their 12th loss by at least 20 points.
Ross arrived in Orlando late Tuesday night and passed a physical Wednesday. But he was not in uniform against the Spurs. The Magic did not receive word from the NBA before tipoff that Ibaka had passed his physical in Toronto, and both players were required under league rules to pass their physicals in order to be eligible to play.
Midway through the second quarter, word arrived that Ibaka had passed his physical and that the trade had been finalized. But that was still too late for Ross.
The rest of the Magic looked as if they had never played alongside each other.
They committed 14 turnovers in the first half, leading directly to 21 Spurs points.
Late in the second quarter, Patty Mills stole the ball from Evan Fournier, and Mills sped upcourt on a fast break before he hurled the ball to Manu Ginobili. Ginobili threw a behind-the-back pass to Kawhi Leonard, who scored on an emphatic two-handed dunk.
The score extended the Spurs' lead to 48-27.
The Magic actually would have benefitted from having Ibaka on Wednesday. Power forward LaMarcus Aldridge, the Spurs player Ibaka would have guarded, scored 23 points on 10-of-13 shooting
Leonard added 22 points and five rebounds.
C.J. Watson, the Magic's starting point guard, sat out the entire second half because he had a sore right Achilles' tendon.
On Nov. 29, the Magic upset the Spurs, 95-83, in San Antonio. The Magic turned the ball over just 13 times and limited the Spurs to 36.8 percent shooting that night.
Orlando was nowhere near as sharp as it needed to be Wednesday evening.
The Magic made only 39.5 percent of their shot attempts.
They trailed by as many as 25 points in the second quarter, but they cut their deficit to 68-56 on a 3-pointer by point guard Elfrid Payton with 4:51 to go in the third quarter.
The Magic (21-37) couldn't get any closer.
Aldridge responded by sinking one of his trademark long 2-point jumpers. After Fournier missed a 3-pointer from beyond the top of the arc, Aldridge made a jumper from 16 feet. And, suddenly, the Spurs padded their lead back out to 72-56.
Dewayne Dedmon, a player the Magic discarded in free agency after they acquired Ibaka and signed Bismack Biyombo, bedeviled his former team.
Dedmon finished with 10 points and 11 rebounds for the Spurs (43-13).
The All-Star break could not have arrived any sooner for the reeling Magic, who have lost 17 of their last 22 games.
Many fans in the announced crowd of 17,101 people started to file out of Amway Center early in the fourth quarter, with the game's outcome already certain.
The NBA trade deadline is scheduled for Feb. 23, and there's a chance that the rest of the roster soon will look different from the roster the Magic had Wednesday night.
The Magic already made one major shake-up when they traded Ibaka.
It's possible at least one more shake-up will follow.
