Archive → August, 2010
Monday’s Magic Word
- Josh Robbins of the Orlando Sentinel: “[Dwight] Howard’s stopover in Central Florida will be brief. He’ll be traveling to Senegal later this week to participate in a Basketball without Borders camp. He also is planning a trip to India to promote the NBA and a trip later this summer to work for a second time with Hakeem Olajuwon. In June, Howard worked out with Olajuwon in Texas. So, what did Howard get out of those workout sessions? ’Basically, what he was saying was I have to become a person that is not afraid to do anything on the floor,” Howard said. “He said right now there’s only certain parts of my game that I’m not afraid to do, but other parts I am. I have to be able to do all of those things, basically. That’s the biggest thing I took from him. I just think he was watching and seeing me play for a while,’ Howard added later. ”All the things we worked on, he was just wondering why I never used those things in a game. He saw all the things that I could do, and he was very impressed. He said that I cannot be afraid to do all these things.’ ”
- Brendan Suhr, former assistant coach of the Orlando Magic when Chuck Daly roamed the sidelines, joins the UCF’s men’s basketball program.
- Tim Povtak of NBA FanHouse: “Just because basketball fans around the world have become enamored with the star-studded Miami Heat doesn’t mean Magic center Dwight Howard will be joining in the fun, too. He is tired of the topic.Much like his team CEO did a few days before, Howard refused to bow down before the Three Kings of Miami Monday, expressing some of the same skepticism that others around the league have shown.”
- No. Really. Dwight Howard doesn’t want to talk about the Miami Heat.
- Howard’s chase-down block of Rajon Rondo in Game 5 of the 2010 NBA Eastern Conference Finals in video. Enjoy.
- John Denton of OrlandoMagic.com catches up with Superman: “Howard has done a lot of stuff to take his mind off basketball after the Magic fell short in their bid to return to the NBA Finals and win a championship. Orlando swept Charlotte and Atlanta in the first two rounds of the playoffs, but fell behind 3-0 to Boston in the Eastern Conference Finals and eventually lost in six games. In the time since the end of the season, Howard traveled to Beijing, Cheng Du and Shenyang, China and Taipei, Taiwan conducting clinics, playing pickup basketball and judging dunk contests as a part of promotional tours for the NBA, Amway and Adidas. Thousands of people mobbed almost every event just to get a peek at the Magic’s 6-foot-11, 270-pound superstar, so much so that one event that 200 security personnel were needed. [...] Up next for Howard is a journey to Senegal as part of the Basketball Without Borders program. It is there that he hopes to meet up with Olajuwon once again. Howard drilled with Olajuwon for five days in June in Houston, working on footwork and low-post drills. Olajuwon, a Hall of Famer and two-time NBA champion, has served as somewhat of a mentor to Howard, giving him advice at times late last season and motivation for the future.”
- Josh Cohen of OrlandoMagic.com talks about rivalries.
Dwight Howard’s Thoughts on the Miami Heat
Photo by Fernando Medina/NBAE via Getty Images
Via Jeff Schultz of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution:
Dwight Howard was back in his hometown Friday, thrilling a group of kids from the Big Brothers and Big Sisters of Atlanta who had no idea the Orlando Magic star and Atlanta native was coming for lunch. But before he took questions, he had one request.
“Please, no questions about the Miami Heat,” he said. “I was just over in China for two weeks and that’s all I heard: ‘What do you think about LeBron?’”
Nonetheless, Howard granted this corner of the blogosphere a few minutes to discuss a few items of interest to Atlanta fans: The Heat, the Hawks and Shaquille O’Neal. [...]
On fans conceding the Eastern Conference to the Heat, following the free agent signings of James and Chris Bosh and the re-signing of Dwyane Wade: “We don’t think about it like that. They’ve still got to play games. It looks good on paper. It looks good playing a video game. But this is real life. We’re looking forward to playing them. They’re going to be a real good team but that doesn’t mean they’re going to win a championship.”
A little late with this one.
The purpose of this post isn’t to provide commentary on Dwight Howard’s comments, but instead expand upon his thoughts on the Miami Heat and their potential as a team next season. The games won’t start until late October, when the 2010-2011 NBA regular season gets underway, but that hasn’t stopped a number of statisticians from crunching the numbers and coming up with various projections for how the Heat may fare. Despite the inherent differences in the systems, adjusted plus/minus, statistical plus/minus, PER, and WARP come to similar conclusions.
Miami is going to be good.
– Neil Paine of Basketball-Reference, using statistical plus/minus:
Like Hollinger, we’ll be conservative with the expected values next season… Let’s give LeBron a +11 (which would be his lowest since 2006-07), Wade a +8 (basically what he did in 2006), and Bosh +3 (a little less than his mark from 2009). Also, we’ll use -3 as our replacement-player value, so we’ve got 3,100 minutes of James at +11, 2,850 minutes of Wade at +8, 2,600 minutes of Bosh at +3, and 11,130 minutes of -3 replacement-level ballers. How many games would that team win?
Doing the math, that allocation of minutes works out to a projected +7.95 efficiency differential. Wanna know which team had at least a +7.95 differential last season? Only one: the Orlando Magic, who were +8.12. Traditionally, a +7.95 differential buys you 61 wins, which is actually exactly what Hollinger came up with. So in the absolute worst case, the Heat win 61 games next season with their Big Three, and are the best team in the East, if not the league. And what if they merely play at last year’s levels?
Expect a +10.6 differential, which equals 68 wins.
… and adjusted plus/minus:
APM paints an even rosier picture for the “Holy Trinity” (or whatever we’re going to call them)… Last year, James had a +18.52 rating, 2nd only to Dwight Howard, and Wade was 4th with +16.09, while Bosh had “only” a +6.97 rating. Mark them down for even +10, +6, and +5, respectively (their 5-year low-water marks when healthy), and with Hollinger’s expected minutes this team would have a +7.0 differential, good for 59 wins. And remember, that’s if they are as bad as they’ve been in 5 years, surrounded by nothing by the cream of the NBDL’s crop.
If they play like they did last year, the Heat’s differential would be a monstrous, Redeem Team-esque +21.2, which I can’t even give a wins estimate for because it breaks the linear equation that relates efficiency differential to winning % (it would have them winning more than 100% of their games). No team has ever had that kind of performance in the history if the NBA, meaning there is a pretty decent chance they’d obliterate the ’96 Bulls’ record for most wins in a season.
The Orlando Magic Are Spending to Win
Photo by Sam Greenwood/Getty Images
Via Ben Q. Rock of Orlando Pinstriped Post:
Mark Deeks, who runs the indispensable ShamSports.com, has updated that site with nearly complete salary information on every NBA team, including the Orlando Magic; the only Magic contract figure on which he’s unsure is J.J. Redick‘s. That’s the link you should consult for every salary-related need you have, and not just for the Magic. Not counting Redick’s salary, the Magic are on the hook for over $85 million this season, and that’s before adding the dollar-for-dollar luxury tax payment. Orlando management is indeed shelling out to put a winning team on the floor this season.
There’s no question that it’s a great time to be a Magic fan, now more than ever. The Orlando Magic are set to unveil the Amway Center in October. Dwight Howard is a top five player and one of the more engaging personalities in the NBA. The players for the Magic are a likable group of guys, led by a fiery head coach — Stan Van Gundy – and an excellent coaching staff. But almost none of this would be possible without Orlando’s front office that has shown the commitment to win. And the Magic are chasing the ever-elusive “gold ball” (the Larry O’Brien trophy), as president of basketball operations Otis Smith likes to put it sometimes, by opening up the checkbook with Rich DeVos’ blessing. Five years ago, it would have been unheard of for Orlando to financially support a payroll that is more than $90 million. Yet that is today’s reality. My how things have changed.
Don’t take anything for granted, though.
The golden era of the Magic is going to go away, sooner or later. It’s happened once, and it’ll happen again. Nevertheless, savor the moment.
