Friday’s Magic Word

• Josh Robbins of the Orlando Sentinel: “You’ve heard a player say he is coming back as a new man. Sometimes it’s all talk. Chris Duhon is walking the walk. He looks like a different player. More evidence of that was revealed Thursday night, when Duhon was the best point guard on the floor, no matter that all-star Deron Williams was in town. Duhon replaced injured starter Jameer Nelson (neck strain), steadying the Magic with nine points, four assists and just one turnover in 28 minutes. Williams was awful, going 2-of-12 with six turnovers. Depending on how Nelson feels on Friday, Duhon might be starting against the Charlotte Bobcats in the second game of a back-to-back. After last season’s immense struggles, Duhon has looked like a different player, even though the season has offered only a sample size.”
• Some statistical oddities from the Orlando Magic so far in the season.
• Head coach Stan Van Gundy is doing more to be less demonstrative in games.
• Van Gundy on Ryan Anderson: “He’s got to get more and he can still do even more. I think the sky’s the limit for him, and so I’m saying it as a positive. I think he’s a helluva player. But he can do more at the defensive end. He can do more on the boards, and he’s got to make that he challenges himself to do that.”
• The Magic have sold out 100 regular season games in a row.
• Kelly Dwyer of Ball Don’t Lie on Orlando’s win last night: “It may not have looked that way, because the Magic aren’t all that great, and it probably doesn’t warm you to hear an opinion that leans this way — but you kind of got the sense that Orlando’s supporting cast was really going all out to prove their worth to Dwight Howard on Thursday. Transition play and cuts away from the ball and overall interest in the game on a level often unseen in professional hoops leads me to believe this. I’d watch the game again to double-check, but then I’d be watching a replay of a Nets/Magic game, and nobody should have to deal with that.”
• Plenty of Magic-related news bits on the Weekend Dime.
• Tonight’s matchup between Orlando and the Charlotte Bobcats features a ton of up-and-coming players according to Clint Peterson of Hardwood Paroxysm.
• Evan Dunlap of Orlando Pinstriped Post sees Chris Duhon in a Derek Fisher-type role this season for the Magic: “All Orlando asks of Duhon is that he reads the defense properly and knocks down an open shot every now and again. That’s what Duhon did against the Nets, drilling three open three-pointers off the catch for nine points on the night. He is, in effect, playing the role Derek Fisher does with the Los Angeles Lakers. It seems to suit him.”
• Another recap, albeit brief, of the Magic’s win against the New Jersey Nets.
• Are there teams in the NBA interested in “rent-a-Dwight?”
• Abe Schwadron of SLAM ONLINE liked Howard’s performance against the Nets.
• Brandon Bass has been fitting in nicely with the Boston Celtics.
• David Thorpe of Scouts Inc. talks about the Magic on HoopSpeak Live.
• Ken Berger of CBSSports.com: ” It’s faulty logic to look at the Nets and shake your head in disbelief that Dwight would want to play for THAT team. That’s not the team Dwight would be playing for; he’d be playing for a Nets team with HIM on it. Big difference. The most interesting aspect of the Dwight saga won’t be where he does and doesn’t want to play, but where the Magic are and aren’t willing to trade him. If Otis Smith and Alex Martins decide they want Pau Gasol and Andrew Bynum, the likelihood that Dwight’s a Laker goes through the roof. If that can’t or won’t happen, can the Nets flip some of their assets for win-now players Orlando would want, i.e., Luis Scola and Kevin Martin from the Rockets, or something similar? Fascinating chess match that Orlando will be playing.”
• Orlando gets an E for effort against New Jersey.
• A list of teams that should be interested in acquiring Howard as a rental.
• Marketing is a reason why Howard-to-Chicago is a near impossibility.
• The Basketball Jones returns on January 3! Bookmark your calendars!

Thursday’s Magic Word

• Josh Robbins of the Orlando Sentinel: “Stan Van Gundy will start Jameer Nelson, Jason Richardson, Hedo Turkoglu, Ryan Anderson and Dwight Howard when the Orlando Magic host the New Jersey Nets at 7 tonight at Amway Center. So no surprises there. Van Gundy wants the Magic to be prepared for the Nets’ pace. So far, according to Synergy Sports Technology, 15 percent of New Jersey’s offensive possessions that ended in a shot attempt, with a turnover or with a free throw came in transition. For comparison’s sake, only eight percent of the Magic’s offensive possessions ended when the Magic were in transition. [...] Another concern for Van Gundy: guarding the Nets’ options out of pick-and-rolls. Nets coach Avery Johnson and Williams expect a rude reception from Magic fans tonight because of all the trade speculation involving their team and Dwight Howard.”
• Deron Williams would recommend the New York market to Dwight Howard.
• Evan Dunlap of Orlando Pinstriped Post warns the Orlando Magic of acquiring veterans for Dwight Howard in a trade: “But Orlando ought not aspire to be the mid-2000s Washington Wizards team, the one which featured a core of Gilbert Arenas, Caron Butler, Brendan Haywood, Antawn Jamison, and DeShawn Stevenson. In the 2004/05 season, the Wizards went 45-37 and advanced to the second round of the playoffs for the first time in 23 years. In the three seasons after that, they won 42, 41, and 43 games and were eliminated in the first round each time. They eventually dismantled that team, as Magic fans well know, as Smith acquired Arenas from Washington in an ill-advised move last December. One may point out the Wizards eventually scored a first-overall draft pick, which they used on stud point guard John Wall. But they only got that pick in the first place because they unloaded the core members of that expensive, veteran-laden, mediocre club.”
• Dwight Howard isn’t a 6-foot-11 center.
• Williams had dinner with Howard last night in Orlando.
• Kurt Helin of ProBasketballTalk tries to guess what Williams and Howard were talking about as they got dinner together: “Williams may have tried to sell him on Brooklyn, they may have talked about Dallas. Heck, they may have talked about Cleveland for all we know. Okay, probably not. But mostly they probably talked about families and hobbies and whatever else they share in common. Like their gold medals and if they want to get another one next summer. This was not high pressure recruiting and no decisions were made. They talked like friends talk. These kinds of dinners happen all the time among players. It’s really not a big deal.”
• A preview of the Nets and Magic game.
• Kevin Durant and Russell Westbrook got into an argument in last night’s game between the Oklahoma City Thunder and Memphis Grizzlies. Head coach Stan Van Gundy humorously suggests that the Thunder should send Durant to Florida to separate the two.
• It’s possible that Williams and Howard could land with the Dallas Mavericks.
• What kind of food did Williams and Howard eat for dinner?
• Orlando isn’t an appealing League Pass team this season.

For the Magic, love is stronger than logic

AP Photo/John Raoux

I’ve been watching the Orlando Magic since 1993. I’ve seen the Magic get close to winning a championship in two different seasons. First in 1995 with Shaquille O’Neal and Penny Hardaway, then in 2009 with Dwight Howard. To witness my hometown team — the only sports team I have an emotional investment in — fail to reach their ultimate goal is frustrating. I can only imagine what other Magic fans were going through when Nick Anderson missed those four free-throws or Courtney Lee missed that incredibly difficult alley-oop layup or Jameer Nelson didn’t properly close out on Derek Fisher. However, through all that pain and suffering, I know that the odds of me being alive to see Orlando eventually win a title are good. Why?

Because I’m 24 years old. I’ve been fortunate to be blessed with good health and that’s something I’ll never take for granted.

Now imagine you’re Rich DeVos. This is you’re 21st season owning the Magic. You have been at the forefront of everything. You’ve been through the ups and downs of being a professional sports owner. But most importantly, you’re 85 years old and in the midst of dealing with a scenario in which your franchise megastar wants to be traded because he’s not sure he can win with Orlando anymore. The catch is that if you trade him, then you can’t win anymore. And how painful would that be? The truth, and this is not to purposely paint a grim picture but merely being realistic, is that there’s no telling how much longer you’ll own the Magic. You’ve been close to winning a championship twice and the clock is ticking. What do you do?

This is the reality that Orlando finds themselves in right now.

Via Marc Stein of ESPN.com:

There is at least a fairly clear sense out there about what the Magic would eventually want in exchange for Howard if they decide, as widely expected between now and the March 15 deadline, to make sure they get something for their face of the franchise as opposed to risking the sight of their Team USA center bolting Orlando in July with nothing coming back in return, just like a certain TNT analyst did in the Olympic summer of 1996.

Sources familiar with Orlando’s thinking say that a picture of what the Magic will ultimately expect in return for their anchor has indeed begun to emerge, telling ESPN.com this week that Orlando would not hold out for youth and draft picks as the league-owned New Orleans Hornets were ordered to do in the Chris Paul sweepstakes. The Magic, sources say, would instead prefer to bring back multiple established veterans who can keep the team competitive.

Reason being: Orlando has moved into a new arena last season and has a 85-year-old owner in Rich De Vos. Sources say De Vos has little interest in starting over/rebuilding, as evidenced by the recent decisions to trade for Glen “Big Baby” Davis and re-sign Jason Richardson even though Howard’s future is so murky.

Because it’s starting to become clear that the Magic, at the behest of DeVos, are in the business of acquiring veterans in a Howard trade to win now as opposed to acquiring draft picks and young players to rebuild later, it’s important to understand the reasoning for this. Meaning, Orlando’s obsessive pursuit with winning.

It started in the offseason in 2009 after the Magic lost to the Los Angeles Lakers in the NBA Finals that year. Once it became clear that Orlando was close to hoisting the Larry O’Brien trophy, the goal became clearer — win for DeVos. I know because I was there when then-CEO Bob Vander Weide said it. General manager Otis Smith would say the same thing as well in interviews when I covered the team in person during that offseason. As such, everything the Magic have done for the past several years, the trades, the spending, it’s been done with the intentions of trying to win for DeVos. The term “going all-in” could not be more appropriate.

That’s why it should come as no surprise to the mainstream media and blogosphere that Orlando is not in the business of rebuilding with draft picks and young players if Howard is traded. Trading for veterans to field a competitive team and fill the Amway Center?

That’s an ancillary reason.

No, it doesn’t make any sense that the Magic should forgo the opportunity to reload through the draft. Orlando is asking to send themselves to the worst possible destination in the NBA and that’s purgatory, where perpetual mediocrity leaves franchises stranded on a desert island with only one way out, which is to blow the whole thing up and start over. But the Magic don’t care because they want to win for their owner and get that gold trophy. Or DeVos will die trying.

That’s love right there.