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On Monday in the second quarter against the Philadelphia 76ers, head coach Stan Van Gundy was forced to use a second unit that consisted of Larry Hughes, Von Wafer, Quentin Richardson, Earl Clark, and Glen Davis. Van Gundy briefly utilized that 5-man unit in the fourth quarter as well.

If it hasn’t become clear by now why Dwight Howard wants out or why the Magic aren’t very good at the moment, witnessing Hughes, Wafer, Richardson, Clark, and Davis play on the court at the same time should put things into focus. Orlando is bad because there’s a lot of bad players on the roster right now.

The funny thing is that it wasn’t too long ago when the Magic were one of the deepest teams in the NBA, if not the deepest.

During the 2009-2010 season, Orlando trotted out — by all accounts when looking at the numbers — the best team in franchise history. Literally from top to bottom, the Magic had quality players at each position. The point guards were Jameer Nelson, Jason Williams, and Anthony Johnson. The wing players were Vince Carter, Matt Barnes, J.J. Redick, and Mickael Pietrus. The bigs were Rashard Lewis, Ryan Anderson, Brandon Bass, Dwight Howard, and Marcin Gortat. For Van Gundy, this was Noah’s Ark on steroids — he didn’t have everything in twos, but in threes and fours.

And give general manager Otis Smith credit at the time. With a savvy trade and ownership’s blessing to spend, Orlando was setup nicely that year until they ran into the Boston Celtics in the Eastern Conference Finals.

Unfortunately for Smith, what he built he also destroyed (with some help from guity parties like the Celtics).

Out went Williams, Johnson, Carter, Barnes, Pietrus, Lewis, Bass, and Gortat. In came Chris Duhon, Hughes, Jason Richardson, Wafer, Hedo Turkoglu, Quentin Richardson, Clark, and Davis. And let’s not forget the Gilbert Arenas experiment either.

In case you’re keeping score, this has what the Magic have become.

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AP Photo/Mike Carlson

Boston Celtics

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Final Recap | Box Score

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Orlando Magic

	Dwight Howard 6-12 FG | 4-8 FT | 1 BLK | 16 REB | 16 PTS | -25 It’s true that Howard has won the Defensive Player of the Year award in three consecutive seasons. It’s also true that Kevin Garnett is a former Defensive Player of the Year award winner. And for Garnett, despite being 35 years old, he reminded everyone that he still has it defensively. Howard struggled to score against Garnett, allowing the Boston Celtics to stay at home on the Magic’s shooters.
	Jason Richardson 5-12 FG | 1-4 3P | 3 STL | 0 REB | 13 PTS | +1 After scoring 10 points in the first quarter, Richardson did next to nothing for Orlando the remainder of the game. He went 1-of-2 from the free-throw line in the third quarter, made a layup shortly thereafter, and that was it. When the Magic were in desperate need of some offense, Richardson was unable to deliver. Given that Richardson isn’t much of a shot creator, that should come as no surprise.
	Ryan Anderson 5-12 FG | 1-2 3P | 1 AST | 4 REB | 12 PTS | +8 In the first quarter, Anderson had 12 points. When he found himself being defended by Pierce, Anderson was able to take him off the dribble twice for a layup and also shoot over him for a midrange jumpshot. Near the end of the period, Anderson made a three-pointer that put the finishing touches on a great start to the game for Orlando. That was the last time he scored.
	Hedo Turkoglu 3-10 FG | 2-5 3P | 7 AST | 5 REB | 10 PTS | -7 Turkoglu really didn’t do much to help the Magic’s cause against the Celtics. In the fourth quarter, when Orlando needed to rely on him, Turkoglu had trouble generating offense for himself. This was no better exemplified than when Brandon Bass found himself defending Turkoglu one-on-one with the shot clock winding down. Turkoglu’s jumper was blocked by Bass. It was just one of those nights for Turkoglu.
	Boston Celtics Boston gave up 58 points at halftime, had a 21-point deficit heading into the third quarter, and they won. Remember when the Magic, no matter what, would almost always lose to the Detroit Pistons for several seasons a few years back? And it didn’t matter who was wearing a Pistons uniform? It’s become more than obvious that the Celtics have taken up the mantle of being that team.

Eddy Rivera is the Editor-in-Chief of Magic Basketball. Follow him on Twitter.

If Magic fans were to use word association for Earl Clark, the first word that would probably come out of their mouths? Potential. After languishing on the bench with the Phoenix Suns for two seasons, Clark came over in the Orlando Magic’s trade for Hedo Turkoglu and Jason Richardson last season. And although he didn’t get a lot of playing time with the Magic, when he did see the floor, it became clear that head coach Stan Van Gundy had the makings of a defensive stopper on his hands. With his length and athleticism, Clark showed flashes of a player that could make an impact defensively.

Standing at 6-foot-10 with a 7-foot-2 wingspan, Clark has a unique ability to defend small forwards and power forwards in the NBA. Clark’s interchangeability of quickness and strength, depending on the matchup, is what makes him a versatile defender. The problem for Clark, however, is that he’s a poor player on offense, which negates any of the positives he brings to the table defensively. Clark tries too often to be someone he’s not when he plays — a player that’s looking to score rather than a player that’s looking to defend. That’s precisely the reason that Van Gundy hasn’t used Clark much in Orlando’s rotation this season.

Yet against the Indiana Pacers on Tuesday, Clark got a chance to play extended minutes. Normally Van Gundy pairs Glen Davis with Ryan Anderson or Dwight Howard as part of the second unit in the second quarter of games. But with Howard saddled with foul trouble after picking up his third foul less than 30 seconds into the second quarter and Anderson needing rest after playing the entire first quarter for the Magic, Van Gundy turned to Clark on the bench. At this point in the game, Orlando was losing. But thanks in large part to Clark’s defensive impact, the Magic were able to withstand a lack of Howard on defense.

When Clark entered the game, Orlando was down by seven points at 29-22. By the end of the second quarter, the Magic were tied with the Pacers at 45 apiece. Clark and his defense was a game-changer for Orlando.

In the period, Clark had five points, three rebounds, one steal, and three blocks in a little more than 11 minutes of playing time. Clark made so many plays defensively, it seemed like he was a mini-Howard.

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Rebounding is one of those things you can thrive at if you put in the work. On the other hand, you could be born with a natural ability to sort of float to wherever the ball seems to come off the rim.

Dwight Howard has both of these things going for him.

It’s well-documented that Dwight works harder than most guys on the court. He logs more minutes, takes more of a beating, and has the supernatural ability to outwork and out-hustle guys who are half his size.

What I noticed, though, in watching some video from some of his more dominant rebounding games this year, is that it’s more than just elbow grease and size that gives Dwight an advantage under the hoop. Dwight has the uncanny ability to be in the right place when the ball clangs off the rim. He dances and floats and positions and schemes and at first you wonder how he was right where he needed to be to get a rebound. But on closer analysis, you realize that there is an art to this thing called rebounding, and Dwight specializes in it.

In watching dozens of Dwight’s rebounds using Synergy Sports Technology, I noticed a few things. First, Dwight doesn’t always box out, because he doesn’t always need to. Second, Dwight’s vision and ability to keep his man, the hoop, and the ball in a perfect triangle is probably his strongest attribute when it comes to defense and rebounding. And finally, Dwight is crafty and does not position himself the same way against every player, nor does he position himself the same way offensively as he does defensively.

Let’s start with the first observation, which is that Dwight doesn’t need to box out a lot of the time. All of these observations sort of flow in and out of each other, so bear with me. Part of the reason that Dwight gets so many rebounds is that his positioning is so good that his opponents recognize when he has position. And frankly, there are times when players will just bail when Dwight is in the paint with his big wide base waiting for the ball to come off the rim. One of the things that makes Dwight so great is that this “position” is simply him being near the basket a lot of the time.

Very few times, especially late in games, do players challenge Dwight when he is under the hoop. In situations where he uses his body more actively, like when he’s facing Andrew Bynum or DeJuan Blair, those players will try to get a hand over the back of Dwight and cause some problems. But when he’s facing weaker opponents like Pau Gasol or Tim Duncan, it’s just a matter of being in the right place. Those players will usually shy away from putting up a fight.

Is it a respect thing? Maybe. But really it’s more of a inevitability factor where guys realize, “What’s the point here? He’s got position.” But that shouldn’t go overlooked. Getting to that position is an art in and of itself.

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An emerging storyline this season for the Orlando Magic so far has been Hedo Turkoglu’s renaissance on offense. In 12 games, Turkoglu’s True Shooting percentage is 61.6 percent, which is a career-high. Likewise, Turkgolu’s usage rate is 20.4 percent, which is important to note because it means that he’s been more involved on offense for the Magic, which is a stark contrast from his disappearing act last season (his usage rate in 2011 was the lowest percentage he put up since his rookie year with the Sacramento Kings in 2001). With Turkoglu scoring with efficiency and becoming more of a threat with the basketball once again, he’s aided Orlando to an 9-3 start to the regular season.

In some of those wins, Turkoglu stepped up in crunch time during the fourth quarter, reminding Magic fans that he can still be “Mr. Fourth Quarter” like he was in 2008 and 2009. During the Magic’s four-game road trip, the Portland Trail Blazers Golden State Warriors, and New York Knicks got a stark reminder of Turkoglu’s effectiveness in the final period of games. And the beauty of it, from Orlando’s perspective, is that Turkoglu did damage both by scoring and passing. In essence, Turkoglu was being the go-to guy in fourth quarters by doing what he does best — being a playmaker and making sound basketball decisions on the court. This is the Turkoglu that the Magic need.

Against the Blazers on Wednesday, Turkoglu stepped up as a safety valve for Orlando with his scoring. To set the stage, the Magic led by as many as 23 points in the third quarter. However, Portland put together a spirited rally in the fourth quarter and were able to cut Orlando’s lead down to three. With the Magic trying to hang on for dear life, head coach Stan Van Gundy entrusted Turkoglu during crunch time to help the team weather the storm. Which means that Turkoglu will run Orlando’s best play in the playbook and that’s the 3/5 pick-and-roll. That’s the play that Van Gundy wants to use with the Magic up by three points and needing a bucket.

SLIDE 1, 2, 3:

On this possession, Turkoglu waits for Howard to set the screen. Turkoglu quickly surveys the manner in which Gerald Wallace is defending him. Turkoglu disregards Howard’s screen and chooses to go to his left. For whatever reason, Wallace is allowing Turkoglu to go to his left uninhibited. Turkoglu takes the opening and begins to dribble penetrate into the lane. At this point, Wallace is behind Turkoglu and LaMarcus Aldridge is cheating towards Howard, perhaps anticipating a lob pass attempt. That doesn’t happen. Instead, Turkoglu — with Aldridge not providing much resistance defensively — makes the layup off the dribble.

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For head coach Stan Van Gundy, his defense-first philosophy is one of the main reasons that the Orlando Magic have won 52 games or more in four seasons under his watch. With Dwight Howard manning the middle, some of the Magic’s defensive tenets are as followed: limit shot opportunities at the rim, don’t foul as to prevent free-throw opportunities, and coerce as many jumpshots as possible. Also, rebounding the basketball and getting back in transition (thus sacrificing chances for offensive rebounds) are things that matter a great deal to Van Gundy. Rarely will you see Orlando try and go for steals, for example, because Van Gundy would rather rely on fundamentals on defense than gamble and be out of position.

Which is why witnessing Van Gundy rely on a zone defense to win a game for the Magic is plain shocking. It just doesn’t happen. Van Gundy doesn’t use a zone because he doesn’t want to nor does he need to. Given that Orlando has finished sixth or better in Defensive Rating since 2008 and has a three-time Defensive Player of the Year at his disposal, can you blame Van Gundy? Yet with the Magic ranked 18th in Defensive Rating entering their contest with the New York Knicks on Martin Luther King Jr. Day, Van Gundy decided to go into his bag of tricks and use a rarely-used defensive scheme. With the Knicks attacking the rim, drawing fouls, and racking up points in the paint, Van Gundy went with a zone.

It’s not so much that Van Gundy utilized a zone. With Howard in foul trouble with five fouls and Orlando going neck-and-neck with New York in crunch time, it’s that Van Gundy threw the zone out there at the perfect time. It served as the Magic’s trump card and the Knicks had no answer for it.

And it wasn’t like Orlando’s zone defense was spectacular. New York just generally did a poor job of attacking it. There’s a lot of ways to attack a zone and strategies can vary, whether it’s high school, college, whatever, but some of the basic things that players are taught is to attack the middle and keep the ball moving.

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I have two very simple observations regarding Hedo Turkoglu at the moment. The first is that he is showing signs of improvement, and the second is that he is not back to 2009 form.

Obviously the first things to take notice of are Turk’s offensive improvements. He’s scoring at a more efficient clip than he has the past two seasons, and is seemingly more comfortable in the offense after his brief but destructive departure from Orlando.

You have to start by looking at his PER, which is currently just under 17, two points above the league average, and several points above where he finished last year. Of course, PER is weighted mostly for offense and doesn’t tell the whole story of a player’s game, but if we’re looking at this number strictly on the basis of improvement, it’s compelling to see that number above his past three seasons (all below 15).

Perhaps a more important sign of improvement is Turk’s shooting percentage from pretty much everywhere on the court. His True Shooting percentage is the highest it’s ever been in his career, which basically confirms that we’re getting a more efficient output from Turk. Granted, he may not be stuffing the stat line like you’d want a fantasy starter to, but efficiency is the name of the game in Orlando. And really, has Turk ever been a stat stuffer? No. That’s not why we like him. We like him because he does things right.

The Magic simply cannot afford empty possessions this season, because aside from Dwight they simply don’t have the star power to fill it up and rely on volume offense to win games. While Stan Van Gundy would like Orlando to be a defense-oriented team, the focus on offense simply needs to be efficiency and execution on each possession. That’s one of the reasons why it is so crucial for guys like Turk to be efficient rather than “high-volume,” or, worse yet, “passive.”

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If you’ve followed Orlando’s season to this point, it’s been impossible to miss the coverage of Jameer Nelson’s slump. Certainly his poor play has been noticeable on the court, but even more striking has been the differences in reaction he inspires. Some observers look at Jameer and see a solid player mired in the valley of statistical inevitability — he’s just missing shots. Other observers watch him and swear there’s something off, that he needs to attack more and look for his own shot. He’s the basketball version of that rock teachers in movies keep on their desks. You know the one that Feeney types from Boy Meets World-esque shows always have: it’s black on one side and white on the other, so two people can be adamant about seeing different colors until we ALL LEARN A LESSON ABOUT PERSPECTIVE. Or something.

This isn’t really a new phenomenon with Nelson. Magic fans have long been divided about him; one subset of fans see him as a frustrating potential engine of the team, a guy who simply needs to focus to regain his All-Star form, while another set of fans has seen him as just better than average, a solid starter but by no means somebody to carry the team. It’s unclear who is right, or whether anybody is. Is there a good Jameer or a bad Jameer? Exactly how much can we expect?

For starters, I looked a few of the numbers from Hoopdata (I would prefer to say I “crunched” some numbers, but Hoopdata pretty much just lays ‘em all out for you). I looked at his 2008-2009 pre-injury numbers and his current season numbers, using these two as his respective peak and valley. Take these with the usual sample size disclaimer, since even the ’08-’09 season was cut short for Nelson by his labrum injury. The first time I looked at the stats, it seemed like Nelson was more or less doing the same things during his best and worst times, that he was just missing shots, per Rob Mahoney’s argument. A closer look, however, reveals some telling things about the aggression of Nelson’s play.

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It’s no secret that the Orlando Magic lack a shot creator on the perimeter. This has been the case since Vince Carter was traded last season, though it was an issue at times even when he was around. The Magic don’t have a LeBron James on the roster, someone that can get them a bucket on offense at any time. Instead, head coach Stan Van Gundy — as stated elsewhere — has to make up for it offensively by creating a lot of pick-and-roll, post-up, or spot-up opportunities. Very rarely will you see Van Gundy call for an isolation play.

Put it this way. Hedo Turkoglu, the likeliest candidate for Orlando to run an isolation play, given that he’s 6-foot-10 and can get his shot off without much resistance from the defense, has been involved in 12 such possessions this season. And that number is a team-high! In isolation, Turkoglu is averaging 0.67 points per possession according to Synergy Sports Technology, which isn’t very good. To compare, James has run 50 isolation plays for himself and has averaged 0.90 points per possession, which ranks eighth in the NBA.

It’s a night-and-day comparison and worth illustrating how the Magic don’t rely on isolation plays, as the Sacramento Kings were the latest team to find out.

SLIDE 1:

Orlando runs so many pick-and-roll variations, it’s hard to keep track of them, but a lot of their plays come out of staggered pick-and-rolls. A staggered pick-and-roll is when an offense sets two screens, instead of one, for the ballhandler to create for either himself, one of the screeners, or someone else. It’s a great pick-and-roll variation to run because it creates extra space for the ballhander to wreak havoc on a defense. On this possession, Glen Davis and Ryan Anderson are the two screeners while Jameer Nelson is the ballhander.

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For all the menacing things Glen Davis did while he was in Boston, he has not seemed to find his groove in Orlando yet.

I chose that word carefully: menacing. He was kind of a pest. Playing off Garnett and Perkins in the post during the Celtics’ prime, earning hustle points, banging on the boards, and kicking you while you’re down with that soft touch from about 15-18 feet.

But why was he so brutal? It was because as limited as he seemed, he had so many ways that he could beat you offensively. He had the pick-and-roll, the post-up, the spot-up, and ever-obnoxious offensive rebound.

That’s really what the Magic need out of Davis this year, but up until now they haven’t exactly seen it.

Let’s look at what we know about Davis. He’s a decent rebounder; good post defender, good scrap player, and can shoot the ball relatively well when he’s not out too far.

The problem right now for Davis is that he’s become an offensive threat in the past few seasons, but has failed to utilize it thus far in Orlando.

Synergy Sports Technology shows that roughly a quarter of his offensive production has come from the pick-and-pop. Well, he’s also rolled a few times (or aimlessly wandered to the paint, if you will). But by in large his weapon off the pick-and-roll is to pop and get a little fade jumper when the defense closes.

That percentage seemed low, so I took a look at his numbers from last year. To my surprise, Davis worked off the pick-and-roll for less than 17 percent of his offense in his final season in Boston. Over 20 percent of the time he was spotting up (no surprise there), but guess where another huge chunk of his offense came from? Posting up!

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