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Via the Orlando Magic:

The National Basketball Association today released its 2011-12 schedule and announced the Orlando Magic will open its 23rd season on Wednesday, November 2 at Amway Center against Charlotte. Tip-off is 7 p.m.

Orlando Magic season tickets, partial plans, group and single-game Amway Center suite rental opportunities are on sale now. Ticket highlights include: 2,500 seats priced $20 or less, 8,000 seats priced $40 or less and 9,000 seats priced $50 or under. Single-game tickets will go on sale in October. A limited number of season tickets are available through the Orlando Magic Box Office by calling 407-89-MAGIC or visiting orlandomagic.com. Fans will receive refunds, with interest, in the event games are missed because of the NBA work stoppage.

Orlando opens training camp on October 4 at Amway Center. The Magic’s complete regular season schedule is available through their official website: orlandomagic.com. The entire NBA schedule can be found on the league’s official website: NBA.com.

The 61st NBA All-Star Game will be played on Sunday, February 26 at Amway Center, which will also host the T-Mobile Rookie Challenge & Youth Jam on Friday, February 24 and NBA All-Star Saturday Night presented by State Farm on Saturday, February 25. NBA All-Star Jam Session presented by adidas, the hugely successful interactive basketball celebration, will be held at the Orange County Convention Center.

On March 7-8, Orlando will travel to London, England for a pair of regular season games against the New Jersey Nets. Both games will be played at London’s O2 Arena. It marks the second time in franchise history that the Magic will have regular season games scheduled outside of the United States. In 1996-97, Orlando also played New Jersey in a pair of contests in Tokyo, Japan.

Orlando has 14 national television games scheduled. The Magic will appear once on ABC (February 19 @ Miami), five times on ESPN and eight times on TNT.

The Magic’s local broadcast schedule will be released at a later date.

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Photo by Kevin C. Cox/Getty Images

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Photo by Kevin C. Cox/Getty Images

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Photo by Mike Ehrmann/Getty Images

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Photo by Scott Cunningham/NBAE via Getty Images

The Orlando Magic and Atlanta Hawks will square off in the first round of the 2011 NBA Playoffs. On Monday, I discussed Pythagorean wins and win profiles. Today, we will look at specific tendencies the teams utilize.

Ranked by points per possession

Orlando’s offense and Atlanta’s defense are evenly matched. The Magic have the 11th best offense in the NBA, and the Hawks have the 13th best defense in the NBA.

Orlando is the best team in the league in scoring with their roll man off the pick-and-roll, and Dwight Howard deserves much of the credit. Orlando’s first play in their recent contest in Charlotte is the epitome of their prowess in this area. Dwight set a screen on the man who was guarding Jameer Nelson, and then he slammed home Nelson’s lob pass to give Orlando a 2-0 lead. Unfortunately for Larry Drew, Atlanta ranks near the bottom of the league, 19th, in stopping the roll man.

The Magic are also successful when the pick-and-roll ball handler attempts a shot. They score the 4th most points per possession in the NBA on this play, and Atlanta is in the middle of the pack (15) at stopping the ball handler. Nearly 50% of Jammer Nelson’s possessions make use of the pick-and-roll, and he is the 30th best player in the NBA in scoring from that set up.

The Magic are near the top in the league scoring off cuts, and Atlanta has issues defending this play. However, Orlando only cuts to the rim about 1 out of every 20 plays.

To no one’s surprise, Orlando is the second best team in the league on scoring after offensive rebounds. When the MVP candidate secures the ball right at the rim, he usually scores. Atlanta is dead last in the NBA at thwarting opponents from scoring on offensive rebounds.

Expect a fierce battle when Orlando spots up on offense. The Magic sharp shooters are the 5th best in the NBA on this type of play, and the Hawks are the 6th best at stopping teams from scoring on spot ups.

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• Zach McCann of the Orlando Sentinel: “With J.J. Redick injured, Jason Richardson battling some minor knee tendinitis and Quentin Richardson suspended for the next two games, the Orlando Magic will be forced to play Gilbert Arenas significant minutes at shooting guard over the last three games of the regular season. That’s a good thing, because the Magic and Arenas need all the practice they can get with Arenas at the two. Despite Arenas’ 25-point outburst while starting alongside Jameer Nelson at Charlotte on Wednesday, Arenas has been largely unproductive playing shooting guard with the Magic this season. He’s far more comfortable and effective – relatively speaking, anyway – with the ball in his hands early in possessions, when he can probe the defense and really be aggressive in trying to score the basketball. This season, according to 82games.com, Arenas’ PER while playing shooting guard is 1.9, compared to his overall Magic PER of 8.9. Both of those numbers are bad, but a PER of 1.9 is almost unfathomably awful. That poor number is mostly explained by Arenas’ absurd effective field goal percentage (.298) while playing the two, a shooting percentage so mind-numbingly low that it makes you question if Arenas can really be effective playing that position.”
• Praise for Gilbert Arenas.
• Evan Dunlap of SB Nation chimes in on the ever-growing MVP debate: “As it applies to the focus of this article, there are statheads and there are, well, anti-statheads. These folks, in my experience, distrust any data that refute conclusions they drew with their own eyes. The truth is more complicated than that. Basketball, like nearly everything else in life, is too complex for us to understand if we apply only one doctrine, so to speak, to our evaluation of it. If we rely too heavily on statistics, no matter how advanced or refined, we are bound to miss something; we run the same risk if we rely too heavily on what we observe. Call me naive, but I think we can all coexist as hoops fans, without calling names or inventing straw men, if we merely blend the statistical with empirical observation.”
• Marc Stein of ESPN.com chooses Dwight Howard as the Defensive Player of the Year in his awards ballot: “Howard is the runaway DPOY no matter where you have him in your MVP thinking. His ability to keep the Magic in the top three in defensive efficiency despite the fact that he’s surrounded by suspect defenders makes this no less a rout than Blake Griffin’s ROY coronation. Doesn’t matter how long ago it was you leapt off Orlando’s bandwagon. The reasonable question now is how many times in a row Howard — who’s about to claim his third successive DPOY — plans to win this award?”
• Kevin Pelton of Basketball Prospectus joins John Hollinger as well as many others in the online writing and NBA analytics community in choosing Howard as the MVP this season: “Beyond that, the Magic’s issues can hardly be blamed on Howard. The question of whether he can lead a successful team should have been answered to our satisfaction with Orlando’s run to the 2009 NBA Finals and last year’s second-best record in the league during the regular season. Howard is a better player now than he was then, but with a weaker supporting cast around him. While Otis Smith‘s midseason deals for [Hedo] Turkoglu, Jason Richardson and Gilbert Arenas haven’t failed per se, nor have they managed to revitalize a team that no longer has a second All-Star capable of helping Howard shoulder the load. The fleet of shooters that once feasted on the open looks created by Howard double-teams now shoots barely better than league average from beyond the arc. None of this points to Howard shortcomings.”
• Is there a conspiracy theory with Howard’s technical fouls?
• Writers of the TrueHoop Network submit their choices for MVP.
• Sebastian Pruiti of NBA Playbook previews the first round matchup in the 2011 NBA Playoffs between the Magic and the Atlanta Hawks. Needless to say, this preview is a must-read.
• Noah Schiller of Hardwood Paroxysm says that Howard is the MVP.
• Zach Lowe of The Point Forward: “I agree with both of these guys in that reducing the Rose/Howard/LeBron James discussion to “stat-heads versus people who watch games” is ridiculous. People would probably lump me in the stat-head boat, since I cite things like points per possession, pace and rebounding rate often, including in my reasoning for why Howard should be the MVP. Three things would be wrong with that characterization: 1) I watch and re-watch a ton of games; 2) Those stats everyone calls “advanced” are not all that advanced. Counting possessions is about as basic as math gets. Rebounding rate is a simple percentage, the sort of thing we learn before middle school. Basic on-court/off-court plus/minus is so simple an elementary school student could understand it with a few minutes of teaching. There are certainly more advanced stats out there, but few trickle that far into mainstream NBA writing; 3) If you actually read (asking a lot, I know) the cases most alleged “stat-heads”make for Howard, you’ll see they are based as much on observation as on stats.”
• Kevin Arnovitz of The Heat Index: “An exchange of ideas generally makes the world a better place, but some of the Rose-James and Rose-Howard debates I’ve overheard and read in recent days aren’t so much a contrast of the players’ attributes as a condemnation of those doing the arguing: Do you stat geeks even watch the games and observe the results, or do you just consult your spreadsheet to draw conclusions? Meanwhile, if you listen to the extremes on the other side, you’d think Rose was putting up Arenasian numbers this season. What are we really arguing about here? If I support LeBron James for the MVP Award, what I’m essentially saying is that Rose is a dynamic talent who just happens to be the second, third or fourth best player in the world. How insulting. Rose-over-James offers the same construction. These disagreements might be contrasts in methodology, but at their very heart, they’re about taste, and taste is a very personal quality.”
• Howard is, by far and large, the best center in the league.

Via ESPN.com:

[Orlando] Magic center Dwight Howard was suspended one game by the NBA for receiving his 18th technical foul of the season and Orlando guard Quentin Richardson received a two-game suspension for shoving Charlotte’s Gerald Henderson in the face.

Howard received a technical Wednesday night in the second quarter against the Bobcats and it was upheld by the league Thursday. [...]

Richardson and Henderson got into an altercation with 8:30 remaining in the fourth quarter of the Magic’s 111-102 victory in Charlotte.

• Evan Dunlap of Orlando Pinstriped Post: “At the risk of sounding obvious, [Dwight] Howard can avoid 10-second violations by shooting faster. His opponents have the right to call attention to how long he takes before shooting, just as the Magic have the right to tell officials if one of their opponents is taking too long to shoot. He can avoid technical fouls by simply passing the ball to an official instead of rolling it away. Doing so shows up the officials in front of both teams, the paying fans in attendance, and the folks watching on TV. I understand the technical call, instead of the delay-of-game one, in this instance. He’s not merely delaying the game, but expressing his frustration with the referees in an unbecoming way. The NBA can avoid, or perhaps curtail, the frustration fans and players have with the rule by enforcing it strictly or not at all. The selective enforcement of the rulebook in professional sports–not just in basketball-rankles fans because rules are meant to be rules no matter the situation. Thus, violations like the NBA’s 10-second count arouse suspicion when they’re called.”
• Dan Devine of Ball Don’t Lie: “After stepping to the charity stripe with the Bobcats holding a 50-41 lead, Howard missed the first of his two freebies. After receiving the ball from the official for his second attempt, Howard launched into his extraordinarily deliberate free-throw routine. Take a deep breath. (Beat.) Shrug the shoulders. (Beat.) Spin the ball in your left hand. (Beat.) Slow dribble. (Beat.) Slow dribble. (Beat.) Slow dribble. (Beat.) Raise your eyes to the basket. (Beat.) Bend at the knees, and then … whistle.”
• The Orlando Magic made quick work of the Charlotte Bobcats in overtime.
• John Hollinger of ESPN Insider cites Howard’s improvements on offense this season: “It’s truly impressive when a superstar-level player can still take his game to another level, and Howard did that this season by developing what had been a rudimentary post-up game. By adding a face-up jumper off the window and getting more comfortable taking a couple of short dribbles for a hook shot, he’s become more than just a physically dominant dunker — he added 3.3 points to his 40-minute average with virtually no loss in efficiency.”
• Also, Hollinger awards Howard with his pseudo-vote for Defensive Player of the Year: “Orlando is third in the NBA in defensive efficiency. Think about this for a second. They have one good defensive player in their top eight. One. Of the top eight players for Orlando by minutes, the other seven are Jameer Nelson, Hedo Turkoglu, Jason Richardson, Brandon Bass, J.J. Redick, Ryan Anderson and Gilbert Arenas; two of them are average, two aspire to be average on their good days and the other three are just flat-out awful. For that group, somehow, to be better defensively than the Lakers, Heat, Spurs and Mavs, among others, defies all common sense. Yet it’s happening, partly because Stan Van Gundy has a strong team concept, but mostly because they have a flyswatter in the middle who is the first guy back in transition, totally dominates the glass and lets everyone else on his team play half a step closer to their man. Howard backs up his case with more traditional stats — the blocks and rebounds, the solid differential — but the greatest case he has comes from scrolling through the other names on the roster, and pondering how on earth that adds up to an elite defensive team.”
• Did you hear? Howard takes too long at the free-throw line.

Against the Charlotte Bobcats on Wednesday, Dwight Howard picked up his 18th technical foul of the regular season after he got whistled for a 10-second violation at the free-throw line. Henry Abbott of TrueHoop chimes in on the circumstances surrounding the tech.

AP Photo/Chuck Burton

BOX SCORE

In a wild and crazy game, the Orlando Magic were able to defeat the Charlotte Bobcats by the score of 111-102 in overtime. With the win, the Magic notched their 50th win of the regular season — the fourth consecutive year with 50 wins or more for the franchise in the Van Gundy era. The victory also sealed the Bobcats’ slim fate of returning to the playoffs. With five games left before the postseason begins, it seemed as if Orlando and Charlotte would go through the motions and play the game just for the sake of playing it. However, the Magic paid a price when Dwight Howard stepped to the free-throw line in the second quarter. Gerald Henderson counted out the seconds as Howard was going through his routine at the charity stripe. Once Henderson reached 10 seconds, Howard was whistled for a violation by Bennett Salvatore and quite frankly, it’s something that should happen more often but referees turn a blind eye more often than not. However, on this occasion, because Henderson was counting out loud, there was no choice but to blow the whistle. Howard did not approve of the call and made it known by throwing the basketball to the baseline away from one of the refs. Immediately, Howard was called for a technical foul by Salvatore, his 18th of the season.

With it, Howard will be suspended for Sunday’s matinee against the Chicago Bulls unless the tech is rescinded. Surprisingly enough, that’s not all for drama. In the fourth quarter, Quentin Richardson got into a scuffle with Henderson after he was called for a foul. Richardson and Henderson exchanged words. Suddenly, something must have been said because Richardson immediately shoved his hands in Henderson’s face, prompting both teams to shove each other. Following the shoving match, Richardson was ejected, while Henderson, Hedo Turkoglu, and Kwame Brown were called for technicals since they were in the middle of the altercation. So a game that meant very little for Orlando turned into a matchup against an enemy.

The Magic were led by a balanced attack, as six players scored in double-figures. Taking the place of Jason Richardson in the starting lineup, Gilbert Arenas was excellent, putting up 25 points on 9-of-14 shooting from the field, including making six three-pointers. Brandon Bass had 19 points and eight rebounds, Jameer Nelson had 18 points and nine assists, Turkoglu had 17 points and seven rebounds, while Howard had 15 points, seven rebounds, and six blocks. Coming off the bench, Ryan Anderson finished with 10 points.

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