May 12
Photo by Handout/Getty Images It’s May and the Orlando Magic aren’t playing basketball right now. Weird. The last time the Magic weren’t playing basketball in May was in 2007 when they were swept by the Detroit Pistons in the first round, which was Brian Hill’s final year as the head coach. Once head coach Stan …
May 04
Photo by Kevin C. Cox/Getty Images Via Josh Robbins of the Orlando Sentinel: As the franchise attempts to sort out exactly what went wrong, where 2010-11 turned for the worse, they can point to a mystifying playoff shooting slump or to some superb clutch shots by the Atlanta Hawks’ Jamal Crawford and Joe Johnson or …
Apr 29
Josh Robbins of the Orlando Sentinel: “The Orlando Magic face a long, uncertain offseason. Those months off will be filled with questions about how a season that started with such promise ended with such overwhelming disappointment. A team that advanced to the NBA Finals in 2009 and reached the Eastern Conference finals in 2010 didn’t …
Apr 29
BOX SCORE The Atlanta Hawks were able to defeat the Orlando Magic by the score of 84-81, winning the series 4-2 and exacting revenge from last year’s sweep in the 2010 NBA Eastern Conference Semifinals. For the Magic, this is the first time they’ve lost in the first round of the playoffs during head coach …
Apr 28
Josh Robbins of the Orlando Sentinel: “Stan Van Gundy reached into his bag of rhetorical tricks Wednesday — all the way back to his seventh-grade phys-ed class. Van Gundy and his classmates were about to do a six-minute run as part of a physical-fitness test, and one of Van Gundy’s friends asked, ‘Coach, how do …
Apr 27
Photo by J. Meric/Getty Images Before the playoffs started, I previewed Orlando’s first round matchup using data from Synergy Sports Technology. Last week, we looked at the playoff games in Atlanta. Today, let’s examine the results from the contest in Orlando. Game 5 PPP = Points Per Possession Orlando offense The Magic shot 11-26 beyond …
Apr 27
Josh Robbins of the Orlando Sentinel: “For the first four games of this playoff series, the Orlando Magic could depend on only one player: Dwight Howard. No one else hit shots consistently. No one else defended game-in, game-out effectively. And no one else brought the necessary intensity at the beginning of games. But with their …
Apr 26
Photo by J. Meric/Getty Images BOX SCORE Able to stave off elimination and avoid ending their season on their home court, the Orlando Magic were able to defeat the Atlanta Hawks by the score of 101-76 and force a Game 6 on Thursday on the road. One of the running narratives in the series has …
Apr 26
Zach McCann of the Orlando Sentinel: “At some point Jamal Crawford has to cool off, right? The Atlanta Hawks shooting guard has torched the Orlando Magic in the first four games of this playoff series, averaging 24 points and shooting 56.5 percent from three-point range. In a series defined by ugly offense and hard-nosed defense, …