Photo by Jed Jacobsohn/Getty Images

Game 2 of the 2009 NBA Finals is hard to watch for many reasons. It was a loss, for one thing. But far more painful is the memory of a confident, exciting group of guys who did a lot of things right. I would not go so far as to call the Magic in 2009 a team of destiny, but I would certainly say that my excitement after 2009 was through the roof thinking about the potential the Magic had of stringing together multiple championship seasons.

Now, after a couple of years, we can only look back fondly (even at the losses) in 2009 and wonder where that team of destiny went.

Dwight was not quite ready 
He did so many things right. He attracted the double-team, got to the foul line (sometimes), passed the ball with precision (for the most part), and rebounded like it was going out of style. What was missing for me was that takeover hunger that Kobe Bryant had throughout the entire game and series. Yes, Dwight demanded the ball, but he did not command the paint. At times he struggled to make good decisions like going left instead of right, or spinning for the lob instead of trying to back Gasol down. You can’t point the finger at Dwight, but you can safely say that he was not ready to win a championship. This was not Shaq, nor was it Tim Duncan. He needed another year or two to develop (which he did). The sad thing is that 2009 team did not stay a 2009 team with him. They dwindled as his game got progressively better. It is one of the more painful memories Magic fans have. Dwight was great, he was even terrific, but he was not ready in 2009 to win a championship.

Read more…

Photo by Elsa/Getty Images

I recently revisited Game 1 of the 2009 NBA Eastern Conference Finals between the Magic and Cavs. Cleveland was hot, and maybe even the team to beat coming into the series. Orlando had other intentions, though. My foggy memory was filled with ideas of a three-point shootout, a lot of LeBron isolation, and a big shot from Rashard Lewis. After revisiting, I realized my memory had failed me.

This was an epic showdown between two superstars — Dwight Howard and LeBron James. More than that, though, it was a showdown between two coaches, two benches, and two sets of roll players. The Magic won in all three of those categories, which meant they would win the game too.

No one on the corner has swagger like us
I remember watching every second of this series. In fact, I remember watching every second of the Cavs’ season. The Mo Williams pick up had me hooked from preseason on, and when LeBron and company arrived in the playoffs, I was convinced nothing could stop them. Game 1 of the Eastern Conference Finals was no exception. In fact, it probably epitomized that untouchable feeling more than any other game. The way the Cavs took the floor against the Magic was daunting. The Cavs were like a fresh rap group that, even if you didn’t like their song, you had to respect their swagger. LeBron was a man on a mission, and at that point had empowered Mo Williams and Delonte West to their max potential. It did not take long for LeBron to assert himself as a juggernaut, either. Ultimately, there was something special about that Cavs team, and what stopped them (perhaps the only thing that could have stopped them) were Dwight Howard and the Orlando Magic.

Read more…

Photo by Kevin C. Cox/Getty Images

Read more…

Photo by Kevin C. Cox/Getty Images

Read more…

Photo by Jonathan Daniel/Getty Images

Via Evan Dunlap of Orlando Pinstriped Post:

Given the dearth of long twos and isolation play, as well as the plentitude of threes and free-throw attempts, it’s almost as though stat geeks found room enough in their parents’ basement to design this offense. Lots of high-efficiency shots, few low-efficiency ones. That much isn’t up for debate.

At issue, though, is this team should have performed better than it did; every Magic fan, I think, would agree with me on that point. And before everyone piles on [Stan Van] Van Gundy, railing against what some folks derisively call this chuck-and-duck scheme, let’s recall an offense with the same principles ranked fourth just one year ago, and helped Orlando to win 59 games.

The principles didn’t change; the players did. Vince Carter, Matt Barnes, Rashard Lewis, Mickael Pietrus, Marcin Gortat, and Jason Williams are all regulars from the 2009/10 squad who departed prior to, or during, the next season.

To me, this all indicates Van Gundy’s offensive style works when equipped with the right personnel. He’s not an offensive genius like, say, Rick Adelman, whose superstar-less Houston Rockets squad had the league’s fourth-best offense this season. Seven Rockets averaged at least two assists per game. Adelman’s offense is more of a “plug-and-play” situation, if you catch my meaning. No matter the personnel, his teams will be brilliant offensively. The same is not true of Van Gundy, whose teams stand out more for their consistently great defense than offense.

For those that want to know more about head coach Stan Van Gundy’s philosophical approaches on offense, this article is a must-read.

Also, the Orlando Magic‘s need for a great one-on-one perimeter scorer remains.

Photo by Kevin C. Cox/Getty Images

The rise and fall of the Orlando Magic as an elite team and championship contender will be examined by Magic Basketball in a two-part series — here’s Part I.

“What went wrong” is far less important right now than “what is going to happen next” for the Orlando Magic, but you cannot really answer the second question without giving a good look at the first. LeBron James’ trajectory and departure from Cleveland provides a significant blueprint for what to expect from Dwight this summer, and it does not look pretty.

I remember the 2009 season vividly. That fall I was meandering around the web, looking at preseason acquisitions and making predictions when certain names would stand out.

I raised my eyebrows when I saw the Cavs picked up Mo Williams, and then made a call to a friend of mine back home in St. Louis. Even though it had been a few weeks since the last time we caught up, the beginning of the conversation went something like this:

“Hello.”

“Uh, did you see that Cleveland got Mo Williams?”

“Oh, they did? Huh…”

“Dude, I think Lebron is going to get a ring this year.”

Obviously Mo Williams was not the reason the Cavs made a run at the Eastern Conference Finals, but here’s the point: When you have a superstar as your centerpiece, the rest becomes a chess game, and the winner of the game is the owner who can put the right pieces in place around your guy.

At that moment in the fall of 2008, I thought Dan Gilbert had done it, or at least had come close.

Since that move, Gilbert didn’t do a whole lot to improve LeBron’s situation. The Antawn Jamison pickup had moments of looking like a good move, but for the remainder of LeBron’s tenure as a Cav, Gilbert watched clumsily as LeBron kept being LeBron, kept empowering guys like Delonte West to max potential, and then fizzle out in the playoffs.

It is a sad story for Cleveland, but the demise of the Cavs and the departure of LeBron might have paved the way for guys like Dwight to have a much easier time come “decision time.”

Read more…

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 even to a few unfortunate bounces of the basketball.

But the [Orlando] Magic likely would be better served to recall Dec. 18, the day their team completed two high-risk trades that would define their season and might limit many of their seasons to come.

The team acquired Jason Richardson, Hedo Turkoglu and Earl Clark from the Phoenix Suns for Vince Carter, Marcin Gortat, Mickael Pietrus, a 2011 first-round pick and cash. The Magic also obtained Gilbert Arenas for Rashard Lewis.

Those deals provided the Magic an immediate short-term infusion of energy and offensive skill that led to a nine-game winning streak in late December and early January. But the longer-term aftereffects weakened Orlando’s defense, put additional pressure on center Dwight Howard and didn’t give the team the additional offensive firepower it needed at playoff time. [...]

[Otis] Smith never could have foreseen that Richardson would get into an altercation with Zaza Pachulia that led to Richardson’s ejection for Game 3′s final minutes and Richardson’s subsequent Game 4 suspension. Smith also can’t be blamed for Richardson stepping on some broken glass while in bare feet last Tuesday, an accident that slowed Richardson in Game 5 and severely hobbled Richardson in Game 6.

Indeed, take away either the altercation or the accident, and the Magic might be preparing now for the playoffs’ second round.

But although Richardson displayed toughness, he didn’t develop into the consistent, dependable second scoring that the Magic needed to complement Howard on offense.

Neither did Turkoglu, who became more of a passer than a shooter after a mesmerizing 17-assist performance on Jan. 8 in Dallas. Indeed, Turkoglu made just over 29 percent of his shots in the playoffs and couldn’t match the quickness and explosiveness of his Atlanta counterpart, Josh Smith.

Starting in the next week or so, the rise and fall of the Orlando Magic as an elite team and championship contender will be examined by Magic Basketball in a three-part series — specifically by Nate Drexler, Danny Nowell, and myself.

Key events will be analyzed on a macro and micro level.

The macro side of things will encompass general manager Otis Smith’s construction and, in some ways, deconstruction of a franchise that appeared in the 2009 NBA Finals, only to regress the next two years by losing in the Eastern Conference Finals in 2010 and first round in 2011.

The micro side of things will touch on the signing of Rashard Lewis, a player that exemplified the rise and fall of the Magic in many ways. It’s Lewis’ arrival that triggered Orlando’s ascent to being one of the best teams in the NBA and it’s his eventual regression that signaled the end of that run of success. Also, the parallels between LeBron James (as a member of the Cleveland Cavaliers) and Dwight Howard will be closely looked at, given that they are two players that have experienced similar career paths with the teams that originally drafted them. And like James, Howard’s future is under an intense microscope, given that everyone is trying to decipher whether he’ll remain with the Magic for the long-term or if he’ll move on and leave.

Stay tuned for these articles.

Photo by J. Meric/Getty Images

You can take the Magic’s Game 1 loss to the Hawks in a number of ways.

You could be enraged–the Magic’s two most important players played one of the best games of their career, and the team still wasn’t competitive. You could despair–it sure looked like the loss exposed a lack of defensive flexibility on the wings and the extent to which the Magic rely on Hedo to create in the offense. I have to confess, though, that I’m not pulling my hair out or drowning my sorrows just yet. It strikes me that Game 1 was almost so logical as to be baffling, as each team basically played to an extreme version of what we already knew about them: the Hawks shot jump shots and hit them, while the Magic have frustratingly few options when Turk doesn’t seem up to being the creator he can be.

By now, you’ve heard the story about the game. The Hawks let Dwight get his and shut everybody else down. Well, except Jameer Nelson, for a quarter. But essentially, that was the ploy, and it worked. As I’m sure you’ve heard, the Magic scored 20 non-Dwight-or-Jameer points. Why, exactly did that happen? One number jumps off the page: 18 turnovers, which on the other end led to 21 points for the ATLiens. Some of this can be pinned on Dwight, as he had eight of those, but I think the biggest offenders, within the flow of the game, were Turkoglu and Arenas, both of whom displayed a maddening propensity to passively dribble into difficult situations while also seemingly refusing to put the pedal to the metal in scoring opportunities. Turkoglu, in particular, needs to step up for the rest of the series, because his passivity simply will not stand on offense or defense. It’s not a shock that Josh Smith took advantage of him, but it is a shock how little he imposed his will on the game. After Dwight, this team relies on positional flexibility with ball-handling spots, and that means Turkoglu has to be the engine a lot of the time.

Read more…

Photo by Kent Smith/NBAE via Getty Images

When it comes to championship contenders in the NBA, there’s five teams that are universally agreed upon — for the most part. Ranking them by their efficiency differentials, they are the Miami Heat (+8.6), Chicago Bulls (+8.1), Los Angeles Lakers (+6.6), San Antonio Spurs (+6.6), and Boston Celtics (+6.2). And since their trades, the Oklahoma City Thunder and Denver Nuggets get pub too.

Then there’s the Orlando Magic, sandwiched in between those teams with an efficiency differential of +6.6, right between the Lakers and Spurs.

At the start of the regular season, the Magic were widely regarded as a threat to win a title. And when Orlando jumped out to a 15-4 start to the year, they were fulfilling everyone’s expectations. There were no surprises. Then the month of December came and everything fell apart for the Magic in a hurry. Orlando hit a stretch of nine games where they only won once. A lack of energy and effort from the players on a consistent basis, plus the regression of Rashard Lewis and others aided in the Magic’s fall from grace. Scoring, which was supposed to be Orlando’s strength since they finished 4th in offensive efficiency last season, faltered and suddenly the offense became an average unit. General manager Otis Smith attempted to rectify the problem by acquiring Hedo Turkoglu, Jason Richardson, and Gilbert Arenas in two separate trades on December 19. For a time, it looked like Smith’s gamble paid off, as the Magic roared to a nine-game winning streak (tying a franchise record) that could have been longer had the basketball bounced in their favor in games against the New Orleans Hornets and Thunder that each resulted in losses. Nevertheless, it appeared as if Orlando fixed their woes and the chemistry seemingly improved. The acquisitions provided the Magic with the jolt of life they needed, especially offensively. But the honeymoon soon ended, as Orlando regressed to the mean on offense, and Smith was back where he started with the roster, except it can be argued things got worse than better.

For all the scoring that Turkoglu, Richardson, and Arenas were to provide, Smith sacrificed defense, depth, and size to get it. As the Magic began to come down from earth offensively, it soon became clear that they got weaker. Even though Orlando remains third in defensive efficiency, thanks in large part to Dwight Howard and Van Gundy, when the big fella is on the bench, the interior defense has been compromised without the presence of Marcin Gortat. Depth, the Magic’s calling card last year, is nearly gone now that only J.J. Redick and Ryan Anderson can be relied upon to contribute consistently. Free agent signees, Quentin Richardson and Chris Duhon, have done little to help the cause. As for Orlando’s size, with Lewis and Gortat absent, they have gone from big to little. In the league, size is needed to win championships and the Magic had it with Howard and Lewis manning the frontcourt with Gortat, Bass, and Anderson coming off the bench. But the trades reshuffled things, and have put a lot of pressure on players like Howard to stay on the floor and avoid foul trouble. Earl Clark is an intriguing prospect, but he’s not a player that Van Gundy can rely upon and trust at the moment. Sure, it’s true that Mickael Pietrus, Lewis, and Carter are not playing right now due to various injuries but there’s no denying that Orlando isn’t the same team.

It’s been an interesting season for the Magic.

The question is, following the aftermath of everything that’s occurred, whether or not they’re a team that can be taken seriously in the playoffs?

Read more…

Photo by Noah Graham/NBAE via Getty Images

Remember back in 2009 when the Magic knocked off the seemingly unbeatable Cavs in the Conference Finals by shooting 41 percent from deep for the entire series? Sometimes I wonder if this year’s squad is the same type of team as that NBA Finals team. That is, I wonder if this team lives and dies by the three-point shot like they did in the days of Lewis and Pietrus. Jeff Van Gundy seems to think so. He never fails to point that out when the Magic go on a big run. The reliance on the three-ball was evident this year when the Magic shot over 50 percent from deep en route to a 20 point win over the Spurs. So I gave it a look. I checked out some season splits from Orlando against the best teams in the East and West to find out if three-point shooting was really the key for this Orlando team. The results pointed to just that, and even taking into account the ever-important role of Dwight Howard in the post, the bottom line is that the Magic will need to shoot the ball, and shoot the ball well from the outside if they are going to be a factor in the playoffs this year.

It is important to understand that the East flat out plays better defense than the West based on defensive efficiency. Five of the top six defensive teams in the league are East Coast teams and the first contending West Coast team that appears on that list is San Antonio in the seventh slot. It should be no wonder that Orlando is able to dominate against the West, but struggles against the East (and they do, as we will see).

Defensive efficiency is a result of several variables, and it isn’t groundbreaking news that an East Coast team plays tougher games against other East Coast teams. Familiarity and predictability certainly come into play. The simple fact that Orlando gets more exposure to the East means that teams come more readily equipped (and fired up) to handle Dwight and company, even if that means hammering Dwight in the post. But more importantly, the Stan Van Gundy/Dwight centered offense is by now extremely familiar. There just aren’t a lot of ways to mask what you’re trying to do if you’re SVG.

The Magic, more so than most other teams, have a particular brand of basketball, making them even more predictable than others.

Just look at the figures. Against the top four teams in the East, the Magic are 5-7 and as a team, shoot the ball at a lower percentage than their season average. Against the top four teams in the West it’s a totally different story. Dwight shoots close 70 percent from the field, and three-point shooters are knocking down well over 40 percent, which, as we’ve seen before, are championship-run numbers.  So there is obviously something at work here.

The compelling factor in all of this is not that the Magic struggle against defenses that are more familiar or competitive with them. What is intriguing is that a closer look at the numbers shows that there is one stat that takes a considerable hit when Orlando loses to Eastern Conference teams — three-point shooting.

Read more…