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Photo by Kevin C. Cox/Getty Images

Via Evan Dunlap of Orlando Pinstriped Post:

It’s unfair to pin responsibility for the team’s offensive shortcomings on any one player, but I do think [Jason] Richardson has to go under the microscope a bit here. He averaged 19.3 points in just 31.8 minutes per game with the Phoenix Suns prior to the deals, shooting 41.9 percent from beyond the arc and 47.7 percent overall. Though he played more minutes with Orlando–34.9, to be precise–his productivity declined sharply, perhaps as a natural consequence of no longer having a point guard of Steve Nash’s caliber feeding him the ball. Richardson shot a good, but not great, 38.4 percent on threes and, worrisomely, just 43.3 percent from the field. Carter, thanks to his foul-drawing ability and improved accuracy on twos, actually scored more efficiently for Orlando than Richardson did this season.

[Gilbert] Arenas is another scapegoat of sorts, though I’m not sure what anyone might have expected a man coming off three knee surgeries in the last three years to accomplish in the smallest role he’s ever held at the professional level. He proved an unmitigated disaster offensively, shooting more often, per minute, than everyone on the team, but converting just 34.4 percent of his shots. He had the right idea when it came to pushing the pace in transition, but still made curious decisions in the halfcourt, resulting in his unacceptably high turnover rate of 19.3. And the poor decision-making also manifested itself in his shot selection.

Dunlap has been chronicling everything that went wrong for the Orlando Magic during the 2010-2011 season in a series of posts — here’s his take on Ryan Anderson and Brandon Bass failing in the playoffs after productive regular seasons.

The articles, though cringe-worthy, are honest assessments and worth the read.

• Zach McCann of the Orlando Sentinel: “Earl Clark is thankful the Phoenix Suns agreed to trade him to the Orlando Magic as part of the six-player, blockbuster deal in mid-December. The move to Orlando might have saved his NBA career. Earlier this year, when the Suns declined to pick up Clark’s $2 million option to keep him for the 2011-12 season — making him a free agent this summer — Clark took it personally and wondered what his NBA future would entail. He barely played in Phoenix, had a reputation as a not-so-hard worker and was stuck between forward positions. It appeared Clark would be competing to make an NBA squad from the end of a bench on a new team next season. But that all changed in December when the Suns sent Clark to the Magic in the deal that brought Hedo Turkoglu and Jason Richardson to Orlando. The fresh start rejuvenated Clark, a second-year player out of Louisville.”
• The Orlando Magic’s search for a shooting guard continues.
• An update on Daniel Orton.
• Ric Bucher of ESPN.com talks about his back-and-forth discussion with Dwight Howard in the locker room when the Magic lost Game 3 against the Atlanta Hawks.
• Josh Cohen of OrlandoMagic.com recaps Orlando’s season and ends with this note: “It will be fascinating to see what the Magic try to do this offseason in an effort to bounce back and return to championship-level form. Except for J-Rich, everyone on the Magic’s roster is under contract for next season. Since Richardson was very valuable to Orlando since his arrival, it’s certainly possible that Otis [Smith] will try and re-sign him to a long-term deal. Otherwise, if there are any changes to the Magic those alterations will likely come in the form of trades.”
• Tom Haberstroh of ESPN Insider provides a solution for the Magic’s woes but not before warning that the task to improve will be difficult: “The Magic could blow it up again, but “it” is rubble anyway. We saw this season that there’s no such thing as an unmovable contract — interestingly enough, thanks to Magic GM Otis Smith — but the stock of [Gilbert] Arenas and Turkoglu has fallen so low that they’re glorified sunk costs at this point. If this sounds like we’re painting a grim picture here, that’s because it is a grim picture. There are no easy answers here, but this is the bed that Smith made. They have no room to sign anyone in free agency and they don’t have the positioning in the draft to pluck an instant contributor. Flexibility-wise, Smith is in a straitjacket, and his only hope is that Arenas and Turkoglu do their best Benjamin Button impressions or accept buyouts. Both scenarios are pipedreams.”

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 Fernando Medina/NBAE via Getty Images

If there is one thing we know about Stan Van Gundy, it’s that he’s a pretty quiet guy, reticent to speak his mind to the media, and wholly above speaking publicly in any way that might ruffle fans’ or players’ feathers. That’s why we can be certain that earlier this week, when he made the following comments, Stan had no sort of ulterior motive or objective in mind:

“There’s no matchup for [Dwight Howard] that creates the excitement,” Van Gundy said. “If you got back to when the centers were king, you have Chamberlain-Russell and people say ‘Wow, that’s a match-up you look forward to.’ Now people look forward to Chris Paul against Derrick Rose.”

What Stan was saying, subtext aside, is that the lack of a nemesis is keeping Dwight Howard’s hype factor down. Well, is he right? There are a couple of different ways to approach this. First, let’s look at a crude measure of the league marquee, the 2011 All-Star rosters. Yao Ming aside, there are only three players who were listed either as centers or forward/centers. One of them was Kevin Love. Another was Al Horford. The third was Pau Gasol, who could be seen as a bona fide A-list big man, but I’m not sure that most people think of his battles in the same way they do LeBron/Kobe or Rose/Paul. The other big man on the list who might qualify is Kevin Garnett, and the popular narrative about the Celtics has been that Kendrick Perkins did the heavy lifting when it came to guarding D12. So, on the face of it, taking as limited a sample as I guess you could, it seems like Stan is right: there are currently no direct match-ups for Dwight that seem worthy of the hype that wing or point guard matchups might garner.

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• Josh Robbins of the Orlando Sentinel: “Stan Van Gundy and his players knew next to nothing about Baruch College, the school in Manhattan where their team practiced Tuesday afternoon. But Baruch College students knew all about the Orlando Magic. Word that the Magic were inside the school’s main gym swept across the compact campus of about 15,500 students. The news spread via cell-phone text  messages and word of mouth, and a crowd of kids waited in the hallway outside the gym to catch any glimpse of the players. ‘Yo,’ one student yelled. ‘Dwight Howard is here!’ Those students peered into the gym through small, rectangular windows on the metal doors. Many of those students held their cell phones up to those windows and took photos or recorded portions of the practice.”
• Noah Sharfman of OrlandoMagic.com: “Attention NBA head coaches: do you want the secret of how to slow down the Orlando Magic’s high-powered offense? Listen closely because the answer may be surprising. To shut the Magic down offensively, you must slow down and limit Jameer Nelson. Nelson’s on-court production is often a tell-tale sign for the Magic as it relates to the team’s success. On a recent telecast between the Magic and Phoenix Suns, analyst Jeff Van Gundy said the key to the Magic’s success is in the hands of its point guards, specifically Nelson. Simply put, when Nelson is playing well, the Magic win. This season, Nelson is having a very productive offensive year, averaging 13 points and over six assists a game, the highest assist mark of his seven-year NBA career. Nelson has already scored in double figures more times this season than he did all of last season, while also leading the team in assists in more games than he did in 2009-10. This season, when Nelson dishes out seven or more assists in a game, the Magic are 20-8. In addition to sparking the Magic’s offense with his scoring and passing, Nelson has delivered late in games for the Magic. Nelson’s most memorable moment this season came at the end of the Magic’s recent matchup against the Denver Nuggets. With 5.7 seconds remaining in a tie game, Nelson collected an inbounds pass near midcourt, took three dribbles and pulled up for a shot well beyond the arc. Hitting nothing but net, Nelson drained the game-winning 3-pointer over Denver’s Ty Lawson as time expired, securing an 85-82 victory for the Magic.”
• Dwight Howard is optimistic about the Orlando Magic’s playoff chances.
• For head coach Stan Van Gundy, a win is a win.
• Even though the Magic won last night, they clearly were disinterested in the fourth quarter.
• Britt Robson of Sports Illustrated with a poignant observation: “The Magic rank third in defensive efficiency, the same as last season, and are actually yielding 1.4 fewer points per 100 possessions than they did in 2009-10. They are five wins behind last year’s pace because their offensive efficiency has plummeted from fourth to 12th. Don’t blame MVP candidate Dwight Howard, who is averaging 23 points on 60 percent shooting, although his usual struggles at the free-throw line and paucity of assists haven’t helped. The reality is that GM Otis Smith‘s blockbuster deals in December have pretty much been a wash. Jason Richardson hasn’t been that much better or worse than Vince Carter, and Hedo Turkoglu and Gilbert Arenas have been mild and major disappointments, respectively. But the real cost was losing ace backup center Marcin Gortat. As well as Brandon Bass has played, he can’t patrol the paint with the same authority as Gortat.”
• Note to Van Gundy: learn to text Gilbert Arenas on BBM.
• Kelly Dwyer of Ball Don’t Lie with some words of wisdom concerning Howard: “All the “where would they be without him?” crap you hear about Derrick Rose? It’s meant for Dwight Howard. Because without this man’s dominant 28-point, 14-rebound, four-block, four-steal night, Orlando loses by 25 to the freakin’ Cavaliers. Derrick Rose may lead my favorite team to a championship this year, but I’m not daft enough to overlook Howard’s MVP season.”

Photo by Rob Carr/Getty Images

Part I of this mini-series looked at the draft position of players who have recently appeared in the NCAA National Finals. Today, we will look at the teams who pursued these players, and how these players performed in the NBA. Tomorrow, Part III will explore two different one-and-done scenarios, and the NCAA Tournament history of players on top NBA teams. We will also see the “good ol’ days” are aptly named.

Winnersville, U.S.A.
Say what you want about the Minnesota Timberwolves, but they are a bunch of winners (at least on draft night). Since 2005, four of Minnesota’s eleven first round picks have played on NCAA Championship teams. They also picked champions in the second round, netting Mario Chalmers and Chris Richard. These players have not helped Minnesota become a #winning team so far. Actually, Wayne Ellington is the only player among the six still with the Wolves. Two different luminaries, Kevin McHale and David Kahn, have made draft picks for the team during this time.

Ironically, Jerry Sloan and the Utah Jazz welcomed three members of the runner-up 2005 Illinois team to town. They used the third overall pick of the 2005 draft on Deron Williams, and he eventually assisted Sloan’s exit from Salt Lake City. They drafted Dee Brown in the second round of 2006, and Roger Powell signed with the Jazz after his Illinois career.

The Bulls ended up with three members of the 2001 Duke team at various stages of their careers. They drafted Jay Williams second overall in 2002. Two years later, they used a second round pick on Chris Duhon. In the summer of 2010, their decision was signing Carlos Boozer to a five year contract. In total, the Bulls have had eight players from the last eleven champions wear their jersey (Williams, Duhon, Boozer, Joakim Noah, Hakim Warrick, Lonny Baxter, Chris Richard, Ben Gordon).

Five teams (Dallas, San Antonio, Boston, Sacramento, Phoenix) haven’t selected a player who appeared in the National Finals since the turn of the century. It is worth pointing out some of these teams are major players in basketball analytics.

The dichotomy between the Timberwolves draft results and some of the analytical squads’ results leads to an obvious question: do the more analytical teams ignore winners, while teams like Minnesota think winners will bring them out of the basement?

We at least know the Mavericks philosophy. I e-mailed Mavericks owner Mark Cuban yesterday and asked him why his team hasn’t drafted a player from the National Finals since he took over. He just chalked it up to happenstance. He went on to say it is “not intentional at all. We don’t care who they play for.”

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• Zach McCann of the Orlando Sentinel: “In the absence of J.J. Redick — who’s missed four games and counting with a lower abdomen injury — the Orlando Magic have adjusted their lineup by giving Redick’s minutes to Gilbert Arenas and leaving the backup point guard minutes to Chris Duhon. Stan Van Gundy explained his decision Friday to play Duhon rotation minutes rather than keeping Arenas at point guard and giving Redick’s minutes to Quentin Richardson or Earl Clark. One, Van Gundy wants Arenas comfortable playing at either guard spot. The Magic had all but abandoned the experiment of playing Arenas at shooting guard in the second half of the season, but Redick’s injury has resurrected that project. If Arenas can gain any efficiency at that spot — which, to be honest, he hasn’t — it’d give the Magic the option of playing Arenas and Jameer Nelson at the same time, potentially adding another dynamic to a sometimes-stagnant offense team.”
• Head coach Stan Van Gundy has high praise for the Denver Nuggets.
• J.J. Redick will continue to sit out of games until he’s fully healthy.
• John Schuhmann of NBA.com takes a look at which teams in the NBA have the best benches. The Orlando Magic do not make the list, even though a bevy of other contenders make appearances.
• Ian Thomsen of Sports Illustrated on the race for the No. 1 seed in the Eastern Conference: “The race for No. 1 could be decided April 7, when Boston (which holds a 2-1 lead in the season series) visits Chicago. Some will argue that the older Celtics can’t afford the more difficult postseason schedule, but they have a history of flouting that logic — last year they won on the road against Cleveland and Orlando and came within five minutes of upsetting the Lakers on their home floor in Game 7 of the finals. Home-court advantage may be more important to the Bulls because Rose has never won a playoff series and will be dealing with an entirely new level of intensive opposition with each successive round. The Celtics know they can win on the road, while this Bulls team has yet to win a series under any circumstances.”
• Given that the Magic are in line for the No. 4 seed in the East, keep an eye on the race for the top seed.
• Marc Stein of ESPN.com: “The focus here is fully on Florida, despite the fact (A) GM Otis Smith should really be under far more pressure in Orlando than Stan Van Gundy after making the Gilbert Arenas trade so many of us deemed unnecessary in addition to the Vince Carter-for-Hedo Turkoglu swap and (B) Stan Van Gundy would instantly become one of the hottest commodities on the coaching market even if the Magic can’t get out of the first round and Van Gundy is ousted.”
• Chad Ford of ESPN Insider breaks down Jason Richardson‘s future: “His numbers no longer pop out at you, especially since the Suns traded him to Orlando, but Richardson continues to play well. He is a big threat from behind the arc and still has some bounce in those 30-year-old legs. The Magic have incurred a massive payroll, so unless they win a title this season it’s unlikely they’ll be willing to pay Richardson to stay around.”

• Zach McCann of the Orlando Sentinel: “Marcin Gortat spent years with the Orlando Magic backing up superstar center Dwight Howard, a relationship that benefited the both of them. Gortat learned and improved while playing with the NBA’s best center every day in practice, and Howard was fortunate to have a hungry and competitive backup, someone who worked hard and pushed Howard during workouts. These days, though, with Gortat now playing for the Phoenix Suns, it appears their personal relationship is non-existent. During the Magic’s 111-88 victory of the Suns on Sunday afternoon, Gortat and Howard never even acknowledged each other. ‘We didn’t say to each other one word,’ Gortat told SBNation.com. ‘We didn’t shake our hands, we didn’t talk to each other, we didn’t say anything. And that’s fine; at the end of the day he’s on a different team, I’m on a different team, and I’m a grown-ass man. I don’t need him any more.’ ”
• Evan Dunlap of Orlando Pinstriped Post previews tonight’s game. Here’s Dunlap’s take on Gilbert Arenas: “Despite his poor individual numbers — his turnovers are higher than they ought to be, as he’s having to acclimate to a new offense and to playing the point almost exclusively — the Magic have played pretty well with him on the floor, based on the on/off data available at basketball-value. It’s an issue of fit: he most often appears at the point with [J.J.] Redick at the other guard spot and Ryan Anderson and Dwight Howard up front. He and Redick can run the break, Anderson and Howard give him two good pick-and-pop (or, in Howard’s case, roll) partners. That’s a tough group to defend.”
• Sebastian Pruiti of NBA Playbook shows that the Orlando Magic’s adjustments defensively against the Phoenix Suns’ pick and roll attack fueled their blowout victory: “In the first half against the Orlando Magic, the Phoenix Suns had success running the pick and roll with Aaron Brooks as the ball handler. In the 14 possessions where Brooks was the ball handler in the 1st half, the Suns scored 25 points, good for a [points per possession] of 1.78. The Suns’ success was due to a creative pick and roll strategy and the Magic’s defensive strategy when it came to defending straight ball screens. After halftime, the Magic came out and made some key adjustments and really shut down the Suns’ pick and roll offense. In the 7 possessions in the third quarter (Brooks didn’t play in the 4th) where Aaron Brooks ran the pick and roll, the Suns only scored 3 points, good for a [points per possession] of 0.43.”
• Marc Stein of ESPN.com: “Not what the Magic bargained for: Arenas has taken 659 shots in 2010-11 … and is shooting 37.5 percent. Only three other players are sub-40 percent with at least 600 FGA: Brandon Jennings, Trevor Ariza, John Salmons.”
• Dwight Howard can still dunk on opposing defenders when he wants to.
• Kurt Helin of ProBasketballTalk: “They are your four seed in the East, almost certainly. The question is, do they want to match up with in the second round: the Celtics, Bulls or Heat?”

Photo by Sam Greenwood/Getty Images

• Brian Schmitz of the Orlando Sentinel: “Hey, who else to give out medical advice but Grant Hill? Hill, who told the Sentinel he plans on playing until he is 40, warned Magic SG J.J. Redick to be wary of his lower abdominal injury. Hill sustained a sports hernia or athletic sports pubalgia, when he played in Orlando. He tore abdominal muscles off his pubic bone. Battling a strained lower abdomen, Redick missed his second consecutive game Sunday, sitting out against Hill’s Phoenix Suns. Redick said he was feeling better. [...] Redick will not play tonight against the Lakers in Los Angeles. He said he had not undergone an MRI, and was non-committal when asked if he would get one. Hills’ teammate, star PG Steve Nash, missed the game, also experiencing similar lower abdomen pain. Coach Stan Van Gundy said he hoped that Redick might be back to face the Bucks in Milwaukee on Wednesday night, the conclusion of the trip. Redick initially injured himself last Friday during the team’s shootaround in San Francisco.”
• Broderick Turner of the Los Angeles Times: “Kobe Bryant didn’t practice Sunday and he didn’t talk to the media, declining even to give an update on his injured left ankle or his playing status for Monday night’s game. So it was left up to Lakers Coach Phil Jackson to clarify matters, saying only that Bryant would be a game-time decision for the contest against the Orlando Magic at Staples Center. ‘We hope he’ll be able to play,’ Jackson said. After a light practice Sunday, Jackson said he hadn’t seen or talked to Bryant about his injury, but he expected his guard to get treatment. Minutes after Jackson left his media session, Bryant was heard talking with Lakers trainer Gary Vitti. If Bryant doesn’t play Monday night, he would have five days to rest his ankle, because the Lakers don’t play again until Friday night, when they play host to the Minnesota Timberwolves.”
• T.J. Simers of the Los Angeles Times: “Dinner with Phil Jackson here, a huge mistake for the big guy because I know now he’s capable of giving more than one-word answers. It’s Friday night at a highly recommended Mexican restaurant, 16 regular-season games remaining in the career of the greatest all-time NBA coach, and we’re talking Michael Jordan and Kobe Bryant. It begins with a question that has nothing to do with either superstar: Is there a chance he might regret retiring while the Lakers remain capable of winning again? ‘I hope I have no regrets about coming back this year. When I saw how Kobe was struggling physically last year, Fish [Derek Fisher] was getting older,” and then he stops himself and brings the conversation back to Bryant. ‘Kobe was really hurt; people don’t give him enough credit. He’s a remarkable person, remarkable.’ ‘Do you like him?’ I ask. ‘It’s not about liking him,’ he says. ‘It’s about admiring his courage. There’s only one individual I know that’s like that, and that’s Michael Jordan. Kobe has patterned himself after Michael, and there are a lot of identical things there, but it’s one thing to hope to be like him, it’s another thing to be like him.’ ”
• Brian Kamenetzky of ESPN Los Angeles: “The Los Angeles Lakers received a scare Saturday night in Dallas, when Kobe Bryant landed awkwardly on his left ankle with 1:52 remaining in the third quarter, re-aggravating an injury suffered two games prior in Atlanta and sending him limping to the locker room for evaluation. He returned in the fourth quarter, but the injury, which he called a sprain, put his availability for Monday’s game against the Orlando Magic at Staples Center in question. Sunday’s practice provided no answers, as Bryant didn’t speak with reporters after arriving at the team’s training facility for treatment. He will be re-evaluated Monday. In the meantime, his status remains the same. [...] Bryant, averaging a team-high 25 points along with 4.8 assists and 5.2 rebounds, has played in all 67 of his team’s games this year. The Lakers have three days off following their date with the Magic before facing Minnesota at home Friday night. Jackson indicated the break wouldn’t influence any decision about Bryant’s availability Monday night.”