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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.

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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.

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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 II.

As the Magic continue to face their uncertain near-future, I’m thinking about something I imagine a lot of us are: John Milton. Specifically, I’m thinking about Paradise Lost, his account of Adam and Eve’s expulsion from Eden. It seems to me that Magic nation probably feels how Adam and Eve did shortly after God exposed the whole apple/fig leaf-clothing fiasco: “We had it all, and we blew it somehow, and now we need to figure out who to blame. Also, I hate snakes.” Yeah, verily, fellow Magic watchers, we have dined on the ambrosia of celestial basketball, have stared lovingly into the pond at our reflections as Eve did, contemplating how nice it was to be a perennial contender. And now we must make our way into the less hospitable basketball wilderness, to try and figure out how to reclaim that divinity.

There is a strain of criticism in Paradise Lost readers that says that Adam and Eve did us all a solid by getting kicked out of Eden–their screw-up, basically, gave us life as we know it. It’s a pleasant take on the notion of original sin, usually called the fortunate fall. By sinning their way out of Eden,  Adam and Eve became people, and exposed the rest of the race to all the goods and bads that come with the territory. For the Magic, our fortunate fall was Rashard Lewis.

You remember that sign-and-trade. The Magic were getting a 27-year-old inside/outside player, the Sonics’ career leader in three-pointers, a player who had scored more than 20 points per game for three straight seasons and was coming of a career high in that department. Of the trade, Stan Van Gundy said, ”It really makes our roster very, very good.  And even more than that, what this says to me and what our organization has done with Rashard shows me and should show everyone out there how committed this organization is to winning and winning a championship.”

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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 Van Gundy arrived, Orlando became accustomed to continuing their season beyond April to the months of May and June but not this time around.

Instead, the Magic are spectators and sitting at home after losing to the Atlanta Hawks in the first round of the 2011 NBA Playoffs.

As such, it seems appropriate to look back at what happened in the postseason for Orlando and chime in on Dwight Howard‘s future with the franchise. So without further ado, welcome to Magic Basketball’s first in-house roundtable discussion.

Credit goes to Matt Scribbins for the questions.

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If ifs and buts were candy and Zaza head-butts, the Magic would still be in the playoffs. What is your #1 if?

Nate Drexler: It would have been nice to see a healthy Magic team in the playoffs. If Gilbert Arenas was at 100 percent for the second half of the season, for instance, things would have played out differently. I only say it because Hibachi is a tremendous player, and the reason so many people are frustrated with his huge contract and poor play is they know what a huge impact he can have on a team.  As for this season, he was dead wood. That is why my biggest “if” is having Gilbert mentally and physically peaked for the playoffs.

Danny Nowell: The biggest if, for me, is what if Hedo Turkoglu had been the same Hedo Turkoglu that propelled the 2009 run. I know, I know, it’s easy to make him a scapegoat—and it’s not like he’s getting younger, so maybe his decline is strictly about aging—but what else would the Magic have realistically been able to get that they needed? Jameer [Nelson] showed up in spurts, Dwight had an historically good series; I think the key could have been a big ball handler that was aggressive when he needed to be and a creator when he didn’t. Hedo’s play was almost the direct inverse of that.

Matt Scribbins: The Magic would still be in the playoffs if they had a legitimate option on offense besides Dwight Howard. With help from the Basketball Reference database, I learned only seven players since 1947 have made 20 or fewer shots while attempting 68+ in the playoffs. Hedo Turkoglu did just that this post-season and bricked his way into the record books.  Hedo, one of the worst shooters in NBA playoff history, actually out did himself and provided his worst playoff shooting performance ever.

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