Billy Donovan discussed the Magic and his successor as the team's head coach, Stan Van Gundy, in an interview with the Orlando Sentinel

File photo by Red Huber, the Orlando Sentinel

Might these bullets comprise the last news post of the season? One can only hope not.

• Mike Bianchi has an interview with Billy Donovan, the man who would have coached the Magic in he hadn't changed his mind and decided to return to the University of Florida. Anyone could have told you, even before the season, that the Magic would be better off with Stan Van Gundy than with Donovan. And now, Donovan has the class (not to mention common sense) to admit it. He also refers to himself in the third person:

  "As far as getting that team to take the next step, I don't think there's any question Stan Van Gundy was the right coach for the job," Donovan said from his office in Gainesville. "You have to have a level of humility in this situation and face facts. And the facts are Billy Donovan has never coached an NBA game in his life. There was obviously going to be a learning curve for me. The job Stan has done this year has been phenomenal, and the job he did with the Miami Heat doesn't get talked about enough."

• If you want to see footage of Jameer Nelson's infamous guarantee of a Game Five victory, Need4Sheed has it. Nelson's delivery doesn't exactly project confidence, to put it charitably, but if the team for which I play just pissed away its season on its home floor to its archrival, I wouldn't sound enthusiastic either.
• Two cool updates from SLAM today:
  • Tim "TADOne" Darga's game notes from the Magic's loss to the Pistons last Saturday. He was there live. Good stuff. Check out the first point after "3Q." My, how things change.
  • This week, Shoals' Quotemonger feature translates Rashard Lewis' assessment that the Pistons are better than the Magic, among other soundbytes.
• The Pistons' Rodney Stuckey made the NBA's All-Rookie Second Team. You're welcome for that pick, Detroit. For those scoring at home, Detroit has a young, solid point guard who may one day take over for its All-Star (Hall-of-Fame?) starter; we have Carlos Arroyo, whom Stan Van Gundy banished to the end of the bench and who will likely leave in free-agency. Wonder who won that trade.
• In cautioning Heat fans not to expect Pat Riley-level greatness from the Heat's new coach, Erik Spoelstra, Ira Winderman name-drops Van Gundy, who coached the Heat for two-plus seasons. Winderman has this to say about the Magic's current head coach:

  As for Van Gundy, the Detroit series will not define him. Instead, it is the fact that he now has driven each of his last three (and only three) teams at least to the conference semifinals. And that's not even counting the Heat team he got settled before Riley finished the drive to the 2006 NBA title.

Oh, and by the way, Chauncey Billups is ready for action, apparently.

Looks like we have an (unofficial) explanation regarding the no-call that I got a bit huffy over earlier today. Read that post first, if you haven't already, then continue with this one.

LawyerBoy at Detroit Bad Boys suggests that Callahan was going to signal a charging foul on Hedo Turkoglu, but when he saw the shot rim-out, he decided there wouldn't be any point in calling the foul because all it'd do is prolong the game, which had been decided. Watch the video again and you'll see what he means.

After the jump, and by a Pistons fan's request, I take a frame-by-frame look at a no-call earlier in the game that benefitted the Magic.

Continue reading this post »

As we covered earlier, there's no shortage of outrage/disbelief that Jameer Nelson, the Magic point guard who averaged a mere 10.9 points and 5.6 assists this season, guaranteed a victory for the Magic tomorrow night, and to a much lesser extent, that Rashard Lewis thinks the Magic are a better team than the Pistons. Oh, the nerve of that Jameer Nelson! How dare one of the team's captains expresses confidence in himself and in his teammates, even though they face impossible odds!

All that sound and fury -- seriously, he's the team's captain, and he's not going to guarantee a loss, so get over it -- relegates discussion of the non-call at the end of Game Four to the background. Admittedly, I wasn't that ticked-off about it, but then I read this update from John Denton. Stan Van Gundy is pissed. Emphases added:

"Let's just say this _ (Maxiell) is in the restricted area, it's a block at any other time of the season," Van Gundy fumed following Orlando's practice Monday morning. "(Referee) Mike Callahan raises his hand and you can see it on the tape _ his hand's up and his hand's down and I can't explain that."

Using the video from NBA.com, I tried to get screencaps of the non-call, which looks a lot more obvious here than it did live, from my vantage point in the upper bowl of Amway Arena. Here are the results:

Fig. 1: The beginning of the play. Hedo Turkoglu (with the ball) is isolated against Tayshaun Prince about eleven feet above the foul line. Note Jason Maxiell, the figure I've circled in yellow, lurking in the painted area. And, if you're both a Magic fan and a masochist, take a look at the game clock on the lower-right of the scoreboard.

Fig. 2: Hedo, after driving left, elevates to take a shot. Note that Jason Maxiell has slid over to try to draw a charge, but his foot (circled in yellow) remains in the restricted area. Again, if you're a glutton for punishment, look at the game clock. Hedo took entirely too long to make his move, but that's not the point of this exercise.

Fig. 3: Turkoglu, airborne, collides with Maxiell, still grounded. His foot is still inside the restricted area.

Fig. 4: Turkoglu misss the shot and his teammate, Dwight Howard, misses a tip-in. Two seconds remain on the clock. The thing to notice here is the baseline official, Mike Callahan, raising his right hand to signal a foul while using his left hand to put his whistle in his mouth.

Fig. 5: not even a full second later, Callahan lowers his hand and decides not to call the foul. The game ends, but not before the head official, Joe Crawford, reviews the play on a courtside monitor. He rules that no foul occurred on the play.

IN NO WAY AM I SUGGESTING that Callahan or any of the officials have it out for the Magic, nor am I suggesting that his change-of-heart cost the Magic the game. There's no shortage of blame for that:

• Keyon Dooling
  • for losing his cool at the end of the game, earning himself a technical foul while arguing a shooting foul called on him. Richard Hamilton missed the technical free throw -- Detroit's only missed freebie in the game -- but it still reflects poorly on him, a veteran on an otherwise young team.
• Dwight Howard for
  • not demanding the ball;
  • for missing several gimmes at the basket.
• Jameer Nelson
  • for grinding the offense to a halt in the third quarter by taking too many jumpers.
• Hedo Turkoglu
  • for taking so gosh-darn long to evaluate the final play that he left no time for Howard (or any of his teammates) to get an offensive rebound and a good look at a tip-in.
• Stan Van Gundy
  • for not resting Howard more than he did;
  • for not putting a taller defender on Richard Hamilton down the stretch;
  • for failing to design an effective play at the end of the game.

I merely aim to point out that this non-call (which the official clearly intended to call in the first place) made a tremendous difference in the game, certainly more than the infamous phantom three-pointer that Chauncey Billups made at the end of the third quarter of Game Two, yet no one is talking about it. Of course, the league will offer the standard conciliatory b.s. it always does in these sorts of situations, and nothing about this series will change. The Magic will still have to play Game Five in Detroit, facing a three-games-to-one deficit and incredibly long odds that they will advance.

[Note by Ben Q Rock, 05/12/08 5:58 PM EDT]: 3QC reader Andrew emails this theory:

Is it at all possible that the ref raised his hand to call the charge on Turkoglu but realized that Maxiell was in the restricted zone and put his hand down? Seems like a plausible explanation, right? Like, at least one worth considering in the interest of balance? I mean, the fact that Maxiell's foot was in the circle means he can't take a charge but it absolutely does not mean that anything he does in the circle is automatically a block.

I certainly wouldn't rule that out. Perhaps Callahan believed the game shouldn't end on a foul call, but that doesn't excuse -- at least not to me -- his decision to start to call a foul, then to change his mind.

The Magic held a 60-48 lead over the Pistons with 9:23 to play in the third quarter of Game Four, and gained possession after referee Joe Crawford whistled Detroit's Antonio McDyess for offensive basket interference. At the 9:11 mark, Maurice Evans hit a three-pointer to give the Magic a 15-point advantage. As the media have well documented, the Pistons went on a 15-0 run to tie the game, and eventually won it with Tayshaun Prince's running hook with 00:08.9 to play in the fourth quarter. But whom should the Magic blame for their miscues? This table sums it up, from the 8:55 mark of the third (when Rodney Stuckey missed a three-pointer for Detroit) to the 2:56 mark of the third (when Richard Hamilton tied the game at 63 with a fast-break dunk):

Likewise, whom should the Pistons praise for their resurgence? Again, we have a table:

Yahoo!'s Kelly Dwyer and 3QC reader Eyriq both pointed out the appropriateness of this website's name after the Magic lost thanks to a blown third-quarter lead. I've already explained that I started the original site at Blogspot after a similar loss to the Sacramento Kings during the 2006/2007 season. But that's not when I came up with the site's name. In fact, I didn't come up with it at all.

My mom did.

Flashback to 2006. Somehow or another, my dad won free tickets to a Magic game. We went to claim them, hoping to choose the Lakers' visit to Orlando as our prize. As it turns out, we didn't have the ability to choose which game we'd attend, and the Magic representative gave us two tickets to see the Milwaukee Bucks on January 31st. The Magic won big, 98-73, and held a 56-29 lead at halftime, but almost gave the game back in the third quarter after being outscored, 24-13. "Just another third-quarter collapse by the Magic," Mom said later, describing the game. The phrase stuck with me, and I kept it in mind when I started the old site.

And that was that.

Some notes and references after the jump.

Continue reading this post »

Jameer Nelson, seen here after the Magic beat the Raptors in Game One of the Eastern Conference Quarterfinals, told media on Saturday he expects the Magic to win Game Five in Detroit this Thursday.

File photo by Fernando Medina, NBAE/Getty Images

There's simply too much hullaballoo surrounding Jameer Nelson's assertion of a Magic win tomorrow night for me to stand. Here are but a few expressions of outrage. If you missed it, here's what he said (from the Associated Press via ESPN.com):

"We're going to make some adjustments and we're going to win this game," Nelson said after Orlando's 90-89 loss on Saturday. "I'm not being arrogant or cocky or anything like that. I think [Saturday] we let it slip out of our hands. Game 2 we let it slip out of our hands. We're going to win this game in Detroit."

Jameer is just doing his job, and not only as a player. It's easy to forget that, although he's the fourth option on offense, he and Dwight Howard are the official captains of this team. And since Dwight hasn't said much of anything since this series began, it falls on Jameer to stand up for himself and for the team. Instead of scratching my head (or pounding it against the wall), I'm more inclined to applaud Jameer for this move. No, he's not the best player on the team, but he is a captain, and he's doing what captains are supposed to do both on and off he court: lead. I'm sure Magic GM Otis Smith and coach Stan Van Gundy are pleased with their young point guard; they had a chat with both him and Dwight two months ago to discuss the importance of leadership.

That said, we'll all be much more impressed if Jameer backs up his talk by leading the Magic to victory tomorrow night, which he can do by distributing the ball and by -- more importantly -- not jacking 20-footers out of the flow of the offense.

Keith Bogans hustles down a rebound and gets fouled by Richard Hamilton in the Magic's 90-89 loss to the Pistons on Saturday.

Photo by John Raoux, the Associated Press

Keith Bogans doesn't get much national acclaim, probably because he's the seventh-man on an Eastern Conference team, and also because he's the fifth option on offense when he does play. But today is his 28th birthday, and he deserves some recognition. That'll do in lieu of a present, right?

• Keith drew 17 charges this season, according to 82games. That's good for third on the team.
• 82games also shows us that Keith was the team's most reliable clutch three-point shooter, hitting 46.2% of his treys in those situations.
• He was one of four Magic players to play in all 82 games, which was a career-best for him.
• He also posted career highs in minutes per game (26.8), field goal percentage (.411), and effective field goal percentage (.537).

Most importantly, Keith kept the floor spread for Dwight Howard to post-up and for Hedo Turkoglu to drive by making 148 three-pointers, more than double his previous season-high. The Magic set a team record with 801 three-pointers made, and Keith was a big part of that.

So, happy birthday, Keith Bogans. Enjoy it, but don't party too hard; we need you well-rested for Game Five this Tuesday in Detroit.

Hedo Turkoglu rubs Jameer Nelson's head during a break in the action in Saturday evening's Orlando Magic/Detroit Pistons game. Detroit won, 90-89, to take a commanding 3-1 series lead.

Photo by Doug Benc, Getty Images

This game was ours for the taking, but we didn't take it. We had an 11-point halftime lead and bumped it up to 15 with a Maurice Evans three-pointer. All we had to do was to get two more stops and two more baskets. That's it. We could have gone up by 19 points and the Pistons would surely have packed it in. Instead, they went on a backbreaking 15-0 run, capped off by a fast-break dunk by Richard Hamilton.

And in the end, we only needed one basket to win. Tayshaun Prince hit a floater in the lane (thanks to an Antonio McDyess offensive rebound) to put the Pistons ahead, 90-89. Hedo Turkoglu, who scored 13 of his 20 points in the period, missed a driving layup over Prince at the buzzer to end the game and, essentially, the series. But it should not have come to that. We wasted too many opportunities to blame the loss squarely on Hedo's missed layup. Take a look at this laundry list of miscues:

• Dwight Howard's missed dunk (2:28, first quarter). This dunk wasn't heavily contested. Dwight reached back with one hand and simply threw it too hard into the back iron.
• Keyon Dooling's bad pass (11:30, second quarter). The scorer credited Keyon with the turnover, but this one was Dwight's fault. After screening for Keyon on the right baseline, Howard rolled to the basket and was wide-open. Keyon delivered a crisp bounce pass, but Howard bobbled it, and Jason Maxiell recovered for Detroit.
• Jameer Nelson's missed free throws (take your pick). Nelson, shooting 83.9% from the stripe this postseason, went just 2-of-6 from the line tonight. Sure, other guys missed free throws -- Rashard Lewis was 1-of-2 and Hedo was 4-of-5 -- but Nelson's misses simply stand out more. His miss with 44 seconds remaining kept the score 89-88, our favor. If he had made it, Tayshaun Prince's floater with 8.9 left in the game would have tied the score, not given the Pistons the lead.

Obviously, I'm disappointed we lost, but we still got some great efforts:

• Hedo was huge in the fourth quarter, as I mentioned.
• Maurice Evans played his tail off and scored 15 points.
• Keith Bogans had 6 points and 7 boards (?!) off the bench, and he showed a new dimension in his game: the driving layup. Both of his field goals were of that variety, and they were both "and-one" plays. A shaky foul shooter, Bogans converted on both his tries.
• In just 3 minutes, Marcin Gortat showed flashes of brilliance, scoring on a beautiful hook from the left baseline (over Rasheed Wallace, no less) and on a layup. The final total for Marcin: 4 points, 1 rebound, and 1 block in just 3 minutes.

I say "just" 3 minutes for Marcin because he should have been on the floor longer. Dwight Howard had arguably his worst offensive performance as a professional, with 8 points on 3-of-12 shooting. He didn't make any shots after the first quarter. The Pistons took him out of the game by muscling him as he shot, and he did not get the benefit of the whistle. Perhaps intimidated, by their defense, he also rushed a few shots, including one put-back (3:08, second quarter) that the threw entirely too hard off the glass; all he needed to do was grab the rebound, come down with it, gather himself, and go up for the jam. With more rest -- he played the entire second half! -- he might have been able to tip-in Hedo's missed layup at the final buzzer. He might have been able to box-out McDyess (who finished with 14 rebounds) more effectively. And something tells me that Gortat would have been able to hold his own in Dwight's absence. But we'll never know for sure.

After Game Three, Yahoo!'s Kelly Dwyer wrote that we let the Pistons creep back into the game because "Jameer Nelson really enjoys shooting 20-foot jumpers." It's true. Nelson tends to settle for the jump-shot too frequently, and especially at the ends of quarters. He ended the Magic's last three first-quarter possessions on jump-shots, making the first and missing the next two. He finished with 6 assists and just 1 turnover, which is fantastic, but the 6-of-14 shooting isn't. And we covered the free-throw shooting.

That's a wrap, both for this recap and for this series. Game Five is Tuesday night in Detroit, and I expect the Pistons to close it out in big fashion on their home floor. They've earned it. Of course, I won't complain if the Magic steal one there... but I wouldn't bank on it.

Eastern Conference Semifinals
	@
Pistons Lead Series, 2-1
Amway Arena
5:00 PM
ESPN
Probable starters:
C. Billups???	PG	Jameer Nelson
R. Hamilton	SG	Maurice Evans
Tayshaun Prince	SF	Hedo Turkoglu
Jason Maxiell	PF	Rashard Lewis
R. Wallace	C	Dwight Howard
Series Central

Following Game Three, Magic coach Stan Van Gundy drew an interesting parallel between the Pistons' situation in this series vs. ours in the last series. We won big in the first game at home, won another close one at home, then got blown out in Game Three on the road. Hopefully we can defend Amway Arena better than the Raptors did in their second, and final, playoff game at Air Canada Centre this season.

Regarding Chauncey Billups: I think he'll play, but that's mere speculation. Here's Tim Povtak of the Orlando Sentinel with the latest update (as of Friday evening, when I'm writing this post):

"It's sore; it's still sore, man," Billups said when asked about his hamstring when he arrived at Amway Arena for practice. "I don't know [if I can play Saturday]. I can't honestly say either way at this point."

There was no noticeable limp when Billups walked, but there was no spring in his step, either, offering little insight into his immediate future.

Povtak asserts that the Pistons will be "vulnerable" if Billups doesn't play. I'm not sure I buy that. Even without Billups, the Pistons have Richard Hamilton, Tayshaun Prince, and Rasheed Wallace. That lineup is more venerable than it is vulnerable. Add the fact that they have a capable rookie (Rodney Stuckey) to take Billups' starting minutes and, well, the Magic have only a slight edge on the Pistons.

It'll be interesting to see how the Pistons defend Rashard Lewis tonight. Lewis exploded in the last outing for 33 points on 11-of-15 shooting (33 points on 15 shots... I'm still drooling) and routinely had open looks. A. Sherrod Blakely of MLive.com reports (via DBB) that Amir Johnson might get the call against Lewis tonight. Johnson, in his third season after being drafted from Westchester High School, is quick; a good leaper; and fresh, averaging only 12 minutes a game this season. He's the sort of guy who can give Lewis fits on the perimeter. If/when Johnson defends Lewis, Rashard should look to post him up. Lewis' post game is underrated, probably because so many of his shots are three-pointers. But he has the skill, strength, and footwork to befuddle the younger Johnson.

It'll also be interesting to see if the Pistons can get any production from Jason Maxiell and Antonio McDyess. Up until Wednesday night, the Pistons were undefeated this postseason in Maxiell's starts. That perfect mark changed because he was a non-factor offensively (0 points?! Not even one monster dunk?!) and had more trouble containing Dwight Howard than usual. McDyess also laid an egg. If either of them can bounce back, the Pistons stand a good chance of winning. If not, they're still a damn good team. But so are we.

Please don't hurt us, Rasheed.

Tipoff's at 5 PM on ESPN. The underrated Dan Schulman/Doris Burke broadcast team has the call, according to The Sporting Blog.

When the Magic beat the Pistons in Game Three, Brendan of the blog Believing in Magic called it "karma." Fair enough. But if the Pistons come out and eat our lunches tomorrow afternoon, we can blame karma for that, too.

Before Game Three, the Orlando Sentinel posted these Rasheed Wallace mask cutouts on its website. I feared the worst, believing that 'Sheed would feed off the crowd's negative energy and have a monster game. He did the exact opposite and finished with 11 points on 4-of-15 shooting, and he took some terrible shots that killed the Pistons' momentum when they were clawing back into the game. So we dodged that bullet, so to speak.

But this flash animation on the Sentinel's site... oh, man. That's bad news. When I first saw it, I laughed a little bit. Actually, I laughed a lot. C'mon, it's funny: click on Rasheed once, and he starts crying. Click again, and a pacifier pops into his mouth and he shuts up.

OrlandoSentinel.com

But then I thought about it some more: the Sentinel is Orlando's go-to newspaper. It's where out-of-towners are going to look for Magic perspective. And when it does amateurish, unprofessional stuff like that, it does more than damage its reputation: it damages the city's reputation.

That's something for which I cannot stand.

Even during the Shaq-and-Penny glory days, we had a reputation as living in a Mickey Mouse town. In a literal sense, that much is true: the Disney World theme parks put us on the map, and -- duh -- they're still here. Nevermind the fact that no Orlando resident I know visits Disney more than once every few years. To out-of-towners, though, it appears as though we're little more than a town of cloying sports neophytes and mouse-ear-wearing idiots. The fact that Disney sponsors some Magic games hurts our cause. Oh, and the team's name itself -- Magic -- evokes the Magic Kingdom theme park. Wonderful.

To combat that reputation, we need to show that we know what we're talking about when it comes to sports. I'm trying to do my part, but I'm not delusional. I am not influential. The Sentinel is. And, as a professional, mainstream-media establishment, it should have more respect for itself and its readers than to post silly flash animations like that. If the Sentinel's editors want to have some fun, that's fine. But they should do so tastefully, lest they swing karma back in the Pistons' favor.