A few assorted notes from the game on Saturday:

• Pregame
  • Spotted outside the arena before the game: a Magic fan wearing a black Otis Smith replica jersey. I salute you, sir.
  • Magic community ambassador Nick Anderson milled about the Magic's side of the court during the shootaround. On his way back into the locker room after presenting a plaque to a community member, Anderson took a three-pointer from the left corner. Swish.
  • Among the standard Pistons jerseys (Hamilton, Billups, Wallace) in the arena, there were not a few throwbacks: Bill Lambier, Rick Mahorn, and Isiah Thomas, to name a few. One gentleman in my section had a vintage Pistons championship t-shirt from when they won back-to-back championships in the early 90s. The back read, "Back-2-Back! Hammer Time!"
  • Tiger Woods sat courtside, as he has several times this season. This time, he stayed until the game ended.
• Halftime
  • A group of jump-roping geniuses called The Chicago Boys provided the entertainment. The stuff they did defies all description.
  • Adonal Foyle took his share of three-pointers. He banked two in from halfcourt.
  • Simon the Music Guy has had better nights. Seriously, there's no excuse for playing a contemporary cover of Modern English's "I Melt With You," especially not when the original is available.
  • Chuck Daly, who coached both the Pistons and the Magic in his Hall-of-Fame career, was in the building. When the Magic's video operator showed him on the JumboTron, a few Pistons fans around me shouted his name.
• Postgame
  • On the north side of the arena, as fans walked to their cars, a live musician played "Old Time Rock-and-Roll" by Bob Seger. Seger is a Detroit native and even attended Game Two in Detroit. Not the best time to play that song, nope.
  • Cases upon cases of a fizzy fruit beverage were available for free. From afar, the cans looked like the ones for Dr. Pepper, so I was a bit disappointed when I discovered they were not. I'll let you know how it tastes.

From Sports Illustrated.com via the Associated Press:

The Orlando Magic's flight from Detroit to Orlando was diverted because of a mechanical problem.

Team spokesman Joel Glass says the plane landed in Cincinnati as a precaution late Monday.

No one was injured and the team was expected to arrive in Orlando today.  Just add more complications to a series that is already looking bleak for the Magic.

Full article (it's very short) here .

Just started thinking about the last time the Magic were up 3-1 in a series.  In that NBA:

where Me-Mac decided it felt good to finally get to the second round happened

where the NBA had (IN MID SEASON) changed the first round from five to seven games out of fear that the lakers and kings (top draw at the time) would meet in the first round happened

where a little used bench player shut down t-mac and became an all-star happened

where 31L, 15L and 15L happened

where one team went on to win a championship and consectutive eastern finals happened

where the other team loses 19 in a row and hires john weisbrod happened

where I can't believe they drafted howard over okafor happened

and now:

where it feels good to be up 3-1, but there's still work to do

I am considering both team needs and BPA in structuring this board. Here are my team needs in order of highest need to lowest need.

1) A starting Shooting Guard. I pick a starter here over starter at Power Forward because I am more comfortable with Lewis at the 4 than Turk at the 2.

2) A starting Power Forward. See above^.

3) A starting Point Guard. Replacing Nelson is a very low priority and I only see one guy that could come in and challenge Jameer right away.

4) A starting Small Forward. This would force both Lewis and Hedo to play out of position. Do we really want that?

5) A backup Point Guard. Both Arroyo and Dooling are free agents, and Nelson has had health problems. I think we need some security here.

6) A backup Power Forward. Here a pick could be nurtured to eventually fill Battie’s shoes once his contract is up.

7) A backup at any other position. I think any guy we pick at positions like C, SF, and SG will have a hard time cracking the rotation this year or anytime soon.

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Uh, is this thing on?

Oh yeah. It's on.

As promised, SBN 2.0 is here. Trei, one of the tech Wunderkinds who developed the new platform, is here to explain the new features. Take it away, Trei. - BQR

Hey Third Quarter Collapse,

Today is the big day. We've switched your community over to the new SB Nation sports blog platform. My name is Trei, and I'm here to help you get adjusted to the new home we've built for you. If you have questions or trouble with the new system, post a comment in this thread and myself or one of the team (lovitt, sixfoot6 or odacrem) will try to point you in the right direction.

Before we begin, I want to let you know that Third Quarter Collapse is one of the first blogs in the SB Nation family to make this transition. We still consider this a beta platform, so don't be surprised if you find a few bugs or if everything isn't exactly right yet. We hope you'll take the time to report any problems you encounter at bugreport@sbnation.com.

Please take a few minutes to read about what's new below. But if you just can't wait to jump in, here are some quick things to check out:

1. Sign up for your SB Nation network account and claim your old blog accounts
2. Once you're logged in, press your  Z  key in any thread with new comments
3. Explore your dashboard and setup your profile
4. Read the guide to the new FanPost editor
5. Install the FanShot bookmarklet and post videos to Third Quarter Collapse from YouTube or images from Flickr
6. Click the "Rec" button on posts and comments to help other people find the good stuff.

What Has Changed

SB Nation Network Accounts - the Big Change

Readers across all of our blogs told us they wanted one account to use on every SB Nation blog. To make this work, we're requiring that everyone create a new SB Nation network account. In most cases you should be able to keep your old username, but a few of you may have to choose something new, since every other community in SB Nation will be going through this same transition. We tried to be as fair as possible in deciding who gets to keep which name, using a formula that takes into account length of membership and frequency of activity.

We want to make it as easy as possible for you to participate on all of our blogs, but we don't want to encourage everyone to start visiting rival team blogs and initiating flame wars. To maintain friendly communities we ask that you explicitly join each blog in order to participate. It's a two-click process, but it does means accepting each blog's community guidelines. Just as you join each blog individually, you can be banned on each blog individually.

You can claim old accounts from multiple SB Nation blogs, and your new username will be retroactively attached to all your old comments and diaries. So now you'll be able to access all your writings from your single profile page... like magic.

To get started, click here to claim your old blog accounts and create a new SB Nation network account.

FanPosts (the Section Formerly Known as Diaries)

We changed their name. Why? Because we took this major upgrade as an opportunity to leave behind some vocabulary that never made much sense for a sports blog. SB Nation is the network of, by and for fans, and these are the blog posts we make. So we call them FanPosts. When you're at a bar telling someone to check out your online sports opinions, you don't have to suggest they read your diary.

FanPosts are displayed differently on the homepage - we include your avatar to give more credit for the time you spend writing great posts. The new post editor has a WYSIWYG view that provides easy formatting. It also auto-saves drafts so you don't have to worry about losing your work when you compose a post within the web browser. And you can now associate teams, players and games with your posts: these tools promote your FanPosts on our new team, player and game pages - across the entire network.

The new system does not work like the old diary editor. For example, in HTML mode the new editor doesn't auto-create a new paragraph from two line breaks. But it does offer a whole array of new features. Look for the blinking help button on the right side of the FanPost editor for quick tips, and take a look at our full guide to writing FanPosts on the new platform.

IMPORTANT - if you write your posts in Microsoft Word or some other off-line editor, you will get the most reliable behavior if you cut & paste your post into the HTML view of the FanPost editor. And if you do that, remember to wrap <p></p> tags around each paragraph so your text doesn't run together.

Visual Redesign

This one is probably the most obvious change of all. Like other major websites working to improve readability for their audience, we've adopted a fixed-width layout optimized for the 1024 x 768 resolution used by the majority of Third Quarter Collapse and SB Nation network users. Use the switcher below the user menu if you prefer the wider layout designed for 1280 monitors. We've introduced a top navigation bar with quick links into old and new sections of the site. We also polished a few edges, made some things larger, others smaller and moved a few boxes here and there. More changes and adjustments to come.

Search

We've completely replaced the old search engine with a new one. We're excited to make it easier to find old posts and comments, but we've only taken our first pass on the tools we're offering. We're focused on making search even better than what you had before, so please know that we're aware search is missing key features and we're working on it.

What's New

Schedule, Scores, Stats and Roster

Third Quarter Collapse now has all the basic information about the Orlando Magic and hundreds of other teams. During games you'll see a regularly updated line score, and as the season progresses we'll track team stat totals and leaders. This is just our first step, so look for us to publish more detailed and archival stats in the future. The best part about all this sports data is that we've integrated it directly into the blog so. We now have special pages that aggregate all blog posts written about games, players and teams.

Recommending FanPosts

Some writing deserves more attention and more conversation. If you want to bump a FanPost up to the top and keep it there for awhile, just click the 'Rec' link under the body of the post. When a FanPost receives enough recommendations it will make the recommended list.

Auto-refreshing Comments

You no longer need to refresh the page to see new comments. If you're logged in, new comments will automatically appear on the page every few seconds. When you post a comment, the page will not refresh either. If you want to quickly cycle through all the new comments, you can press the C key on your keyboard. Unmark a new comment after you've read it with the X key. And use the Z key if you want to umark comments as you're cycling through them.

As you use these shortcuts to cycle through comments, press the R key to reply to the current comment. All these helpful keyboard shortcuts are listed at the top of each comments section for reference.

Recommending Comments

Now you can reward those folks who take the time to look up stats and make smart arguments in the comments. Next to each comment there is an 'actions' link that you can click to find the recommend and flag options.

Flagging Comments

To help the moderators on a site, we've built-in tools that let you flag comments that are spam, trolling or just plain inappropriate. Only moderators can see those flags.

FanShots

Many members of the community just want to post that one link, video, photo or quote, but don't need a full FanPost. We've got you covered: FanShots let you share YouTube videos, Flickr or PhotoBucket photos, quotes from articles, portions of chat transcripts, top 5 lists and simple links. If it's a video or image we'll put a thumbnail on the homepage when you post it.

For those of you who are experienced internet hunter-gatherers of Orlando Magic material, install the bookmarklet onto the links bar of your browser and share FanShots with the community from wherever on the web you find that killer quote or photo.

Archives

It's much easier to find that post about a certain deadline trade or prospect retro feature. You can browse by year and month.

Avatars

Upload an image so folks can see your custom avatar on your profile, your FanPosts, and all your comments.

Network Profiles

Now that we have unified SB Nation network accounts, your profile will be your central hub for all of your activity on any blogs where you are a member.

Network bar

The top bar stays with you on all SB Nation blogs. It's a quick way to login and logout. When you're logged in, you'll see your avatar and screen name which links to your profile. The icon to the right leads to your Dashboard area where you can edit your settings, profile, account details and any FanPosts or FanShots you've published. As we add more blogs to the new SB Nation network, the My Blogs menu will be a handy way to navigate between the blogs you've joined.

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There are plenty more small changes and additions we've made, so please take a careful look around and explore this new system. We appreciate your patience and hope you'll help us improve the new platform for this and all the other SB Nation blogs.

And in case you missed it, you'll want to start by claiming your old blog accounts and creating a new SB Nation network account.

Please help the city of Seattle

Continue reading this post »

Hey everyone. Jim here from the SB Nation's Celtics Blog Green Bandwagon. Despite the Magic's two victories over the Celtics this year, which of course include Boston's first loss and that Hedo Turkoglu buzzer beater, I can't hate the Magic. Maybe it's the Dwight Howard effect. That brings me to this diary post. First of all I was blown away by his dunk contest performance. I thought his first three dunks were epic. And I slightly disagree with your take on the Superman dunk. Granted the new nickname might be a bit much. But it was amazing where he took off from and that he could get high enough to throw the ball through the hoop. There was a strong chance he could have blown that. Huge bonus points for pulling it off. Although I wonder if there will be any backlash about the amount of time and energy Howard put into the contest. It was just seven days ago that Van Gundy criticized Howard and questioned his priorities. Now I'm of the opinion that this is a non story. But sometimes perception is reality. I'm not trying to stir anything up. Just wanted to throw that out there. Keep up the good work.

Well, since nobody else has said anything, I will. First things first, I am one of the bloggers at the SBNation Suns blog, Bright Side of the Sun. Despite the fact my team had two guys represented in New Orleans, I'm just not a big fan of the whole All-Star thing. The All-Star break means one thing to me--a break. I usually just DVR the activities and skim through them after the fact. Huge time-saver, and then I can get back to the "break" part of it.

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Nobody asked me, but here's how I'd fill out my All-Star reserve ballot for the Eastern Conference. The starting lineup, which is determined by fan vote, was announced Thursday. Here it is:

1. Jason Kidd (New Jersey)
2. Dwyane Wade (Miami)
3. LeBron James (Cleveland)
4. Kevin Garnett (Boston)
5. Dwight Howard (Orlando)

Eastern coaches vote on who the reserves for the Eastern team are. Recall that each coach must select two guards, two forwards, and one center on their ballot. Additionally, they may vote in two "wild card" players of any position. Coaches may not vote for their own players. With those rules in mind, here is my ballot:

Guards:

Forwards:

Center:

Wild cards:

It was difficult to exclude Richard Hamilton, Hedo Turkoglu, and Gerald Wallace from this list. However, with so many other deserving forwards, a few other ones had to get left-out. Note that, if it were totally up to me, Calderon and Billups would be the starting backcourt, Hamilton and Jason Kidd would be the backup guards, and Dwyane Wade would be out of the game entirely. In other words, Hamilton would take Wade's spot on the roster, but not his starting role. Sorry, Pookie; you're not in my Fave 5... or Fave 12, for that matter.

Feel free to file your complaints in the comments or in a diary of your own.

Every so often, someone will find this site by searching for "Orlando Magic Uniform Numbers," or another similar query. Now, they can get what they work looking for by visiting this site. Below is a table compiling a list of every person who has ever played for the Orlando Magic, listed by uniform number in ascending order. The information is from the Magic's media guide, which you can download in PDF form at this link.

I welcome your input as far as changes or clarifications; I have been wrong before.

Without further ado, here's the list. Enjoy!

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