A friendly reminder that tomorrow afternoon 3QC will pick on the Magic's behalf in SB Nation's 2008 NBA Mock Draft, hosted by Ridiculous Upside. The Magic have the 22nd overall pick and ours is due tomorrow at 4:30 PM Eastern. If you'd like to throw some players' names into the hat for consideration, please do so in the comments to this thread.

Here's how the draft has gone so far. Note that Magic faves Brandon Rush and Marreese Speights are already off the board. Of the teams drafting ahead of us, Toronto, Cleveland, and Denver seem likely to take wing players:

1. Chicago Bulls: Derrick Rose
2. Miami Heat: Michael Beasley
3. Minnesota Timberwolves: O.J. Mayo
4. Seattle SuperSonics: Eric Gordon
5. Memphis Grizzlies: Kevin Love
6. New York Knicks: Russell Westrbrook
7. Los Angeles Clippers: Jerryd Bayless
8. Milwaukee Bucks: Anthony Randolph
9. Charlotte Bobcats: Joe Alexander
10. New Jersey Nets: Brook Lopez
11. Indiana Pacers: D.J. Augustin
12. Sacramento Kings: Marreese Speights
13. Portland Trail Blazers: Brandon Rush
14. Golden State Warriors: DeAndre Jordan
15. Phoenix Suns: Danilo Gallinari
16. Philadelphia 76ers: Darrell Arthur
17. Toronto Raptors
18. Washington Wizards
19. Cleveland Cavaliers
20. Denver Nuggets
21. New Jersey Nets

Keep in mind that trades are not permitted, at least not for this particular mock draft. So we can't, say, offer Hedo Turkoglu, J.J. Redick, and the 22nd pick to Sacramento for Ron Artest and the rights to Speights.

If you have suggestions, let's hear 'em. You can also vote in the poll, which should close tomorrow at 3 PM Eastern.

Not much in the tubes today.

• Mike Freeman of CBS Sportsline has nothing but nice things to say about Dwight Howard:

  When you think Howard, think Shaquille O'Neal or Patrick Ewing or Tim Duncan, but instead of O'Neal's flab there are finely tuned gams. Instead of Ewing's more plodding game fit for a schoolyard, there is finesse. Howard possesses the power Duncan never had. And Howard isn't injury prone like Yao Ming.

  (HT: Hardwood Paroxysm)

• Chad Ford (ESPN Insider) has put together a nice rundown of the free-agency situation this summer. In my dreams, Elton Brand opts-out of his deal with the Los Angeles Clippers, then signs with us for the full mid-level exception, leaving tens of millions of dollars on the table for a chance at a title. Dude doesn't need the money; he can just keep producing Werner Herzog films (Rescue Dawn!) to pay the rent.

  Like I said, in my dreams.

• Brian Schmitz writes in his blog about the importance of the Magic holding on to that third playoff seed. If we drop to fourth, we'll likely face a first-round matchup with the Toronto Raptors, with whom we do not match-up well.
• Alex Kennedy at RealGM makes the case that Hedo Turkoglu should win the league's Most Improved Player award this season. (HT: Punisher in this thread at MagicMadness)

And since there's not much in the way of Magic news, we now turn to our division rivals:

• The Atlanta Hawks are 1-4 since acquiring Mike Bibby from the Sacramento Kings. Bibby has struggled, averaging 11.8 points, 2.0 rebounds, 5.4 assists, and 3.0 turnovers as a Hawk. He's only shooting 38% from the field. Despite their poor record lately, I expect Atlanta to make the playoffs. The East is that bad.
• The Charlotte Bobcats' slim playoff hopes ended last Friday when Gerald Wallace, their leading scorer and franchise cornerstone, left a game on a stretcher after the Kings' Mikki Moore inadvertently elbowed him in the face. Wallace suffered a concussion -- his fourth in the last four seasons -- and will miss at least the next two weeks.
• The Miami Heat earned their second win since Christmas last night, blowing out the Kings, 107-86. The Heat are now 2-22 in 2008 and haven't been relevant since... well, last season. Understandably, the folks at Sactown Royalty aren't happy with last night's results.
  • Speaking of Sactown Royalty, check out this diary post I made there to caption a picture of Hedo Turkoglu and Ron Artest talking. Join the fun!
• The Washington Wizards are just 3-10 this month, and got absolutely destroyed in Houston last night, 94-69. The Wizards managed to score just 23 points in the first half. But it hasn't been all bad for Washington this week: DeShawn Stevenson had the game of his life Monday night, scoring a career-best 33 points and hitting the game-winning triple to propel the Wizards to a victory over the New Orleans Hornets. Were the playoffs to begin today, we'd play the Wizards, so they're definitely worth keeping an eye on.

Don't forget the game thread, and stay tuned: I have a fairly large post in the works for sometime later this week.

Who needs Jerry West when you have Keyon Dooling? The Magic's backup point guard candidly imitates The Logo in the Magic's 112-93 win over the Kings on Sunday.
Photo by Fernando Medina, NBAE/Getty Images

• How about Keyon Dooling? That pose above uncannily resembles the NBA's logo.
• John Denton and Brian Schmitz each have stories about Rashard Lewis' unselfishness; he's perfectly happy deferring to Dwight Howard and Hedo Turkoglu, and he's not concerned with his 18.2 scoring average, which is his lowest in four seasons. You gotta like his attitude. However, he can sometimes defer too often, passing the ball late in the shot clock when he should be the one shooting.
• Yesterday, Schmitz reported on his blog that the Magic will probably extend Otis Smith's contract for another two seasons beyond this one. David Whitley thinks that'd be a good move, and I tend to agree. As much as we Magic fans love to rip on Otis for not takings risks, he's done a decent job of assembling this team. Plus, there's no reason to fire him or let him go. This organization needs stability, and Otis provides that.
• Great news from Tim Povtak's NBA Confidential today, the focus of which is Ron Artest. But the meat of the story is in this excerpt:

  Magic General Manager Otis Smith, who understands the importance of perception in a small market like Orlando, has been gently chiding point guard Jameer Nelson about his scraggly beard, so don't be surprised to see it disappear soon [....] Smith just told his own son, Otis, Jr., that both the allowance and the car keys would disappear until he found a razor.

  I have no problem with players growing facial hair -- Hell, I emailed Basketbawful last week to nominate Shaq for Worst of the Night for shaving off his mustache -- but Jameer needs to trim his beard. It's a bit scraggly, as this Fernando Medina photograph shows.

• Just a reminder: the latest installment of the Blogger MVP/Rookie of the Year rankings is up at CelticsBlog. Dwight Howard placed 5th, one spot behind Kobe Bryant (who received my first-place vote) and one spot ahead of Steve Nash (who did not appear on my ballot). Thanks to Tom for being so diligent in putting it all together.
• I can't think of any way to relate this video to the Magic, so I won't even try. But head on over to Basketbawful to watch Knicks forward Zach Randolph... well, I don't know how to describe it. But yeah, Basketbawful called it "the worst possession [he's] ever seen," and it's hard to disagree. Even Steve Francis was more prudent with his shot-selection.

Don't forget to check out the game thread for tonight's contest against the Jason Kidd-less Nets.

If it's J.J. Redick time, it's garbage time: Redick shoots a layup against the Kings in the Magic's 112-93 romp.
Photo by Fernando Medina, NBAE/Getty Images

I'm going to start a Brian Cook Fan Club. I really want to. He and Keyon Dooling pick-and-roll'd the Kings to death to start the fourth quarter, combining to score the Magic's first 20 points of the period to slam the door shut in Sacramento's face. Count me as one of the assorted fans who gave Cook a standing ovation when coach Stan Van Gundy pulled him out of the game.

The first half of the game was brutal to watch, although Dwight Howard did manage to put up some highlight-reel dunks, including one over Spencer Hawes, who is younger than I am. And, on one amusing sequence, the Kings' Mikki Moore caught the ball right in the middle of the lane with Howard draped all over him. Moore pump-faked a few times, pivoted, threw up a hook shot... and Howard sent it back in his face. Did Moore really think he was going to fake-out Dwight Howard?

Anyway, the halftime score was 46-all, and neither team played particularly hard or well. Only Howard and the Kings' Kevin Martin distinguished themselves. Most everyone else went through the motions until about halfway through the period, when the Magic scored 9 points in a 40-second span thanks to great hustle. Rashard Lewis made a deep three-pointer. On the next possession, the Magic forced Martin to miss a layup, leading to a Keith Bogans three-pointer in transition. Moore threw a lazy inbounds pass, which Bogans tipped off Kings guard Beno Udrih and out-of-bounds. PA announcer Paul Porter's voice boomed "MAGIC BALL!", the crowd began to stir, and Hedo Turkoglu made a layup, got fouled, and converted the free throw. The time was approximately 7 PM, and the Magic had finally woken up.

Sactown Royalty wasn't a fan of Kings coach Reggie Theus' substitution patterns at the end of the third quarter and the beginning of the fourth quarter. I thought his biggest mistake was not having Ron Artest guard Howard more often. The one possession he did, Artest baited Howard into committing an offensive foul.

Stan Van Gundy also made mistakes. In the first half Martin frequently got wide-open jump shots because of poor defensive rotations on the Magic's part. Van Gundy opted to use Howard to double-team Artest each time he touched the ball, leaving Moore open. Maurice Evans would then shift down to cover Moore, leaving Martin wide-open beyond the three-point arc. Thankfully, the Magic abandoned this strategy in the second half, during which Martin scored only 7 points.

Overall, a solid win in front of the home crowd. We've won 4 of our last 5 games and our defense seems to be getting better, although that's not saying much. For more on the game, check out the boxscore and the GameFlow.

Lots of strange little things in and around the arena last night. To wit:

• Spotted outside the arena before the game: a man wearing a Cuttino Mobley Magic jersey. I couldn't believe it. Dude only played 23 games with us before we traded him for... wait for it... Doug Christie.
• Theus strode across the sidelines prior to the National Anthem to shake hands with the Magic coaching staff. It was a classy move.
• The National Anthem was sung by children from a local elementary school. It was, by far, the most entertaining Anthem of the season, and they received a rousing and well-deserved ovation.
• On the night when the Magic gave away action figures bearing his likeness, Jameer Nelson shot 1-of-11, yet it certainly didn't seem as though he took that many shots. Give him credit for being inconspicuous in his sucking, although Kelly Dwyer picked up on it right away.
• Early in the fourth quarter, Adonal Foyle made a great pass (!) to Brian Cook, who was cutting along the baseline, leading to an acrobatic (!!) reverse layup (!!!). UPDATE: Fernando Medina snapped a photo of said layup.
• Pat Garrity was active and actually got playing time. There's no good reason for him to be active instead of James Augustine, but I don't mind Auggie being on the sidelines. He's a great dresser, mostly because his jackets are cut very well.
• Rashard Lewis blocked three shots. The Magic are now 1-0 when Lewis blocks three shots or more. In a related story, Rashard Lewis is 6'10", and it took him 57 games to finish one with three blocks. That's bad. Still, if you had told me at the beginning of the seasn that Lewis would block three shots before scoring 30 points -- something he still hasn't done -- I would have said you were full of it.
• Brad Miller is one of the NBA's most intimidating players. After a few calls didn't go his way, I feared for Dwight Howard's life; Miller looked possessed. Unsurprisingly, he launched a three-pointer out of frustration, and it missed. Badly.

	vs.
35-22		26-28
Amway Arena
6:00 PM
Sun Sports HD
Probable starters:
Jameer Nelson	PG	Beno Udrih
Maurice Evans	SG	Kevin Martin
Hedo Turkoglu	SF	Ron Artest
Rashard Lewis	PF	Mikki Moore
Dwight Howard	C	Brad Miller

The Kings may be talented enough to make the playoffs. That's what section214 concludes after this Sactown Royalty article about the players earning fewer than $2 million who give the most bang for their buck; Jameer Nelson makes an appearance. So why don't the Kings stand a chance? Because they have $21 million tied-up in unproductive power forwards. Sounds like a problem we could stand to have, no?

The last time these two teams played, the Kings totally embarrassed us on their home floor. As the GameFlow tells us, we never had a lead after the opening minutes of the game, and we were down by as many as 19 points in the fourth quarter; the respectable final margin, 104-100, was largely due to J.J. Redick scoring 10 points in the final 8 minutes.

Since then, the Kings have shaken up their roster. They traded Mike Bibby to Atlanta, a division rival of ours, for Shelden Williams and Cap Space. Bibby's replacement at point guard, Beno Udrih, produces almost the exact same level. Additionally, the Kings will have Ron Artest and Kevin Martin available this evening. Those two players sat out the first time we played the Kings.

For us to win, we're going to have to keep Kevin Martin off the foul line, which is much easier said than done. "Speed Racer" is capable of scoring 15 points without making more than five shots. Consider what Martin did to us the last time the Kings were here, a loss so infuriating it caused some deluded moron to start a website: in 30 minutes, he made only one-of-eight shots, yet still scored 20 points. The Kings managed to win despite shooting .338 from the field. That's got to be some sort of record.

Other Kings who could kill us: Brad Miller, whom Rashard Lewis had trouble guarding in these teams' first meeting this season; Francisco Garcia, who is en fuego this month, shooting .600 from three-point range(!); and Quincy Douby, a rambunctious combo-guard who can join Paul Millsap and Anthony Carter in the "Obscure Players Who Absolutely F---ing Destroyed Us" Club.

Be sure to mosey on over to Sactown Royalty for some brilliant Kings blogging. Tipoff tonight is at 6 PM instead of 7, and the first 5000 fans at the Amway Arena will receive a Jameer Nelson action figure. No word on if the concession stands are serving turnovers to commemorate the event.

Post your pre-, in-, and post-game comments in here. Go Magic.

• The Magic and the Kings keep getting linked by trade rumors. Ron Artest to Orlando? Shareef Abdur-Rahim to Orlando? But Tom Ziller of Sactown Royalty proposes another: Mike Bibby. He looked around the league and assessed Bibby's relative value to other teams, as well as what those other teams can offer in return, and classified Orlando as a team that intrigues him. He explains,

  "Bibby fits the gunner-around-Dwight philosophy and Orlando has the expirings and young talent to pull it off. Jameer Nelson is a bit of a problem, though."

  I don't think Bibby is such a great fit here, honestly. He's in the same shoot-first mold as Jameer Nelson, and for whatever reason the team has played better with pass-first Carlos Arroyo at the helm this season. So no, I'm not sure that he's the answer, especially when our biggest need is a power forward who can defend.

• Speaking of trades, the good folks at Hardwood Paroxysm put Carlos Arroyo on their list of "20 Players To Be Freed from Captivity." Here's how they explain it:

  [Arroyo]'s playing too well to bench, but not well enough to put in front of Nelson's big fat contract. This is in a league where Jason Williams starts for a team. This must be remedied. The Magic will be happier. They can put Nelson and the contract in the slot and let him run the show.

  I disagree, frankly. Trading Arroyo leaves us with only Keyon Dooling as the backup point guard, and that's not his natural position anyway. Keep Carlos here, please.

• Keith Bogans' line from last night: 8 points, 8 rebounds, 2 assists, and 1 butt-pat.
• Dwight Howard will once again participate in the Sprite Slam Dunk competition. He'll face-off against Gerald Green, the defending champion from the Minnesota Timberwolves; Rudy Gay from the Memphis Grizzlies; and Jamario Moon from the Toronto Raptors. After getting robbed last year, Dwight is back with a vengeance, and has told the Orlando Sentinel's Brian Schmitz that he has a plan. Henry Abbott, of TrueHoop fame, writes, "isn't Howard breaking some kind of unwritten rule by admitting that he's taking the contest so seriously?"
• Str8 Hoops has this compilation of nicknames for NBA players. Oddly enough, "Turk" is not included next to Hedo Turkoglu's name, but "Glu" is. Does that mean we have a "Sweet Lew" (Rashard Lewis) and a "Sweet Glu"? (Hat-tip: Kelly Dwyer)

	vs.
12-20		22-13
Arco Arena
10:00 PM
FSN Florida
Probable starters:
Beno Udrih	PG	Carlos Arroyo
John Salmons	SG	Keith Bogans
Francisco Garcia	SF	Hedo Turkoglu
Mikki Moore	PF	Rashard Lewis
Brad Miller	C	Dwight Howard

The Kings inspired me to start the original 3QC. Just throwing that out there.

Despite being based in cities on the opposite sides of the United States, the Magic and Kings share some similarities: They both pursued Stan Van Gundy to fill their coaching vacancy, with Van Gundy faxing his Magic coaching contract to Orlando from a Sacramento Kinko's store; former Magic guard Reggie Theus is the Kings' first-year head coach; Hedo Turkoglu started his career with the Kings and is playing the best basketball of his life for the Magic; the two teams reportedly discussed a Turkoglu-for-Ron Artest swap this summer, although that rumor was debunked; and there were rumblings of the Kings sending Shareef Abdur-Rahim to the Magic to replace the injured Tony Battie. Good thing for Orlando that deal never happened: 'Reef is out for the season after undergoing knee surgery in December.

But the teams are much different in the standings. The Magic are first in the Southeast and are 9 games above .500; the Kings are 4th in the Pacific and 8 games below .500. And whereas the web's best Kings blog, Sactown Royalty, gets a bajillion hits a day, I'm lucky to reach 125. So there's that.

UPDATE: Here's an insightful article from Sam Amick of the Sacramento Bee (you may have to create a username to read the aricle, but it's worth it) that explains in great detail how Stan Van Gundy went from house-hunting in Sacramento with his wife (using a Kings company car, no less) to faxing a signed Magic contract to Orlando. Stan regrets not informing Geoff Petrie of his decision and wishes he handled the situation better. The reader comments section is worth a read also, if you're in the mood for a chuckle. Here's a gem from "kingsrulal":

Van Grungy did the Kings a favor by going elsewhere. He is a below average coach who doesn't give a damn about anyone but himself. Reggie is a much better coach and person.

Additionally, "apounders" cites the Magic's poor home record as a sign of Van Gundy's coaching mediocrity. It was awfully convenient for him to omit mentioning the Magic's league-best 15 road wins.  

Tipoff is at 10 PM because of the whole time-zone thing. As far as who will start tonight for Orlando, I'm not sure. Arroyo seems to have taken over the starting point guard job for now, but Van Gundy's replacement of Keith Bogans with Keyon Dooling on Friday night didn't really yield much. Bogans matches up better with John Salmons than Dooling does, so I figure he'll get the nod tonight.

Let's play a game of "You Be the GM". Here are two players from which to choose to fill out your roster:

Although Option 2's statistics aren't as good as Option 1's, they still compare favorably. Both players are 25-years-old. Based on the stats, most coaches and GMs would choose Option 1 over Option 2. But with more context, the choice becomes less obvious. Read more after the jump.

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