As you may have noticed, Getty removed the pictures which depicted the new uniforms for the Magic, Timberwolves, and Kings from its website. Apologies if you didn't manage to catch them in time.

Onto the news...

• Beyond the Arc, a Grizzlies-centered blog, refutes a recent internet report from an NBA website which stated the Grizzlies and Magic were discussing a trade involving Memphis shipping Javaris Crittenton to Orlando for the rights to Fran Vazquez. Those discussions never took place, according to the Grizzlies' owner, Michael Heisley. If they had, I'd worry for Mr. Heisley's sanity. (HT: Ball Don't Lie)
• In a fairly meaningless Olympic tune-up, Team USA defeated Team Turkey (which played without Hedo Turkoglu or Mehmet Okur), 114-82. Dwight Howard had 14 points (7-of-8 FG) and a game-high 8 boards. Here's the boxscore.
• Orlando Magic Blog examined the players the Magic have lost this summer and raises a good question: who's going to absorb their minutes? Jameer Nelson, Mickael Pietrus, and Anthony Johnson better eat their Wheaties this year, that's for darn sure. Courtney Lee, too.
• After some intensive number-cruncing, The Arbitrarian has created the Model-Estimated Value (MEV), a statistic which seeks to accurately account for each player's value based on his box-score statistics. It's like John Hollinger's PER and Dave Barri's Wins Produced insofar as it sums-up a player's production in a single number. Anyway, this metric rates Dwight Howard as the sixth-most productive player in the league last season, trailing LeBron James, Chris Paul, Amare Stoudemire, Kobe Bryant, and Allen Iverson.

Otherwise, it's quiet on the Magic front. We're still waiting for them to acquire a third point guard and to unveil their new uniforms.

	vs.
49-29		19-59
Amway Arena
7:00 PM
Sun Sports
Probable starters:
Jameer Nelson	PG	Randy Foye
Maurice Evans	SG	Marko Jaric
Hedo Turkoglu	SF	Kirk Snyder
Rashard Lewis	PF	Ryan Gomes
Dwight Howard	C	Al Jefferson
Season series:
6 Nov 2007: Magic 111, Timberwolves 103

We should have no trouble with Minnesota at all. The Timberwolves are a decent rebounding team (12th in offensive rebound rate, 15th in defensive rebound rate), but don't do anything else well. They have Al Jefferson, who'd be an All-Star if he played for a team anywhere close to .500. He's one of only four players in the league this year averaging 20 points and 10 rebounds; Dwight Howard, Antawn Jamison, and Carlos Boozer are the others.

Jefferson is a poor defender, though. In an improbable victory over the Suns earlier this year, Jefferson scored 39 points, but allowed Amare Stoudemire to score 33.... on 14-of-16 from the field. Dwight Howard will destroy Jefferson tonight, provided that his teammates do a good enough job of getting him the ball.

They also have free-agent-to-be Ryan Gomes, who can play either forward position and is a solid "glue guy," the kind of role-player I'd like to see us sign this summer. But he told Hoopsworld he wants to stay in Minnesota. What a shame.

I get a feeling like we'll get to see plenty of J.J. Redick, Carlos Arroyo, Pat Garrity, and James Augustine tonight. It's our last game against a Western team, so if there's ever a time to rest the starters, it's tonight.

Go Magic. Get that 50th win, and we can all celebrate with free Dunkin' Donuts Saturday morning.

	vs.
47-27		50-22
Amway Arena
7:00 PM
Sun Sports
Probable starters:
Jameer Nelson	PG	Chris Paul
Maurice Evans	SG	Morris Peterson
Hedo Turkoglu	SF	P. Stojakovic
Rashard Lewis	PF	David West
Dwight Howard	C	T. Chandler
19 Nov 2007: Magic 95, Hornets 88

I did a double-take when I looked back in the archives and saw we beat the Hornets in our first meeting. Really? We beat the Hornets? Then I remembered that Chris Paul missed that game, and Tyson Chandler left early with a knee injury. So we eked-out a victory over a team missing the best point guard in the league and its All-Star caliber center. Forgive me if I'm not too enthusiastic about that win, which also happened to be the last time Trevor Ariza played in a Magic uniform; we traded him to the Lakers for Maurice Evans and Brian Cook the next day.

The New Orleans Hornets are really freaking good. 50-22, on top of the best conference in the NBA, and, by extension, on top of the best division in the NBA. But because they play in a small market, haven't gone on a huge win streak, and didn't make a huge trade this season, they're flying under the radar. For more on the Hornets, let's hear from Rohan, who writes for At The Hive.

------------------------------------------------------

3QC: Chris Paul is a legitimate MVP candidate having arguably the best "pure" point guard statistical season (21.6 points, 11.3 assists, 2.7 steals, 49% shooting as of this writing) in the history of the league... and he won't turn 23 until May. How high is his ceiling? Can he -- or anyone else, for that matter -- play the position any better than he is right now?

Rohan: This guy is playing scary basketball right now. You put it well- he is indeed having the greatest year statistically in the history of the point guard position. His 28.8 PER eclipses anything Oscar Robertson, or Magic ever did; in fact the top 10 PER years by point guards are all Magic and Oscar, except for CP up at number 1. Right now there's nobody even close to Paul; Nash is posting a 21.1 (his best MVP year was 23.8), and he's the closest guy there is to Paul this year. In fact, Nash, Jose Calderon of Toronto, and Utah's Deron Williams are the only other guys in the 20's, but Paul is getting close to the 30's nonetheless.

Pretty much any Hornet telecast you tune into, you'll hear the announcers comparing Paul to another great, Isiah Thomas. Comparing with the same stage in Isiah's career, Paul shoots about 3 percent better, pulls down half a rebound more per game, shoots 12 percent better from the stripe and 4 percent better from long range, is about even on steals and assists, but impressively averages an entire turnover less. And according to Dean Oliver's DRtg stat, Paul is actually the better defensive point guard overall.

As far as his ceiling goes... let me just say, I'd be happy if he didn't improve from his current level at all. That said, there's two things I can pinpoint as areas of potential improvement. The first is a must- improving defensively against bigger point guards. I'm sure you've heard of his struggles against Deron Williams. The Jazz guard has about 4 inches and almost 40 pounds on him, which is huge. CP is going to have to learn to outsmart Williams on the court, and rely on his quickness to defend him. Utah's the one team I absolutely do not want to see in the playoffs, and the Chris Paul-DWill matchup is a large part of that. The second potential improvement isn't as much of a necessity- I want to see if Chris Paul can continue his fantastic improvement on jump shots. He came into the league at 45 eFG% and is currently at 53%. That's a testament to the work he's put in during the offseasons, and if he can ever come near Steve Nash levels (ie, 60%), playing against him would just be unfair.

3QC: In a Q-and-A session with ClipsNation, I gave Steve an opportunity to talk about how great Al Thornton is. So, in that vein, I'm giving you a few paragraphs to rave about David West, the Hornets' starting power forward and arguably the league's most underappreciated player. Have at it.

Rohan: Haha, I just kind of went off on Chris Paul, so this feels weird. Nevertheless, I'll gladly take the opportunity. West is one my favorites for one big reason: he gets maximum results out of his specific skill set. What I mean by that is West isn't as athletically gifted as the Howards (who is?), Amares, Odoms, or Garnetts of the world. When you watch him play, you won't be awed by an explosive first step or come from behind rejection into the eighth row. Even with Paul continually throwing alley-oop lobs, you'll never see West on the finishing end of one of those dunks. And he understands that. When he first broke into the league, I (and other Hornets' fans) came to know him as a tireless worker on the glass. Gradually, he improved his offensive game, year by year.

West is equal parts power and finesse- one of his go-to moves is powering his upper body into a defender, before taking a soft fall away jumper. Unlike most power forwards, he will give you a decent cross over as part of his drive to the hole. One thing you and your readers might not like though is that he'll be yelling every second of every minute of every game (at the refs). I'm stunned he hasn't gotten more technicals this year, but off the court, he's a really low-key and mild mannered dude.

3QC: Talk a bit about the job Byron Scott has done coaching this team. Certainly having the All-Star talent of Paul and West helps, but he's also turned the likes of Ryan Bowen, Rasual Butler, and Melvin Ely into regular rotation players. Is there a more deserving candidate for Coach of the Year?

Rohan: I say he's COY. First, I don't think he gets enough credit for the offensive system he's implemented in New Orleans. A lot of people will just point at Chris Paul and say it's pretty easy to coach with a point guard like him. However, they miss how well he's taught the other Hornets' players their specific duties on offense; New Orleans implements a highly complex variation of the Princeton offense. This allows the finds CP has to make to be a lot less risky; Peja Stojakovic is having one of the best seasons of his career due to the way Scott has set up the offense for him.

On the defensive end, Scott makes his case even stronger. In the last three years, the Hornets have jumped up in defensive efficiency rankings, starting at 20th, getting to 16th, and culminating at 9th. That's really impressive to me when you have a guy like Peja Stojakovic as a starter. Stojakovic isn't atrocious, but he's certainly a weak link; Scott specifically designs the defensive strategies, game to game, to cover for Peja through various types of help defense. On the player-coach interaction front, Scott has successfully integrated a known head case, Bonzi Wells, and a guy coming off a 2 year NBA ban, Chris Andersen, back into the rotation. That has to count for something.

3QC: Along the same lines, how about the work Jeff Bower has done in assembling this team? It really is hard to imagine better complements to Paul than Peja Stojakovic at the three and Tyson Chandler at the five. Does he deserve Executive of the Year consideration? Or is he just really, really, really good?

Rohan: Yeah, this team has been assembled through some very shrewd moves over the past few years. Number one is obviously the Chris Paul selection (by all accounts, New Orleans had him higher on their board than Deron Williams). The P.J. Brown and J.R. Smith for Tyson Chandler deal is looking brilliant. The decision to slowly elevate David West into the starting PF role (let alone giving him a chance as an undersized PF) instead of pursuing a big name free agent has worked out beautifully. Getting a three point shooter some pegged to be on the downside of his career has paid dividends. Most impressive, to me, was Bower pulling the trigger on acquiring Bonzi Wells, and reacquiring Chris Andersen. You have to understand that this was a playoff team with or without those two guys. Bower could've easily sat back, and have been absolved of any of the potential blame that comes with acquiring a head-case and a former drug user. Instead, he showed real commitment to building a bona fide contender- he put his own neck on the line for the good of the franchise. To me, that's worth just as much, if not more, than signing two big name free agents in one offseason (Boston).

3QC: This question's really just for fun. This year, the Hornets introduced an alternate logo, cleverly titled the "fleur de bee," to be worn on a jersey patch. What's your take on the fleur de bee? I ask only because I think it's the best alternate logo in the league, and because not enough people see it.

Rohan: Hahaha, you're right, it's indeed a clever play on the "fleur de lis" and props are in order to whomever coined that. I think it really showed the Hornets commitment (at the time it was released) to the city of New Orleans, with all the drama floating around about leaving the city. The city and its fans have just rewarded the franchise's commitment by showing up to games en masse these last two months.

------------------------------------------------------

Thanks once again to Rohan for his insight. Check out his site, At The Hive, for more on the Hornets. Click here for my answers to his questions about the Magic, including my take on Rashard Lewis' contract. Another great resource for Hornets news and analysis is Hornets 247. There's also this great post about the Hornets at Hardwood Paroxysm.

As Biased Fan reminds us in this comment here at 3QC, a Magic victory over the Hornets tonight goes one step closer to helping the Jazz secure home-court advantage in the West. I think we owe them that much, since their drubbing of the Wizards last night sealed the Southeast Division title for us.

The tip's at 7 on Sun Sports, and there really is no excuse not to watch this game. Clear your schedule. Chris Paul should will be a joy to watch, even if when he's shredding our perimeter defense.

Get them donuts. Go Magic.

The dunk contest, which featured Dwight Howard defeating Gerald Green in the final round. happened last February. The blogosphere is still buzzing about it.
File photo by Bill Haber, the Associated Press

• Krolik of FreeDarko invokes the Dunk Contest, and the Superman Dunk in particular, in this must-read piece on form, function, and high-school-to-the-League players:

  When [Dwight Howard] plays, the court pulsates with the power of dunk. And yet his dunk contest was marked by triumphs of style rather than substance, with his signature dunk being a show of smoke and mirrors while THE BIRTHDAY CAKE was, like Howard's tragically futile sticker dunk, a demonstration of substance-as-style, and the contest ended with [Gerald] Green doing a ridiculously difficult dunk that didn't photograph well (seriously, try jumping off a hardwood floor in socks), while Howard did a two-handed windmill using a toy hoop.

  Krolik also argues that Dwight, Amare Stoudemire, LeBron James, etc. benefitted from coming straight out of high school: "[B]y being allowed to find the music of their own games, the HS guys eventually found an off-beat form of truth as yet unrivaled by any other category of player." Bookmark FreeDarko. You'll thank me later.

• More on Dwight and dunking: the Superman dunk is matched up against the aforementioned BIRTHDAY CAKE dunk in the Ball Don't Lie Bedlam Tournament... and it's losing. Will someone knock some sense into these Yahoo! readers?
• Speaking of knocking some sense into people, check out the comments in this thread at Denton's board. Stan Van Gundy told reporters today that he wants Dwight to be more vocal and aggressive when asking for the ball on offense. One reader calls Stan "a little troll who likes the media limelight," then later adds that Doc Rivers is a better coach.
• The ubiquitous Tom Ziller sorta name-drops J.J. Redick in today's The Rotation piece at FanHouse. Check the "electability" chart at the end of the entry: Ziller pegs J.J. as "conservative" and "not electable", and similar to -- gulp -- Pat Riley in both those respects. So that's why Stan is so reluctant to play J.J...

Don't forget the game thread for the Magic's battle with the Spurs tonight.

Don't worry, Stan: if the team I coached lost to the Hawks, I'd be displeased too.
Photo by Gregory Smith, the Associated Press

The Orlando Magic celebrated Easter early by laying an egg against the Atlanta Hawks last night. The four-point lead we held heading into the fourth quarter simply evaporated, and we ended up losing by eight. Joe Johnson had 34 points and 7 assists; Keith Bogans and Keyon Dooling tied for the Magic lead in assists with 4 apiece; and Dwight Howard shot 5-of-11 from the foul line¹. It appears as thought it was one of those nights where we just flat-out don't care, letting an inferior team walk all over us. Luckily, we haven't had one of those nights in a while, so I suppose I'm not too steamed about this loss. Then again, I didn't have to sit through it.

Anyway, I spent some time with the ms. last night, so I didn't follow the game at all. It's just as well. I'm not too about this loss; the fact that we see the Hawks once more in Atlanta leaves open the possibility of a us administering a butt-kicking. And because that game is on the second-to-last night of the season, we could end their playoff hopes, if they haven't yet played themselves out of postseason contention.

The Magic have today and tomorrow off before taking on the San Antonio Spurs on Tuesday. Let's hope our guys don't get too hung up on this loss and instead focus on that matchup against the defending world champions.

¹ Phoenix's Amare Stoudemire, who's played out of his mind since the Suns acquired Shaquille O'Neal last month, scored 38 points tonight. He was 20-of-20 from the foul line. I weep for Dwight's potential.

	vs.
11-4		14-3
U.S. Airways Center
10:00 PM
Sun Sports HD
Probable starters:
Steve Nash	PG	Jameer Nelson
Leandro Barbosa	SG	Keith Bogans
Grant Hill	SF	Hedo Turkoglu
Shawn Marion	PF	Rashard Lewis
Amare Stoudemire	C	Dwight Howard

25 words or fewer: The Orlando Magic test their league-best 9-1 road record against one of the NBA's elite teams, the Phoenix Suns.

Know your enemy: The Suns have lost their last two games.

Useless information: Dallas, Phoenix, and San Antonio lost each of their games on Monday. When was the last time that happened?

Bullet points:

• UPDATE: Grant Hill tells Brian Schmitz that he thinks the Magic "are for real." That's high praise, and might have just made my day... unless he was trying to jinx us. That's not cool.
• UPDATE: John Denton writes that the Magic treat both Inspector Carlos Arroyo and Jameer Nelson like starting point guards, despite the fact that Nelson is the real starter.

  Arroyo said he and Nelson are able to coexist in the Magic backcourt because they are close friends and support each other. Both would prefer to play more minutes, but they understand that Van Gundy is going to simply ride the hot hand from game to game.

  "We don’t get all caught up in who’s playing and who’s not playing," Arroyo said. "We don’t care who’s getting the credit as long as we’re winning. It’s working for us."

  I used to think that the Magic should trade Arroyo's expiring deal for frontcourt help. Now? I'd rather not lose him.

• The last time the Magic played the Suns, Leandro Barbosa started in place of an injured Raja Bell and scored a career-high 39 points. It may be deja vu all over again for Orlando, as Bell is ailing again, meaning Barbosa will likely get the start tonight. (Hat tip: Bright Side of the Sun)
• John Denton spoke with Grant Hill about getting booed in his return to Orlando last month, and Grant explained that he's not bitter about it. I'm still bitter about that whackjob who shouted "Hill, you suck!" during the national anthem.
• Brian Schmitz expects Stan Van Gundy to win Coach of the Year. I know we're only a month into the season, but it's hard to disagree with him. Of particular note in that blog entry:

  Sports Illustrated, which didn't even pick the Magic in its preseason special to make the playoffs, will be in Phoenix to prepare a piece on the team.

  Sweet! I doubt it'll be the cover story, but it'd be nice if it were. It's been far too long since we've been on the cover.

• Former Magic coach and current TV analyst Matt Guokas says Dwight Howard may not be built like Shaq, but "the dominance is there." In further describing Dwight's game, Guokas invokes Bill Russell and Wilt Chamberlain. Did I mention that Howard isn't yet 22 years old?
• This link has absolutely nothing to do with tonight's game, but screw it, it needs to be passed on: The Knicks got their asses pillaged (to paraphrase Posting and Toasting) by the Celtics last night, and KnickerBlogger responds. (Hat tip: TrueHoop)
• Still no word as to whether or not Keyon Dooling will be able to play tonight; as far as I know, he's still recovering from food poisoning he suffered over the weekend.
• Speaking of KnickerBlogger, its advanced stats page dispels the notion that the Suns don't play a lick of defense. Adjusted for pace, the Suns are the ninth-best defensive team in the league, which is especially remarkable considering that they play at the second-fastest pace of any team.

John Hollinger, the statistical whiz who derived Player Efficiency Rating (PER), has released his projected 2007/2008 PER statistics for every player who played at least 500 minutes last season. PER is, as he explains it to Henry Abbott of TrueHoop:

Anyway, PER is a per-minute rating of a player's statistical productivity. It's great for measuring a player's "tangibles"; the one area it struggles is with defense because so much of that remains a black box for the analytical community.

I use it so much because it makes it very easy to make comparisons between players who play differing minutes, or in different systems or what-not -- comparisons which, using conventional stats, are almost impossible.

Here is how PER is derived:

I base the projections on a tool called similarity scores.

For each player, I use as a comparison the players from the past 20 years who are the most similar, based on age, height and stats over the past three seasons. Some players will have more comparables than others, depending on how unusual they are -- guys with freak heights (Yao Ming, Earl Boykins), freak ages (Dikembe Mutombo) or freak stats (Andrei Kirilenko) will have relatively few, while a more generic player like Al Harrington or Devin Brown could have over a hundred.

From that point, I see what their most similar players did a year later, and project those changes onto the stats of the player being studied. So, for example, the reason that Yao Ming's PER is projected to rise sharply this year is because the most similar players also saw their PERs increase sharply at the same age; similarly, Andre Miller is expected to tank because a number of similar players hit the wall at his age.

PER is normalized each year to 15; that is, if you have a PER of 15, you're an average player. After the jump, I've posted a table showing how Magic players fared last year, as well as Hollinger's projections for them this year, and their difference. Alternatively, you can click here to view the predictions directly on ESPN.com. While the raw numbers are free, the player profiles are not.

Continue reading this post »