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.
32-21		32-19
Amway Arena
7:00 PM
FSN Florida
Probable starters:
Jameer Nelson	PG	Anthony Carter
Maurice Evans	SG	Allen Iverson
Hedo Turkoglu	SF	Carmelo Anthony
Rashard Lewis	PF	Kenyon Martin
Dwight Howard	C	Marcus Camby

The Nuggets are coming off a 114-113 overtime victory over the Miami Heat last night. J.R. Smith lead Denver with 28 points... in 27 minutes... on 8-of-14 three-point shooting. He has no conscience. And the Magic damn well better close out on him if they hope to win.

And ohbytheway, the Nuggets also have the league's highest-scoring duo: Carmelo Anthony and Allen Iverson. The theme for the Magic tonight has to be DEFENSE.

Of course, the biggest story in this game is the (overblown) "feud" between Dwight Howard and Stan Van Gundy. How will Dwight respond in his first game since his coach called him out for not playing good defense? Brian Schmitz guarantees Howard will go for 20 points and 20 rebounds, even though he'll be matched-up with Marcus Camby, the league's leading rebounder and shot-blocker. However, a big night for Dwight isn't out of the question: Mark Blount (!) managed to post 18 points and 13 boards against Camby last night, and he's Mark Blount.

Anyway, look for the Nuggets to cream us. Sure, they're on the second night of a back-to-back, but that certainly didn't bother the Cavaliers on Monday. Unless the Nuggets flat-out miss their shots, they have this one in the bag. Accuscore disagrees, as the Magic won 62% of the game simulations it ran. Don't count on it. We are not a good team right now.

For some really super-cool Nuggets p.o.v., check out Pickaxe & Roll. Jeremy, who runs the site, does a great job analyzing Nuggets games with video. Check out this video breakdown of the Nuggets' first game against the Magic, which resulted in a Denver win thanks to Anthony Carter's 14th fourth-quarter points.

Tipoff's at 7. Go Magic.

The Cavaliers' Larry Hughes scores an easy 2 of his season-high 40 points in Cleveland's 118-111 victory over the Orlando Magic on Monday.
Photo by Fernando Medina, NBAE/Getty Images

This loss (boxscore | GameFlow) might be the most disappointing one of the season. The Cavaliers were playing their fourth game in five nights, the second game of a home-and-road back-to-back. They didn't arrive in Orlando until 1:30 PM yesterday. Meanwhile, the Magic had two days off and were playing just their fourth game in seven days. Additionally, the Cavaliers were without the services of rotation players Daniel Gibson, Sasha Pavlovic, and Anderson Varejao. How the Hell did they manage to beat us?

We let them. It's that simple. We had just a three-point halftime lead, and I was never comfortable with it. Our third quarter was one of the worst of the season, as Cleveland scored 34 points on 62% shooting. Larry Hughes scored 23 points (on 6-of-7 shooting!) in the period, one short of the Magic franchise record of points scored by an individual opponent in a quarter. Keyon Dooling, the Magic's best on-ball defender and the player most capable of shutting down Hughes, missed the game with a sprained mid-foot. Dooling would have certainly been able to keep Hughes in check, but Larry Hughes is still Larry Hughes. There's no reason why he should be the one guy to beat your team. Look at the picture I used at the top of this entry. There are literally no Magic players in the picture as he lays the ball in. It's disgusting and embarrassing.

There's also the matter of Dwight Howard being dissatisfied with his role on the team. Reportedly, Howard's breather in the middle of the fourth quarter was to make an example of him. He and Stan Van Gundy had a "conflict," and apparently Van Gundy wants Dwight to focus more on his rebounding and shot-blocking. From John Denton:

"He had 23 15-plus rebounds in the first 41 games and he has one in the past 12 games. He didn't even have a double-figure rebounding game (on Monday). It's a matter of focus and his focus is on the offensive end and he gets discouraged when he doesn't get the ball. I don't think, I know, that the numbers prove that what we need him to focus on to win is defense and rebounding. But that's not what he wants to do right now, so we have a little bit of a conflict."

Both Dwight and Stan have legitimate beefs. Dwight is an All-Star for a reason: he's a damn good player. He leads the team in scoring despite being the third option on offense, and he hardly saw the ball last night after the first half. In periods one and two, Howard shot a combined 6-of-9 for 13 points. In periods three and four, he shot a combined 0-of-2 for 3 points. He has every right to be ticked, especially when everyone else in the starting lineup attempts at least one more shot than he does, as was the case last night. At the same time, it shouldn't take more touches to make Dwight happy; he should be trying hard on defense whether he shoots 25 times or 2 times.

The loss makes us 1-3 on our 5-game homestand going into the All-Star break. Clearly, we have work to do. A few days ago, Stan told the Orlando Sentinel he wanted his team to think of the homestand, as well as the two road games immediately after it, as "a playoff series." If the team's poor play of late is indicative of how it will play in the postseason, there's no question we'll be hitting the golf links sooner rather than later.

For what it's worth, Hedo Turkoglu (25 points, 6 rebounds, 5 assists) was the only one of our guys to play well tonight. Jameer Nelson scored 22 on 7-of-14 shooting, and got to the foul line 10 times, but he also committed 5 turnovers.

In light of last night's defeat, I'm considering changing this site's URL to www.heyorlandomagicpleasestoplettingcrappyplayerslikelarryhughestakesomanyeasyshots.com.

Speaking of funny URLs, the guys at Hey, Larry Hughes! Please Stop Taking So Many Bad Shots! have written an open letter to Rod Thorn of the New Jersey Nets, imploring him to trade Jason Kidd to Cleveland for Hughes:

The future’s name is Laura Larry Hughes. Larry is 40-point-scorer. He’s a slasher. He even has tattoos - very cool tattoos of tough things that give him street-cred. And 3 years ago, when he played for the Wizards, Larry had a lot of steals. THOUSANDS OF STEALS. More steals than any player every recorded in the history of the NBA. You like steals, don’t you Rod?

Well, there is something to be said for wanting to sell high...

Our next game is Wednesday night against Denver. Without Keyon Dooling to check Allen Iverson, it's going to be a long night. Remember when the Answer hung 60 on us in 2005? It might get a lot worse than that on Wednesday. Be prepared.

	vs.
18-28		29-18
Wachovia Center
7:00 PM
Sun Sports
Probable starters:
Andre Miller	PG	Carlos Arroyo
Willie Green	SG	Maurice Evans
Andre Iguodala	SF	Hedo Turkoglu
Reggie Evans	PF	Rashard Lewis
Samuel Dalembert	C	Dwight Howard

Lots of weird storylines heading into tonight's action. The two teams have combined to play 93 games, yet have not played each other once. The 76ers are 10 games below .500, yet just 1.5 games out of a playoff spot in the Eastern Conference. Odder still, they won their last game by 43 points. Yes, the Philadelphia 76ers, post-Allen Iverson, beat a team by 43 points. Next thing you know, Joe Johnson will make an All-Star team.

Oh, wait. Crap.

I'm most interested in seeing how Hedo Turkoglu plays in his first game, post-All-Star-snub. Hopefully, he'll do his best Al Thornton impression. Thornton, who plays for the Los Angeles Clippers, was left off the roster for the Rookie Game at All-Star Weekend. He subsequently dropped 33 points on the Hawks in a 95-88 victory. I hope he dunked on Joe Johnson's head. For more notable examples of players going absolutely apeshit nuts after getting snubbed, check out today's post at 20 Second Timeout.

The player who most worries me is Andre Miller. He's great at posting-up smaller guards, much like Chauncey Billups. He's going to give Arroyo and Jameer Nelson fits. Additionally, he throws some unfairly awesome outlet passes, like this alley-oop to Andre Iguodala from about 60 feet away. But don't let that highlight clip fool you into thinking the 76ers are a running team. Despite having young studs like Iguodala, Willie Green, and Louis Williams, they're only 22nd in the league in pace factor.

Anyway, Dwight Howard gets to compete against one of the few players in the league who can legitimately challenge him for rebounds. Reggie Evans, whom the Magic were reportedly interested in acquiring last summer, is 8th in the league in Rebound Rate, ahead of such luminaries as Tim Duncan, Andris Biedrins, and Carlos Boozer. Samuel Dalembert, who will guard Howard, is 20th. I can't mention Dalembert without throwing in the infamous Pat Garrity Dunk Mix. The following video is completely real. Do not adjust your screen.

For your 76ers fix, check out Sixers 4 Guidos.

See you at 7. Go Magic.

Short preview today because I went to see Juno last night. Do yourself a favor and go see it, just not at game-time tonight. This should be a good one because both teams are looking to legitimize themselves in their respective conferences. Are the Nuggets for real? What about the Magic? We'll get a pretty good idea after tonight.  

	vs.
21-13		23-14
Pepsi Center
9:00 PM
Sun Sports HD
Probable starters:
Anthony Carter	PG	Jameer Nelson
Allen Iverson	SG	Maurice Evans
Carmelo Anthony	SF	Hedo Turkoglu
Kenyon Martin	PF	Rashard Lewis
Marcus Camby	C	Dwight Howard

I've listed Nelson and Maurice "Mogans" Evans as the starting guards because they played well together Wednesday night in Los Angeles, but it's really anyone's guess as to who will start back there at this point. Mark Price and Brooks Thompson could suit-up for us and I wouldn't be surprised.

Be sure to check out Pickaxe And Roll, the newest member of the SB Nation team, for your Denver Nuggets news.

When I get bored -- which is frequently -- I browse eBay for Orlando Magic goodies. Today, something truly unique caught my eye: this authentic Dwight Howard jersey. Notice anything unusual?

Oh, it looks legitimate, and it may be. The dazzle fabric used on those jerseys must be hard to fake. But here's what gets me: the Magic ditched that design two years before they drafted Howard in 2004. And when the Magic choose to wear throwback uniforms, they go with ones from the pinstriped era. All these facts lead me to wonder just where the heck the seller got this jersey.

There's also this Howard throwback jersey, which looks suspect because the number font doesn't match up with the actual on-court model. Ordinarily, such incongruity wouldn't worry me. However, since the seller bills these jerseys as authentic, I am a bit alarmed.

The weirdness isn't limited to the Magic, though. The seller also offers this Allen Iverson jersey and this Carmelo Anthony jersey, also with a design that predates those players' respective arrivals in Denver.

I'm not calling the seller a fraud -- after all, s/he does have 98% positive feedback -- but these jerseys do indeed raise a few questions. What do you guys think? Are they real or fake?