Stan Van Gundy gives Rashard Lewis a high-five after the Orlando Magic defeated the Cleveland Cavaliers, 104-90, on Monday night. Lewis scored 21 points for Orlando.
Photo by Gary W. Green, the Orlando Sentinel

Noted NBA scribe Ira Winderman wrote this weekend that the Magic are "an  all-or-nothing jump-shooting team." In the first half of tonight's game against the Conference-rival Cleveland Cavaliers, they were "nothing." In the second half, they were "all," hitting 8 of their final 12 three-point tries to quickly erase a 10-point, third-quarter deficit. They went on to win by a final score of 104-90. Here's the boxscore.

I want to give our guys a lot of credit: they gutted out a tough win. We got of to a tough start on the offensive end -- how does 1-of-9 from the field sound to you? -- and were hampered by foul trouble on the defensive end. And when LeBron James slammed-down a Damon Jones airball towards the end of the first half to give the Cavaliers a five-point lead, I had the feeling that Cleveland was headed for an easy win.

Not so, however. Our six three-pointers in the third quarter -- including five in a three-minute span -- swung the momentum back our way. We started the fourth quarter on a 9-2 run, and after that I never doubted the outcome. When our guys are nailing their threes, especially at home, we're a tough team to beat.

But it wasn't just the three-ball that kept us afloat. The Cavaliers, even with the recently acquired Ben Wallace and Joe Smith, could not contain Dwight Howard down low. Dwight shot just 6-of-14 from the field -- due in large part to some hacks by Wallace and Zydrunas Ilgauskas that went uncalled -- but made up for it with an 11-of-15 showing from the foul line. Howard also got Ilgauskas and Anderson Varejao in foul trouble. In fact, the only negative in Dwight's game tonight was his tendency to goaltend: he was called for three illegal swats in tonight's game, and none of those shots had a prayer of going in anyway. Indeed, with some better shooting nights from Hedo Turkoglu (5-of-16) and Jameer Nelson (2-of-12), as well as some shot-blocking discretion from Howard, this win certainly could have been by a much wider margin.

Tonight's convincing, come-from-behind victory over a well-respected opponent puts the Magic 21 games over .500, makes them winners of 5 straight games, and owners of a 12-3 record since the All-Star break. Yes, many of the wins in that stretch have been over inferior teams -- New York, Atlanta, the L.A. Clippers, Miami, and Indiana, to name a few -- the Magic are at least taking care of business, which is something they failed to do earlier this season when they lost to Atlanta and to Indiana. They've also won some quality games in this most recent stretch, including the 18-point drubbing of Detroit and tonight's win over Cleveland.

The Magic have Tuesday off before playing the Wizards on Wednesday. Let's hope they don't rest on their laurels, though. The real season doesn't begin for another month.

Final notes:

• Stan Van Gundy called upon Brian Cook when Rashard Lewis picked up his second foul in the first period. Cook played only a shade under 7 minutes, but that didn't stop him from taking 7 shots and committing 3 fouls...
• ...which lead to significant playing time for Pat Garrity. The most-tenured current Magic player scored 5 points and grabbed 3 rebounds tonight, and worked his tail off on both ends of the floor. Hats-off to him, and hats-off to Stan Van Gundy for trusting him enough.
• Cleveland is a very poor offensive team. For whatever reason, Delonte West brought the ball up on the majority of the Cavaliers' possessions, and frequently the shot-clock ran down to below 10 seconds before the offense really started moving. Luckily for them, they get plenty of second-chance opportunities, and they play stifling defense.
• A Saint Patrick's Day prank? Both of the numeral 8s on Pat Garrity's jersey were upside-down tonight. Here's the front view from Gary W. Green and the back view from Fernando Medina. Notice how the larger "hole" in the 8 is on top in both instances? That's wrong.
• Jameer Nelson was straight-up awful tonight. West, his college teammate at Saint Joseph's, got the best of him frequently, even managing to block two of his shots. And one of West's 2 offensive boards came after Nelson simply forgot to box him out. He ran the offense okay, I guess, but one of his three turnovers was an absolutely boneheaded outlet pass that he telegraphed. Cleveland's Sasha Pavlovic snatched it with ease, then threw the ball ahead to LeBron James for a three-pointer.

Not to pile on Otis Smith, but the Magic are the only Eastern Conference team currently over .500 not to make at least one roster move to improve itself in the past month. To recap:

1. Boston Celtics (44-12)
   • Sign forward P.J. Brown out of retirement
   • Sign free-agent guard Sam Cassell (bought-out by the Los Angeles Clippers, a decision with which ClipperSteve does not agree)
2. Detroit Pistons (42-16)
   • Acquire guard Juan Dixon from the Toronto Raptors for center Primoz Brezec
   • Sign free-agent center Theo Ratliff (bought-out by the Minnesota Timberwolves)
3. Orlando Magic (37-23)
4. Toronto Raptors (32-24)
   • Acquire center Primoz Brezec from the Detroit Pistons for guard Juan Dixon
5. Cleveland Cavaliers (32-26)
   • Acquire forwards Joe Smith and Ben Wallace from the Chicago Bulls for foward Drew Gooden and guard Larry Hughes
   • Acquire forward Wally Szczerbiak and guard Delonte West from the Seattle SuperSonics for forwards Donyell Marshall and Ira Newble

Okay, maybe the Raptors getting Brezec from the Pistons doesn't count, but the fact remains: the teams around us are at least trying to improve, and we aren't. The Magic, as constituted the day of the trade deadline, were certainly not talented enough to defeat Boston, Detroit, or Toronto in a seven-game series. Now? They're arguably not talented enough to take down Cleveland, either. Even more troublesome is the fact that Toronto and Cleveland are potential first-round playoff opponents for us, which makes the possibility of an early vacation for us much more immediate.

As MME wrote at Bold 'n' Blue, the Magic are the only team in the NBA this season to beat Boston and Detroit twice each. However, one win against each of those teams came on a game-winning shot, and another came down to a missed last-second shot by the opponent. Only one, the most recent victory over the Pistons, was decisive by any stretch of the imagination.

On the day of the trade deadline, I considered Detroit the most formidable of any of these plus-.500 teams. Now that Boston has added two talented, savvy, playoff-proven veterans, I'm even more frightened of them. In last season's playoffs, Detroit's Chris Webber and Dale Davis (who no longer play for the Pistons) hacked Dwight Howard into a funk he could not shake. They intimidated him. The Celtics now have P.J. Brown, who can similarly pester Dwight. Celtics coach Doc Rivers can also dust-off Scot Pollard, who is good for six fouls a game. Meanwhile, Sam Cassell has 115 games of playoff experience, and still has the skills to pick-apart younger point guards; see this season's 35-point undressing of the Pacers' Jamaal Tinsley for proof.

Theo Ratliff is finally healthy, and he gives the Pistons the same toughness that Davis and Webber provided them last year. He's still a good shot-blocker, and can be trusted in late-game situations; in the fourth quarter of Game 7 in a playoff series, with Rasheed Wallace fouled out, Pistons coach Flip Saunders will go with Ratliff over emerging youngster Amir Johnson 11 times out of 10.

Cleveland is similarly tougher with Ben Wallace and Joe Smith. Even with Wallace's declining skills, he's still more of a banger than Drew Gooden ever was or ever will be. Adding those two guys to a frontcourt that already boasted Zydrunas Ilgauskas and Anderson Varejao makes the Cavaliers a team built for hard-nosed playoff basketball. Also, they have LeBron James.

As for Toronto, they're already a better team. As ESPN.com's John Hollinger mentioned yesterday (Insider, although it's free for right now), Toronto has a better point differential than we do, and point differential is a better indicator of a team's ability that won-loss record is:

Let's put it more simply: The Raps aren't beating people, they're killing them. Toronto topped Milwaukee by 31, Washington by 39, Miami by 32, Minnesota by 23 and 22, New Jersey by 18, Orlando by 17, and New York by 23. In a 16-game stretch, half their games were blowout wins.

Sum it up and you'll see in that modest-looking 16-game stretch [during which Toronto is 10-6] the Raptors are outscoring opponents by an impressive 10 points per game.

Chris Bosh and Dwight Howard play well against each other, so the real difference-making factor for the Raptors in a series against us is the point guard tandem of Jose Calderon and T.J. Ford. There's no way that either Jameer Nelson or Keyon Dooling can shut both of those guys down; they get into the lane at will and have the three-point shooters to make defenses pay for collapsing on them. The Raptors, as a team, shoot 40% from beyond the arc, is tops in the NBA.

So should we just give up and concede the conference to these teams? No, of course not. We can beat any of these teams in a playoff series, but the odds are decidedly not in our favor. After reading this post by Matt at Hardwood Paroxysm, I decided to contact him to chat about D-League players who could help Orlando. Click "Permalink" below to read what he had to say.

Continue reading this post »

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.
32-20		28-22
Amway Arena
7:00 PM
FSN Florida
Probable starters:
Jameer Nelson	PG	Larry Hughes
Maurice Evans	SG	LeBron James
Hedo Turkoglu	SF	Ira Newble
Rashard Lewis	PF	Drew Gooden
Dwight Howard	C	Z. Ilgauskas

The Cavaliers got trounced last night, 113-83, on their home floor. Already missing Daniel Gibson, Drew Gooden, Sasha Pavlovic, and Anderson Varejao, they lost Damon Jones to a sprained ankle and Zydrunas Ilgauskas to back spasms. They're injury-ravaged, on the second night of a back-to-back, and not that great a team.

I've been ill (as in "physically sick," not as in "cool" or whatever those kids call it these days) all weekend and I'm still recovering. My post output might drop this week. Sorry about that.

The game's at 7, and it's Brian Cook and Maurice Evans autographed photo night at the Amway Arena. Get excited!

...and go Magic.

UPDATE: Happy 32nd birthday to Tony Battie! Too bad he's not healthy to play against his former team...

Positive Reactions from a Magic Perspective:

• John Hollinger (Insider) says the deal makes sense for the Magic for two reasons. However, since I am not an Insider subscriber, I can't specify what those reasons are.

Wish I had more to tell you on this one. I trust Hollinger's analyses... usually.

Negative Reactions from a Magic Perspective:

• Believing in Magic:

  [T]his could be the worst deal I’ve ever seen Orlando make...and they’ve made quite a few blunders.

  I'm not sure if it's a bad deal yet, so it's certainly not in Varejao-and-Gooden-for-Battie territory.

• The Howeva Files:

  On paper, this trade makes it look like the Magic got slashed with a ginsu knife.

  Rated R for language.

Positive Reactions from a Laker Perspective:

• Brett Edwards at FanHouse, regarding Brian Cook:

  Good riddance, you stiff.

  Well.

• Forum Blue and Gold:

  This trade strikes me as a win for the Lakers, I’ll miss the consistency of Evans but this is Sasha [Vujacic]’s chance to show that he is ready to be Kobe [Bryant]’s backup (and his last chance to prove it).

  By all accounts, Vujacic is a terrible player, so if the Lakers are okay with giving him major minutes if it means dumping Cook... that says a lot about Cook.

Negative Reactions from a Laker Perspective:

• None

Further Details on Cook and Evans:
Kurt from Forum Blue and Gold was kind enough to pass along insight about Cook and Evans via email. Here's what he wrote:

On Cook and Evans, well, let’s start with the better half of the deal for you. Evans is a good, solid NBA backup two guard. He’s got a nice jumper and can hit the three if you give him a little room (35% career three and 36% last season). He’ll also give you a spectacular dunk or two this season, he’s more athletic than his game shows. He’s a good defender and plays well within a team system. Really, just a professional guy off the bench who has thrived in Detroit and in LA this year as part of a strong group off the bench.

Brian Cook is the Lakers fans whipping boy this season, and fans see his departure as a matter of addition by subtraction. On the bright side he can shoot the jumper and from three — it’s an ugly flat shot but he hit 40% from deep last year. Now, if you expect him to do a lot of rebounding, well, you’re out of luck, he gets some because he’s tall (5.7 per 40 minutes so far this season) but his heart isn’t in it. On defense you might as well put an orange traffic cone out for the opposing team to dribble around. Sorry for the pessimistic look, but maybe if your expectations are low he’ll look better in the uni.

In a second missive, he writes:

One of my commenters, George, made a good point about Cook I’ll pass along:

I think Cook might fare a bit better in Orlando with Howard getting all the attention down low. Originally, he was drafted to play alongside Shaq, so I guess one can draw a comparison in the scenarios.

Also, Cook got a bad rap because he and Vladamir Radmanovic were basically competing for the same role, but Radman has a much more rounded game (he can put the ball on the floor, Cook can’t). I hope this works out for you, I really like the core of the team they are building down there.

Indeed, the Lakers got the better end of the deal, shedding salary while simultaneously bringing in better talent. But lost in all this pessimistic talk from Magic fans' point of view is that Ariza wasn't working in Stan Van Gundy's offense. It's not about having the most raw talent on your team, but rather about having the most talent that fits into the system you're trying to implement. Since Cook and Evans shoot threes well, and since Ariza doesn't, the trade doesn't look too bad. We'll see how it works out.

Since Tony Battie went down with a torn rotator cuff, the Magic have been wanting for help on the front line. The Magic need help at the center and power forward positions if they expect to advance very far in the playoffs. Rebounding in particular is an issue. The starting frontcourt of Dwight Howard, Rashard Lewis, and Hedo Turkoglu has size -- each is at least 6'10" tall -- but only Howard can be counted on to rebound consistently. And the Magic haven't been getting much help on the boards from the guard positions, although Keith Bogans did haul in 9 last night. Essentially, we need rebounding, and we need it now.

How bad is the rebounding situation? We've managed to haul in a mere 23% of our missed shots, well below the average of 27%. Additionally, we've allowed our opponents to get 31% of their misses. Offensive rebounding is second only to field-goal percentage in importance to winning games. Thus, if they expect to win many games this season, the Magic need to toughen up on the boards.

All this background brings me to this free story on ESPN Insider, which details the 10 best available unemployed players, many of which are big men. Here are the bigs on the list, with their most recent rebounding statistics:

1. Anderson Varejao (11.3 per 40)
2. D.J. Mbenga (5.6 per 40)
3. P.J. Brown (9.5 per 40)
4. Chris Webber (9.6 per 40)
5. Dale Davis (11.8 per 40)
6. Chris Andersen (10.9 per 40)
7. Vitaly Potapenko (6.7 per 40)

Of those players, the one who interests me most is the ancient seasoned Dale Davis. He'll be 39 years old in March, but he's still a talented rebounder. More importantly, he would bring attitude to a soft, finesse-based Magic team that could use some toughness off the bench.

Don't worry about his lack of speed holding back the offense. Despite promises to run more often, the Stan Van Gundy-coached Magic are are 27th in the league in pace, using just 88.7 possessions per game. Last year, under Brian Hill, the Magic used 88.5 possessions per game. Dale Davis was able to fit in just fine with Detroit's slow, methodical offense last year; he'd do alright here too.

But I don't expect Otis Smith to act in haste to sign a big man. He's still waiting to hear back from the league about a medical injury exception, which would pay half of Tony Battie's salary this season, giving the Magic $2.7 million to spend on an available free-agent. Given that Brown and Webber won't play for such a low salary; and given that Mbenga and Potapenko aren't great rebounders; and given that Varejao and Andersen have their rights owned by other teams, Davis is the only player who seems to make sense for the Magic.

Of course, they could go the alternate route by giving minutes to Marcin Gortat and James Augustine. But I wouldn't advise that. The Magic need rebounding now, and Davis could step in immediately and provide that. There's no learning curve with Dale. Why not offer him the veterans' minimum, cut Bo Outlaw, and see what he can do?

Aggressive all night, Jameer Nelson floats a teardrop over the Cleveland Cavaliers' defense
Photo by Andrew D. Bernstein, NBAE/Getty Images

Well, it wasn't pretty, and it doesn't count in the standings, but we should still be happy that the Magic fought back after trailing early to defeat the Cavaliers by a final score of 90-86. Here's the box score.

I never thought I'd say this about the Magic, but they won the game at the free-throw line. After shooting just 70% as a team from the stripe last season -- 28th out of 30 teams -- the Magic shot 35-of-40 tonight, good for 87.5%. In contrast, Cleveland, which was 29th in foul shooting last season, shot a miserable 18-of-26 this morning. The plus-14 in attempts and plus-17 in makes was the real difference-maker here. Oh, and Dwight Howard was 13-of-16 from the free throw line.

That's not a misprint. Dwight Howard hit 81% of his free throws tonight. 81%. Dwight Howard. Wow.

Let me put it this way: it's encouraging that the Magic beat a 50-win team despite shooting 38.5% from the field and 27.8% from three-point range.

But even more encouraging was the play from Jameer Nelson. Playing for a contract extension, Jameer had his best game of the young preseason, scoring 24 points -- on just 10 field goal attempts, no less -- while dishing 6 assists. He would have had more of those if the shooters around him were more keyed-in. His penetration created wide-open looks for our wing players, and Keith Bogans in particular. When he wasn't dishing off penetration, he was laying the ball in or drawing contact to get to the foul line. Case in point: All 8 of Jameer's points in the decisive fourth quarter came off free throws. I'm sorry for ever doubting him. He works well in Stan Van Gundy's system, and I hope he sticks around.

Jameer Nelson has improved under Stan Van Gundy's guidance.
Photo by Fernando Medina, NBAE/Getty Images

As for the Cavaliers, they actually looked pretty good. Shannon Brown had 12 points on 3-of-11 shooting, which doesn't look so great, but you have to watch him to appreciate his play. He has a quick first step and a quick release on his shot. He'll make a pretty good successor to Larry Hughes once Hughes' ridiculous contract comes off the books. It'll be interesting to see how well this team plays once (if?) it gets free-agent holdouts Sasha Pavlovic and Anderson Varejao back.

I enjoyed ESPN2's broadcast. Mark Jones has a great voice and does a good job calling the game without talking too much. And in Hubie Brown, you've got one of the most knowledgeable basketball minds in our game, and you know you're going to get solid commentary from him night in and night out... even if he refers to Drew Gooden, whom he coached in Memphis a few years ago, as "Dwight Gooden" and Sasha Pavlovic as simply "Petrovic."

Okay, it may only be a preseason game against a team missing two of its top players, and against a team that sat its starters the entire fourth quarter, but it's hard not to be excited. Jameer Nelson is finally playing to his potential, Dwight Howard is dropping 31 points and 14 rebounds against a 7'3" non-stiff center, and the new offensive system is clicking.

Are you starting to believe in Magic?