You may remember this post from May, in which I tried to navigate the NBA's salary cap to see what the Magic could do this summer in free agency. Now that we're closer to the beginning of the free-agent signing period (Wednesday, July 9th), I thought I'd take another look at it. I've presented my findings in a Q-and-A format. For this post, I consulted Larry Coon's NBA Salary Cap F.A.Q., Storyteller's Contracts, ESPN's 2008 NBA Free Agent list, and the Orlando Magic's official roster page. We hope you find this guide helpful.

Question: How many players do the Magic have under contract next season, and what are they owed?

Answer: Currently, the Magic have 11 players under contract, owed a total of $60,553,339 next season. While the league has yet to release its official salary-cap data, we can say with absolute certainty that the Magic are over the salary cap. Here's how everything breaks down by player...

Note: for this table, "Age" refers to a player's age as of October 31st, 2008, when we expect the NBA season to begin.

... and by position...

Make the jump to read the rest of the Q-and-A.

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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.

Hedo Turkoglu wonders how he managed to play so poorly walks back on defense in disbelief of John Goble's call.
Photo by Rich Pedroncelli, the Associated Press

Once again, the Magic came out flat against an inferior opponent, and despite a furious fourth-quarter rally in which they matched their first-half scoring with 38 points, the Orlando Magic fell short, 104-100, to the shorthanded Sacramento Kings. Here's the boxscore. And here's the Game Flow, which shows just how in-control Sacramento was for the whole game.

I confess: I tuned out of this game early in the fourth quarter because I needed sleep, which is a polite way of saying I didn't think there was any way in Hell we would win. But based on the approximately 39 minutes of basketball I did listen to, we were thoroughly outhustled and outplayed by a team that simply wanted to win more than we did.

After the game -- I did listen to the post-game show while getting ready for bed -- Stan Van Gundy called out Dwight Howard and Hedo Turkoglu for not playing their hardest, especially defensively. Dwight had a gaudy linescore: (27 points on 11-of-13 shooting, 15 rebounds) but he managed just one measly blocked shot. He also allowed Mikki Moore to grab 5 offensive rebounds and failed to discourage Beno Udrih from penetrating and dishing the ball out to open shooters. When Udrih wasn't doing that, he was finishing at the rim, with 16 first-half points.

For the first time this season, I'm comfortable saying Rashard Lewis was our best player. It only took him 36 games, but hey. Better late than never. Anyway, Lewis nailed 6 triples on his way to scoring 22 points, his highest scoring output since a post-Christmas outburst of 26 against the Knicks.

For us, it's time to hit the Panic Button. 22-14 is still a nice record, but it's also the same record that we had at this time last season. Changing the starting backcourt worked briefly, but in the past few games the team has still come out flat. It's not the lineup that's getting us off to horrible starts; it's something else. Attitude? Motivation? Bad mojo? Either way, something needs to change. Maybe that something is J.J. Redick's playing time. Redick made a rare non-garbage time appearance and scored 10 points in 8 minutes, leading the Magic's late rally. Considering the struggles of our other two-guards (Keyon Dooling and Keith Bogans combined for 8 points on 2-of-10 shooting), it might be time for Stan to consider putting J.J. in the rotation.

Here's a boxscore-related anomaly: the Magic's quarter-by-quarter scoring got better as the game went on (18, 20, 24, 38), but the Kings' was fairly consistent (26, 27, 25, 26). I wonder if there's anything to that...?

Anyway, it's back to the grind as the Magic play yet another mediocre, injury-riddled team (tonight, it's the Clippers) on the road tonight. Maybe we can right the ship with a victory, which would be our first of calendar year 2008.

Did I really just type that? We can "right the ship" with a victory over the Clippers. Where has this season gone?

	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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