Orlando Magic Blog

Group Blog talking about the NBA 2009 Eastern Conference Champions. Due to the amazing success of the 2009 playoff run comments are now frequently deleted to kill offensive comments, incoherence, or asininity. Comments can no longer be anonymous and require either a Blogger or OpenID account.

Friday, December 15, 2006

Magic struggles continue with loss at CHA

Behind Sean May's career-high 32 pts, off the bench no less, CHA (6-16, 4-8 home) cruised past the turnover-prone and injury-plagued Magic (15-10, 7-6 road) 99-89. The Magic have now dropped 6 of 8 games, and are now in 3rd place in the East, percentage points behind DET and CLE.

Rookie Adam Morrison snapped out of his slump, scoring 22 pts on 7 of 12 shooting, also off the bench. Emeka Okafor added 13 pts 11 rebs. For the Magic, KDooling, starting at SG, led with 20 pts. TDiener led the bench with 16 pts on 5 of 6 shooting, including 3 of 4 from 3 pt range. CArroyo added 13 pts, and DHoward 10 pts 12 rebs, though he shot just 2 of 8 from the FT line with 6 TOs. J.J. Redick added 5 pts in 20 minutes.

ORL (34 of 69, 49.3%) outscored CHA (33 of 81, 40.7%) from the floor 74-71. The Magic were 6 of 10 from 3 pt range, while CHA was 5 of 14. The FT difference was the story of this game, as CHA shot an outstanding 28 of 34 from the FT line, while the Magic shot just 15 of 23. Also, 23 TOs cost the Magic, and many of them were just plain foolish. CHA had just 10 TOs. The Magic AST/TO ratio was a poor 16-23, while CHA was much better at 17-10. The CHA bench (May, Morrison) outscored the Magic bench 54-36.

GHill, JNelson, HTurkoglu, and KBogans all sat out the game due to injury. Diener looked really sharp from long-range, and the team shot much better as a whole. Hopefully this bodes well for the future for the Magic. CLE comes to ORL in a big early-season matchup SAT night.

posted by Mike from Illinois @ 12:06 AM  

11 Comments:

  • At 12:45 AM, Blogger Mike from Illinois said…

    As much as we've complemented Otis Smith on his many shrewd moves in the last year, once again we were reminded THU night of the huge blunder Otis and Co. made in the 2005 draft, drafting Fran Vasquez. The Magic could have picked Sean May instead. CHA happily drafted him 2 picks later, and look how well he's doing now. Can you imagine starting Dwight at C, Darko at PF, and Sean May coming in off the bench for either one? Wow... what could have been. May abused the Magic THU night even worse than he abused Illinois in the 2005 NCAA championship game.

    Even though I have several doubts about Brian Hill, I'm not going to heavily criticize him in this current losing stretch. With all the injuries, nearly everyone's role on the team now is different, and no matter what player rotation Hill uses, the chemistry just isn't going to be there right away. The players that are in there have to be held accountable also, and they have to step up their play.

    One positive is that Diener and Redick are now seeing significant playing time, and they both looked better against CHA, especially Travis.

    Dwight usually has awesome games against CHA, but not THU night. Several silly TOs by Dwight... poor FT shooting... he look tired. I also am not going to criticize BHill for not playing Dwight 40+ minutes every game at this juncture. The Magic have played the most games in the NBA so far, and judging by Dwight's play against CHA, he could really use the rest. When the games become more spaced out later on, then he should be able to play 40+ minutes a game.

    With the injuries now and different player rotations that are going to have to be used, the Magic may very well continue to struggle for a while. Yes, some of Hill's substitutions and in-game adjustments during this losing stretch have been questionable, but it's up to the players to perform better when they are in the game, and pick up the slack with several key guys out with injuries.

     

  • At 1:33 AM, Blogger Sports on a Schtick said…

    Disappointing to see the Magic struggle on a nationally-televised broadcast, but oh well.

    I liked seeing Darko and Redick get a lot of minutes. The more tick for them the better. Howard was clearly frustrated and not in the game mentally. Ariza's tenacity, especially on the glass, was great to watch.

     

  • At 7:52 AM, Blogger Matt said…

    Once again we made super-stars out of average players. As I posted yesterday, the whole team shows the ill-effect of playing too many games in so little time, and they never had the chance of recovering from the gruelling road-trip. Thanks again goes to NBA schedulers for their foolish scheduling, throughout the years, but this one tops them all. Just imagine that at the far end of a 5 road-game out-west they had to play a 6th one at the east.

    Hill, however, could not be spared from continuing his foolish rotation. He mentioned that CHA's front-line was effective against ours; the question is then why 10 minutes goes to Garrity? Those minutes could have been given to Bo, who played so well, or to anybody else who at least would have been able to defend or shoot. I am thinking where would we have been last night without Travis? This guy was sitting on the bench forever, and would have never seen any playing time if Hill's hand was not forced due to injuries. J.J. was better than the night before but still lacks the decisiveness to pull up with the 3-point shot, like the one that he passed up for a 2 and missed. Him and Travis have to be the assistance that the Magic needs, since they have the fresh legs. I strongly recommend that Travis starts at two backed up by J.J. while Keyon backs up Carlos, for the time being.

     

  • At 7:56 AM, Blogger Matt said…

    The relief that we were looking for is on the way. After playing CLE on Saturday, we won't play again until Wednesday.

     

  • At 12:45 PM, Blogger Big Figure said…

    BSH's coaching strategy-"throw it in too dwight and watch him work". There's so many things wrong with that philosophy,that i dont think i have enough time in the day to state them all,but i will make one point,after the game i watched Timmy do his thing,and i noticed that when popovich calls for a tim duncan post up,timmy always makes a pass out of the double team for a shot or lay-up,then he got his first basket cleaning up an offensive rebound by one of his guards attacking the basket,which is the same role dwight should be playing for us,timmy doesnt quickly turn and face and try to get by the defender because he's scared he's gonna get it stripped like dwight does(usually dwight gets the ball stripped anyway when he tries that),no timmy seems to take the post up opportunity as a way to make his teammates better,then in the fourth quarter when teams arent so inclined to double he'll go to work on the block giving the defense a whole new look/perspective to deal with in the fourth quarter,and he only posts half the time the other half you have manu and tony parker running pick and roles with him giving him easy shot attempts off of bounce passes between the role for easy lay-ups and dunks something our guards dont excell at doing even if coached to do so,plus the fact that dwight gets so many post ups this early in his career is actually stunting his growth,if dwight were allowed to play off the ball and our perimeter was the focal point with more pick and roll with the purpose of making a pass instead of what our guards do on the roll and thats shoot everytime,we'd have much more success because their isnt a team in the league that could keep dwight off of the offensive boards,i'm tired of watching dwight go one on one and the team getting nothing out of it,in no way do i blame dwight for the current situation because coach hill deserves all the blame for his weak system or lack thereof,personally i dont think throw it in too dwight every possession constitutes as a system.

     

  • At 12:56 PM, Blogger Big Figure said…

    Case in point,when the magic started the season we had a great first game against the bulls but then started to struggle,part of the reason we came out of the struggle winning games is because BSH decided to take the ball out of dwights hands to start games,putting hedo down on the low block,dwight starts having some monster games being able to play his way into a game without having to be the offensive focal point,hedo gets hurt (even though hedo's game actually started to tail off before the injury)and we cant win a game,even worse at this point with all the injuries were forced to give dwight the ball,no one healthy on our perimeter can post.

     

  • At 2:56 PM, Blogger Mike from Illinois said…

    With the injury situation now, I like Matt's suggestion of starting Travis at SG, with Redick as back-up and having Keyon backing up Carlos. With Diener's dead-eye shooting. this could help the Magic get off to a strong start in games. If Dooling can come off the bench and play as well as he did yesterday, that would be a big boost for the team. It's something that BHill should consider, but he probably won't.

    When Jameer and Hedo come back from their injuries, it's imperative that the both of them start playing the way they're capable of, especially Nelson as the PG of the team. It's been really hard seeing the Magic struggle so much on offense the last 15-16 games. The last month of last season, the offense was doing so well and Jameer had a lot to do with that.

     

  • At 5:49 PM, Blogger OVERWADED said…

    This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.

     

  • At 5:50 PM, Blogger OVERWADED said…

    The Magic will continue to struggle until Hedo and especially Jameer come back.

    Three of our smartest players on the floor are out injuried right now (Hill, Jameer, Hedo), all of which have decents shots to spread the floor. In turn, defenses can collapse on Dwight that much easier.

    There is a reason the only time the Magic have looked decent is when Travis and JJ on the floor. Look at our starting 5 right now. Every single one of them think go to the basket to score 1st, and shoot outside as a last resort. Battie and Dwight never leave the painted area. Arroyo, Ariza, and Dooling continue to try and attack that area. That line up will never work.

    Starting Travis at the 2 is a good idea. We might have some mismatches, but at least we'll have 1 guy out there to spread the floor.

    Arroyo needs to stop playing with himself, and realize his job is to make the team better. Last night he finished the game with 1 assist?

    Seeing Battie on the floor is almost starting to bother me as much as Garrity. They are both players who used to do so much more than they are right now.

    I expect to see crappy basketball until we have some healthy players. Most of these guys have never played with each other, especially in game situations.

     

  • At 7:15 PM, Blogger Mike from Illinois said…

    In 52 minutes of playing time these last 2 games, Arroyo has a mere 3 assists. In fact, he has more turnovers with 4. When your starting pt guard has such a poor AST/TO ratio, the offense is going to struggle. Jameer had similar low assist numbers the last several games before he got hurt.

     

  • At 11:22 PM, Blogger Matt said…

    I tend to blame a lot on unfortunate scheduling. If the team doesn't turn around after the three days rest past Cleveland's game, something is seriously wrong. All this with disregard for coaching deficiencies, since I believe this team has the talent to compensate for coaching shortcomings.

     

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