Magic Must Now Deal With the Future
The Orlando Magic's Game 3 nose-dive pushed the countdown button on looking forward to the upcoming summer.
In the recesses of general manager Otis Smith's mind, games four through six became an on-the-job tryout.
The tryouts ended Friday night, and now the off-season officially launches.
Smith made drastic roster changes last off-season. Six new names joined the Magic roster at the beginning of 2009.
The make-up of the franchise had shifted to emphasize the inside aspect, of the team's inside-out offensive approach.
The Magic worked through some early season growing pains, to find their stride the last third of the season. The Magic continued to dominate in the post-season, sweeping the Charlotte Bobcats and the Atlanta Hawks in the first two rounds of the playoffs.
Then the Magic faced the test of defeating a championship team. Literally the same starting five that won the 2008 NBA Championship.
Orlando failed the test.
Here is the complete article from the Bleacher Report.
Here are the final playoff statistics for key Magic players:
Jameer Nelson: 19.0 ppg... 47.9% FG... 39.3% 3 PT FG... 4.8 asts... 1.0 stls... 2.5 tos
Dwight Howard: 18.1 ppg... 61.4% FG... 11.1 rebs... 3.5 blks... 3.6 to
Vince Carter: 15.5 ppg... 40.2% FG... 23.5% 3 PT FG... 4.2 rebs... 2.3 asts
Rashard Lewis: 12.9 ppg... 46.2% FG... 37.3% 3 PT FG... 5.6 rebs... 1.1 stls
Mickael Pietrus: 8.4 ppg... 43.8% FG... 45.9% 3 PT FG
J.J. Redick: 7.5 ppg... 42.3% FG... 42.9% 3 PT FG
Matt Barnes: 6.4 ppg... 40.0 FG... 37.5% 3 PT FG... 4.7 rebs
Marcin Gortat: 3.0 ppg... 65.4% FG... 4.4 rebs
Brandon Bass... 2.7 ppg... 53.8% FG... 1.1 rebs
Ryan Anderson: 2.6 ppg... 31.0% FG... 28.6% 3 PT FG... 3.4 rebs
Jason Williams: 2.6 ppg... 34.2% FG... 25.0% 3 PT FG... 1.6 asts
posted by Mike from Illinois @ 3:11 AM
4 Comments:
At 4:05 AM,
Mike from Illinois said…
In all honesty, I can't blame the post-season failure of the Magic on Otis Smith. He made a series of bold moves last off-season to try and improve the defending Eastern Conference Champs; however, those moves wound up failing because the Magic lost in the ECF.
Consider though that the Magic went well over the salary cap and into luxury tax territory for the first time in franchise history last off-season, with the approval of owner Rich Devos. I would expect nothing less this off-season.
Many experts are saying how much the Magic missed Hedo Turkoglu this season, because of how versatile he was offensively and because he was such a good passer. There is no guarantee, though, the Magic would have gone to the Finals this season if the Magic had re-signed Turk, as Turk's stats fell significantly with the Raptors this season. Signing Turk long-term would have hamstrung the franchise money-wise, also.
Vince Carter has only one more year remaining in his contract, and that could be very valuable to the Magic come next year's trading deadline.
Smith's signing of Brandon Bass can be construed as somewhat of a bust, as Bass doesn't seem to fit in the Magic's offensive or defensive scheme, and had many DNP-CDs.
Smith's matching the Dallas offer sheet for Marcin Gortat proved to be smart, as Gortat was a solid backup to Howard at center, even though Gortat's stats were not as good as the previous season.
I also hope the Magic retain Coach Stan Van Gundy. In his 3 years as coach, the Magic have had 52, 59, and 59 wins, and have gone to the ECF two years in a row along with a Finals appearance last season; that's a pretty impressive resume!
I don't see how some people can blame the ECF loss on Van Gundy; he wasn't perfect, but it's the players' fault for not executing properly on offense and defense.
At 10:15 PM,
Matt said…
We would see this summer how serious the Magic ownership is in the pursuit of championship beyond an empty shell of announcing it as a target. They showed their seriousness when traded for Vince last year, which I applauded at the time. Vince did not produce as expected, but even if he did, the team is not built to compete with either LAL or BOS. Say as you will about Rashard's creating mismatches at PF, but that would not hold true when it comes to big frontlines of LA and BOS, as well as it did not test well against CLE. If the ownership is serious about championship, then the team's structure has to change.
We need a true PF, and the city's son Amare is going to be on the market, and surely would love to play with Dwight. After all, he should be tired of banging with big centers while his built is more suited to PF position. We cannot move Rashard's contract but we can move his position to SF. Vince's expiring contract is attractive to some teams. There is also quite a bit of interest in Gortat. But I am not advocating Vince's trade, and rather believe in going over the salary cap, as I have always been. Devos family owes that much to the city of Orlando especially now that they are getting a new arena. The team as is built presently cannot get over the hump in the East, let alone beating the Lakers.
At 1:02 AM,
Mike from Illinois said…
Agreed, Matt.
At 11:11 AM,
Big Figure said…
I agree as well. Otis may choose to keep this team together though seeing as how they only had one year playing together. I love the sound of amare coming home at the same time. Matt/mike what about a straight up trade amare + 1 for rashard?
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