Celtics Fell Mighty Magic in Game 1

I was visiting Boston and communing with a fellow member of the JPO team yesterday, but due to the quirks of my travel schedule, I actually was not able to view most of the Orlando-Boston game and could only see highlights. The box score reveals a couple interesting quirks to me, though.

* Boston out-assisted Orlando, 21 to 10. Orlando had averaged nearly 19 assists per game in their first two post-season series. Look for Stan Van Gundy to emphasize more pick-and-roll action in Game 2, freeing up Vince Carter and Rashard Lewis for more easy shots.

* Relatedly, Orlando shot only 5 for 22 from three-point range, an unusually low clip compared to their regular-season percentage of 37%. Had they made a couple more of those, they could have nipped Boston.

Prior to this series, I told my co-bloggers that I predict Orlando in 6 games. I still stand by that prediction, although obviously my prediction now seems significantly less likely, both in a simple arithmetical sense and also due to what we learned about the teams' relative strengths.

Magic 99, Bobcats 88 (TrueHoop Defensive Writing Challenge Entry #1)

The Charlotte Bobcats succeeded in turning Superman into a mere mortal for four straight games. But it didn’t matter. Despite Dwight Howard’s chronic foul trouble, the Orlando Magic have swept the Bobcats out of the first round of these NBA playoffs. The Magic now await the winner of the Hawks-Bucks series, which is tied 2-2.

With Howard again in foul trouble for most of the game, the Magic ratcheted up their perimeter defense, holding the Bobcats' guards to collective 7-for-28 shooting (Stephen Jackson: 2-for-11; Raymond Felton: 3-for-8; Larry Hughes: 1-for-4; D.J. Augustin: 1-for-5).

The Bobcats led 45-43 after the first half on the strength of their half-court trap, which forced the Magic into 6 first-half turnovers. The Bobcats’ point guards, moreover, finally removed the lead insoles from their sneakers and manned up against Jameer Nelson, who had torched the Bobcats’ matador defense in the first three games of the series.

Orlando stayed in the game in the first half and compensated for Howard’s absence by relying on a 2-3 zone (or, as Kevin McHale called it, “man-to-man with zone principles” — whatever that is). The 2-3 zone goaded the weak-shooting Bobcats into brick upon brick from beyond the arc. What Orlando did not count on, though, was that offensively-challenged Tyrus Thomas would find the zone’s seams and knock down 8 straight wide-open jumpers.

The Bobcats, however, were unable to sustain their defensive intensity and hustle in the second half, forcing just one turnover and repeatedly giving up wide-open corner 3s to the Magic swingmen.

Hangin' Out The Passenger Side

Orlando has already lost 50% of their ten-man Finals rotation: Battie, Alston, Lee, Turkoglu and Gortat will all be playing elsewhere next year. That leaves just Howard, Lewis, Nelson, Redick, and Pietrus (plus Anthony Johnson, who saw no floor time in the Finals). Other than the 2006 Miami Heat, I can't think of any past champions that radically switched their supporting cast in the previous summer. Now, Vince Carter and Ryan Anderson are fine additions, but that's still only eight players under contract, who comprise salaries of about $66 MM. The league minimum of players is 13. While there are plenty of bench-level free agents to be had, I wonder how many of them can be contributors to a championship team. Robert Swift? Brian Skinner?
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UPDATE July 20th: I was wrong. I wish to amend my above post. Orlando re-signed Gortat, surprisingly. The loss of Alston is really not a dear blow, given that Orlando also has Tyronn Lue and Johnson on the bench to play PG. Orlando has also signed Brandon Bass and Matt Barnes as free agents. Both Bass and Barnes are good perimeter shooters, which fits with the team's current strategic model. This was actually a very good summer for Orlando, at least on paper. The loss of Turkoglu will hurt, but adding Vince Carter is spectacular.

So long, Magic Dynasty

Magic fans will likely be hurting from Thursday night's collapse for years. For the Magic, there is no "wait til next year" because their best scorer, Hedo Turkoglu, will be wearing another team's colors come next season.

Turkoglu has a player option for the 2009-10 season for $7.36 million, but recent reports indicate that he will opt out of his contract. And let's be honest: he'd have to be crazy not to do so. Turk has shown his mettle these playoffs, solidifying his place in the game as one of the game's best clutch shooters. The playoffs have also given Turkoglu to showcase his other talents -- his ability to get off his own shot from anywhere on the court; his ball handling skills (the Magic's offense flows through him on most of the Magic's half-court sets); and even his hitherto unknown defensive talents (that block on Kobe in Game 2 will have Kobe seething for months). Make no mistake: This is Superman's team, but when the Magic need to score, the ball will be in Turkoglu's hands.

The Magic just can't afford to re-sign Turkoglu at market price. The Magic's GM, Otis Smith, assured this two years ago when they inked Rashard Lewis to a 6-year $113 million max contract. I'm sure that it's not lost on Turkoglu (or on Dwight Howard) that one-dimensional, inconsistent Rashard Lewis makes significantly more than anyone on the team. But egos aside, with Dwight Howard on the books for $15.1 million next season and Lewis set to make $18 million next season, the Magic don't have space for a third player making near-max money. (Magic management have already indicated that they are loath to pay the luxury tax. )

Look for Turkoglu in a Raptors uniform next season. In addition to GM Bryan Colangelo's European fetish, the Raptors are badly in need of someone who can create his own shot and someone who can handle the ball. Turkoglu does both.

Mona Lisa, Mona Lisa, Men Have Named You

Q: What do Hedo Turkoglu, Rafer Alston, Dwight Howard, Mickael Pietrus, Tony Battie, and J.J. Redick have in common? (in contradistinction to their teammates Nelson, Lewis, Lee, and Gortat?) Answer below.

A: None of them has a tattoo!

Straight, No Chaser

Towards the end of overtime in last night's Game 2 of the NBA Finals, the Lakers took the ball with about 27 seconds left and a 3-point lead. ABC's Jeff Van Gundy (or was it Mark Jackson?) argued that Orlando should foul immediately. I thought this was bad advice. If you foul an 80% free-throw shooter, then there's a 64% chance that he'll make both shots and you'll be down by 5 points, and a 32% chance that he'll make only 1 shot and you'll be down by 4 points. There's only a 4% chance that he'll miss both shots and you'll have a chance to tie the game! My advice would be to try for a defensive stop and get the ball back. Granted, as Van Gundy observed, if the Lakers simply held the ball for 24 seconds, they would leave Orlando with only 3 seconds remaining to put a shot together. But they probably would not do that; rather, they would try for a score to augment their lead. This gives Orlando opportunity to either get a steal or a stop well before 24 seconds elapsed. It might not work, but the probability of success would probably be over 4 percent.

In the event, Orlando adopted perhaps a compromise strategy between my advice and Van Gundy's: they trapped the Lakers on the inbound pass (which was in the backcourt) and tried to effect either a steal or an 8-second violation. When this failed and the Lakers successfully advanced the ball across the half-court line, Orlando immediately fouled with 22 seconds left. They smartly chose to foul Lamar Odom, who is only a 62.3% free throw shooter (thus, a 14% chance that he would miss both, but an 86% chance that he would make at least one shot and make it a two-possession game). In the event, Odom made two free throws, Redick and Lewis missed three-pointers, and the ballgame ended as Jack Nicholson rose to congratulate the Magic's stars. A Coach Bhel would have handled things differently.

One Long Sleepless Night

What I find most amazing about Orlando’s success is that it comes despite a series of terrible decisions by the general manager, Otis Smith. Firstly, he tried to hire University of Florida basketball coach Billy Donovan as his new coach in 2007, before Donovan changed his mind five days after signing his contract. If you have an MVP-caliber player on your roster, your next coaching hire should represent an affirmative answer to the question, “Could I imagine this coach leading us to victory in the NBA Finals?” While Donovan won two championships as a college coach, the list of college coaches with NO pro experience who have succeeded in the big leagues is nil, to the best of my knowledge. Smith was rescued from his enormous blunder when Donovan took a hike and Stan Van Gundy agreed to coach Orlando. Van Gundy had already proved he could manage a team of raging adults when he took a young Butler-Odom-Wade-Jones-Haslem-Grant team to the second round of the playoffs in 2004 and took a team of Shaquille O’Neal plus Wade, Jones, and Haslem to a couple smiles of fortune away from the NBA Finals against the Pistons the next year. All parties are better off with the eventual coaching allocation.


Orlando, under previous general manager John Weisbrod, had a great summer in 2004, hauling two good draft picks in Nelson and Howard, and signing Hedo Turkoglu as a free agent. When Smith took over in June 2005, though, the general tenor of team management turned awful (or offal?). Orlando’s 2005 draft pick, Spanish center Fran Vázquez, refused to leave Europe despite earlier americophilic statements, and 2006’s draft pick, college yeoman J.J. Redick, proved to be a small and jittery shooter in the pros. In place of Vazquez, Orlando could have taken Danny Granger, Nate Robinson, Jason Maxiell, Linas Kleiza, David Lee, Monta Ellis … or if a center Smith coveted, Andray Blatche and Ronny Turiaf were available. In Redick’s stead, Orlando could have chosen athletic off-guards like Ronnie Brewer or Thabo Sefolosha. A host of point guards, including guys now manning contenders including Rajon Rondo, Jordan Farmar, Shannon Brown, and Kyle Lowry, were available in '06 as well; it would have been nice to have a feisty backup when Jameer Nelson was injured in February 2009.

Smith had a fine 2007, picking up Rashard Lewis and Marcin Gortat as free agents. However, he blundered quite a bit in trading Trevor Ariza, a skilled wing defender, to the Lakers for Brian Cook and Maurice Evans, neither of whom provide any of the oomph that T.A. does. To be sure, Ariza never showed any aptitude for three-point shooting or steals in the early part of his career, and he has burnished those skills in Los Angeles through extensive and patient practice. Still, Ariza was too athletic to discard so quickly. The 2008-09 period also worked out well for Smith, as described here: he drafted Courtney Lee and signed Mickael Pietrus and Anthony Johnson; later, he acquired Rafer Alston by trade when Nelson injured his shoulder.

I think this story illustrates that blunders in roster management are easily fixable. If Ariza were still on the roster, Smith would not have had reason or financial room to sign Pietrus; if a young PG like Farmar were understudying Nelson when the latter got injured, Farmar would have been thrust into the starting role, which frankly would not have got them to the Finals. (And acquiring Brian Cook later helped Smith acquire Alston.) It would have been nice if Fran Vazquez decided to play Stateside, but Marcin Gortat ably fills his role. But, but! — not all general managers are able to cleanse their errors. Whether out of misguided loyalty, unreasonable optimism, or a refusal to recognize one’s own poor judgment, many GMs choose to stick with their bad moves for far longer than is justified.

Tuesday Recap: Orlando Magic vs. Toronto Raptors

This is why I bought NBA League Pass: Last night’s game between the Orlando Magic and the Toronto Raptors did not attract national television coverage (er, U.S. national television – it was broadcast nationwide in Canada), but it pitted two of the Eastern Conference’s most promising young teams against each other.

It is striking just how similar the teams are. First, the Raptors and the Magic each possess one bona fide superstar in the form of a young, charismatic power forward. It has become increasingly clear this season that the torch has been passed from Kevin Garnett and Tim Duncan to Chris Bosh and Dwight Howard. Second, in Rashard Lewis and Jermaine O’Neal, each team carries on its roster an overpaid former all-star who knows he’s overpaid. Both the Magic and Raptors know that neither Lewis nor O’Neal is worth max money, but these young teams and their fans are just so impatient to join the NBA’s elite that they’ll dole out superstar money to merely solid players. Third, each team has an underappreciated, foreign-born, borderline all-star in Hedo Turkoglu and Jose Calderon. Fourth, although both teams have impressive starting line-ups, they are wafer-thin once you get past the starting five.

Despite the final score, last night’s game was deceptively close. More importantly, Toronto was playing without Calderon (and displayed a shocking lack of depth at the PG position). Also significant is the fact that for much of the game, the Magic was playing 6 on 4 basketball against the Raptors. (I count Will Solomon, the Raptors’ starting point guard, as an Orlando player – that’s how bad he was. The 3 turnovers don’t tell half the story – there should be a stat for “wasted possessions,” i.e., when the PG dribbles the ball going nowhere for 20 seconds and then makes the post entry pass so that Chris Bosh receives the ball outside the three point line with 4 seconds to shoot.)

And if Toronto fans needed another reason not to be discouraged, Chris Bosh’s play was off the charts. Not only did he put up huge numbers (44 pts, 18 reb, 14-19 FG), but he was diving for loose balls and seemed eager to take the team on his shoulders (something he hasn’t looked comfortable doing in years past). Additionally, it seems that Toronto’s twin towers experiment with J.O. and CB4 is paying early dividends. The two looked comfortable playing together, although I’d like to see them utilize the high-low post pass even more. Jermaine was also a beast against Howard, holding the Superman to mere mortal numbers. (The box score shows just one block for O’Neal – I swear I saw at least four not counting the number of bad/changed shots he forced the Magic players to make.)

While Toronto fans could take solace in a number of positives from yesterday’s game, at the end of the day, a loss is still a loss. Nevertheless, it has to be encouraging to have shut down Howard who made the Raptors defense look downright JV in the first round of last year’s playoffs.