The losing was so bad that Matt Goukas summed the evening in one sentence. Goukas at one point in the first half says, "Arroyo travels and Brian Hill has a headache." He was referring to the call on the floor after an obvious traveling violation by Carlos Arroyo and the camera switching to Brian Hill with his head pointed down and rubbing his forhead. There was uncontrollable laughter for at least 2 minutes in my household until reality set in. The team sucks right now. About the only thing going for the Magic right now is the minor miracle that J.J. Redick was on the floor for more than 2 minutes.
While I would love to give you an insightful breakdown of what is wrong - I'm not sure I or anyone can pin it down. I thought Grant Hill needed to pick up his scoring and be more involved in the offense in order to get the games closer. Well, Hill had 21 points and we still lost big. But there are a few things that stand out in this game that seem to habits for this team. First, the Magic have poor execution finishing the fast breaks they do get. We know Hill, Nelson, Howard and even Turkoglu can finish on the break - so I have to attribute this with the team playing uptight. They are thinking so hard about not turning the ball over that they give up hard cuts to the basket. Only 13 assists while committing 16 turnovers will not help much either. And our beast, Dwight Howard, has been very mortal like as of late. Howard only grabbed 7 rebounds.
Here is what I do know. Dwight Howard has to get more touches and be a consistent factor in the offense. No one else on the team right now is playing well enough to draw the kind of attention he does. Along with Howard, Grant Hill needs to have the ball in his hands more often. Hill is a playmaker, let him make plays. Freedom. While I personally favor the structured and discplined game of basketball, this team is just thinking way too much about what it takes to win. Maybe the coaching staff needs to loosen things up a little and get the team thinking about basketball. We know they can play defense. We've also seen the intensity on defense pickup when the offense is working. Maybe the answer is to let the team play free a little on offense and see where it takes them. The fourth quarter execution is certainly not working out very well.
Regardless of opinion, all we can do is keep supporting the team and hope the real Magic come back soon. I definitely miss the team from the beginning of the year. Win or lose, I miss the effort they were putting into the games. That seems to be missing as of late.
