Archive for the 'Magic' Category

Pistons eliminate Magic in five

Published by Matt Watson on May 14, 2008 in 2008 Playoffs, Magic and Shameless Plugging. 22 Comments

There’s been a lack of activity on my part over here today and last night (not that it’s stopped any of you), but that’s in part because I’ve been pretty active on FanHouse. Here are some highlights from last night:

  • Flip Saunders on Chauncey Billups taking his time returning:

    “It’s up to the players [to decide] when they’re right,” said Saunders. “And when they’re right, I don’t want them to have any hesitation, because if they’re not right and they have hesitation, they’re not going to play very good, to be honest. So, he’s got to feel comfortable as far as about it.”

  • Stan Van Gundy on Jameer Nelson’s “guarantee” as well as calling out the media for making lazy judgments:

    “What happens all the time is how well [we] play determines what you guys write about a team’s character and everything,” Van Gundy told the gaggle of reporters. “So automatically, if you play well, you have great character. And if you don’t play well, it’s because you don’t have the ‘resolve,’ and the ‘mental toughness’ and all of that. We have all of that. We have to play well.”

    This is an excellent point. I’ve grown increasingly sensitive to assigning character flaws to a team every time they lose. The Magic didn’t lose last night because they lacked character. In fact, the opposite is true: they held Detroit to 36% shooting, they out-rebounded them and they gave up only three three-pointers all night long.

    Unfortunately, they also turned the ball over 21 times (for 34 Pistons points) while Detroit set an NBA playoff record with three turnovers, including not one in the final three quarters. Orlando showed a ton of heart by staying in this game all night long, but in the end, the Pistons executed and they didn’t. That’s nothing to be ashamed of. The Pistons have been to six straight conference finals for a reason.

    The Pistons see this type of logic used against them all the time. When the Pistons lose, it’s not because they’re complacent, they simply don’t well every single night. When Rasheed Wallace has a bad shooting night, he’s not being lazy, he just couldn’t get into a groove. If you ever see me relying on cliche instead of reality, please call me out.

  • Jameer Nelson thinks the media made too much of his “guarantee:”

    After the game, slumped in a chair in front of his locker with his feet soaking in ice and wearing only a towel, a dejected Nelson reflected on his “guarantee” and the attention it attracted. “I didn’t guarantee a win,” he said. “I didn’t say, ‘we’re going to …’ I said ‘we have to go win, we’re going to come get this win.’ And the media took it out of proportion or whatever they want to do. The media always wants a story. I mean, I really don’t care what people write, you know?”

    I mean, he did say the Magic were going to win, but if you read my whole post, he explains himself.

  • I spoke to Rashard Lewis before the game about a handful of things, including how competitive this series actually was despite the fact that Orlando only won a single game:

    We won one game, but at the same time, the record doesn’t say how hard we’ve been playing, how tough we’ve been taking a team down to the wire. They’ve beat us three times, we’ve only beat them once, but I can guarantee you that every game they had to go out there and win the game, it wasn’t handed to them.

And last but certainly not least …

Rip Hamilton’s reaction after the game:

“I didn’t even see who blocked the shot, to tell you the truth. The only thing I’d seen was Tay flexing. I went up to Rasheed and I was like, ‘Uh, who blocked that shot? It must be Tay, huh?’

Pistons, Magic, elimination game

Published by Matt Watson on May 13, 2008 in 2008 Playoffs, Magic and Previews. 433 Comments

Enough said. I’m at the game for FanHouse — leave your thoughts in the comments.

Rashard has a little Chauncey in him

Published by Matt Watson on May 11, 2008 in 2008 Playoffs and Magic. 46 Comments

Rashard Lewis speaking after Saturday’s 90-89 loss:

“We had our chance and let it slip away. For some reason, I feel we’re still the better team,” Magic forward Rashard Lewis said. “We just made too many mistakes at the end.

“It was our mistakes, nothing they did. They still got to beat us one more time.”

For the record, I don’t fault him for this. All professional athletes have sizable egos — it’s a huge part of that drive that makes them stand out from 99.9999% of the world who’ll never draw a paycheck for playing sports. If certain athletes appear humble, they just have a better filter than others.

(And just in case the title doesn’t make sense to you, here’s a refresher.)

Pistons/Magic tensions spill into the media room

Published by Matt Watson on May 11, 2008 in 2008 Playoffs, Magic and The Media. 24 Comments

From Chris McCosky’s blog Friday afternoon:

So I go on this talk radio show down here Thursday afternoon. I thought they wanted a Chauncey Billups update. But no, this guy — I don’t remember his name — says, “Now that the Magic have control of the series…” And I stopped him. Control of the series? How does being down 2-1 with two games still to be played in Detroit give the Magic control of the series. […] It was his show, so I tried to be diplomatic. I said from the Magic point of view, sure, they probably feel like the tide had turned. But I said the Pistons didn’t feel that way at all. Well, the jackass just couldn’t accept that. He must asked me three more times, in three different ways, if the Pistons feared the Magic now. I was like, Dude, they have a healthy respect for the Magic, they always have. But they don’t fear them. My God, get a grip.

I was thinking about this — early in the series, the Magic players made a big deal about not being intimidated by the Pistons, not backing down and all that. But where did that come from? The Pistons never talked like they were out to punk the Magic. They never talked like they didn’t respect them. The Pistons were actually surprised that the Magic had that mind-set. So where did it come from? It came from the Magic’s own inferiority complex. They are the ones who felt punked. Their media buys into it and perpetuates it. Even this half-baked talk show guy was all, “I’m going to stand up to this Detroit writer. I am going to show how tough I am.” Whatever.

Here’s how tough this guy was. He apparently kept ripping on me AFTER I was off the air. Real braveheart, this guy. He had no retort when I was talking to him, but boy, he tore me up when he knew I couldn’t answer back. Piece of work. But that’s how they roll down here.

From Mike Bianchi of the Orlando Sentinel following Saturday’s game:

Many of us in the press room before the game could see this coming.

That’s when a hulking Pistons beat writer for the Detroit News nearly beat up undersized Orlando sports radio host Jerry O’Neill before the game. Even the Magic media came up small.

And that’s how we roll in Detroit. I’ve never seen this O’Neill fellow, but my money is on McCosky.

(And by the way, even the locals down in Florida are embarrassed by Orlando’s media. The Magic look like they’ll be good for quite some time — hopefully in a few years the media down there will catch up and learn how to act like a big league sports market.)

Update: McCosky explains what happened in his blog today:

Anyway, I walk up to him and I said, “You always rip on your guests once they are off the air and can’t respond?” He said something about how it was his show and for me not to tell him how to run his show. I questioned his courage and some other things and we went back and forth. I was holding my laptop, so it wasn’t like I was about to strike him. But I was up in his face, and I suppose I might have cursed a bit. Again, sort of what I do. I remember him saying that I talked down to him, and I said something like, I only talk down to stupid people. I suppose that wasn’t very nice.

It was getting pretty heated when Sherrod Blakely from Booth Newspapers stepped between us and guided me away. I am embarrassed how many times Sherrod has had to pull me away — usually its from a visiting camera guy or an overzealous security guard. God bless you, Sherrod.

His whole post is worth a read — if I blockquoted the interesting parts, I’d be re-printing the whole thing. You know, for a guy who says he’s not a fan of blogs, he does a pretty good job writing one. There’s obviously no place for this type of stuff in the actually paper but it’s certainly entertaining.

Who’s the odd man out in Game 4?

Published by Matt Watson on May 10, 2008 in 2008 Playoffs, Magic and Previews. 426 Comments

Word on the street is that Chauncey Billups will be a game-time decision. Even if he plays, I think we can count on seeing Juan Dixon and/or Lindsey Hunter active, but at whose expense? Will Jarvis Hayes be wearing a suit on the sidelines? Will Flip Saunders’ Amir-on-Shard experiment be scrapped? Will Walter Herrmann’s brief return to relevance die a quick death?

I honestly have no idea. Make your predictions in the comments, then tune in at 5pm for the game (FSN, ESPN) and leave your thoughts in the comments.

Game 3: Pistons and Magic

Published by Matt Watson on May 7, 2008 in 2008 Playoffs, Magic and Previews. 308 Comments

That’s what Chauncey’s controversial three-pointer looked like from the stands. (Well, that’s what it would’ve looked like from the stands if you’d been boozing for the first three quarters — that’s pretty blurry.) Personally, I have to agree with A. Sherrod Blakely:

You know what’s the best part of about tonight’s Game 3 matchup? It will (hopefully) put to bed all the shot clock controversy from Game 2.

If the Magic can’t win a game on their own floor, they’ll have a hard time convincing anyone that one shot at the end of the third quarter on Monday actually decided Game 2. In any case, the game just started — leave your thoughts in the comments.

Pistons go up 2-0 on Magic

Published by Matt Watson on May 6, 2008 in 2008 Playoffs, Games, Magic and Shameless Plugging. 60 Comments

I have all sorts of stuff from last night’s game going up at FanHouse this morning. Before the game, Rashard Lewis told me that the brewing war of the words between he and Theo Ratliff was over and done with:

“I’m a basketball player, I go out there to play basketball and not to trash talk. It was just something that he said and I responded to it. It wasn’t nothing personal, it was just me being a man and responding to what he said. But at the same time, I’m not that type of player. I go out there to play basketball and try to win for my team and let the trash talk stay on their side.”

After the game, Ratliff told me that Dwight Howard isn’t on the same level as David Robinson, Patrick Ewing and Hakeem Olajuwon … yet:

“He’s a phenomenal talent — his athleticism, his size, but he’s still young. He’s going to continue to get better and continue to get better and he’ll probably be at the status of those guys later on in his career.”

Jason Maxiell explained why he’s so freaking active on the court:

MW: At the end of the last series, Thaddeus Young had a pretty entertaining quote about you. … He said, Maxiell is crazy, he’s crazy crazy. What do you think about that, that’s a sign of respect, wouldn’t you say?

JM: Yeah, to a certain degree. I guess with my size, I got to keep moving, going for offensive boards. They don’t run plays for me, so the way for myself to score is to get to the board.

And, of course, the clock thing. The Pistons obviously got a gift, but the Magic refused to blame that one play for their loss:

“They didn’t start the clock and he made the shot, but I didn’t think that determined the game,” said Rashard Lewis. “We were still in the game, we were down two points at the time. We still had another full quarter to go, we were still in the game, but I think we made a lot of little mistakes that made us lose that game.”

You can’t get too upset about an iffy call when you go out and finish the game shooting 25% and committing five turnovers over the last 12 minutes. That whistle on Keyon Dooling for “pushing” Rip Hamilton before the in-bounds pass? That was bad, too, but the Pistons were already up three with the ball so it’s hard to say that was a game-changer, as well. I will admit those types of things add up over time, though. I’m willing to chalk some of it up to the refs being partly influenced by a LOUD crowd at the Palace.

Pistons, Magic, Game 2

Published by Matt Watson on May 5, 2008 in 2008 Playoffs, Magic and Previews. 253 Comments

I’m at the game for FanHouse — leave your thoughts in the comments.

Orlando gets chippy (and chirpy)

Published by Matt Watson on May 5, 2008 in 2008 Playoffs and Magic. 4 Comments

From my FanHouse post on Saturday’s game:

Things almost boiled over in the fourth when Rashard Lewis wrapped up Theo Ratliff under Detroit’s basket. Ratliff shook off the contact, but Lewis drew a technical, as well as an earful from Maxiell. “I wanted to make sure my teammate’s okay,” he said after the game. “We’re all family here, so I let it be known [if they] try to get physical, it’s not going to be that easy for them and we’re going to fire it back at them.”

When asked if the rough play affected the Pistons, Maxiell laughed. “Oh no, not at all,” he said. “We’re a rough team ourselves. We’re going to do the roughing.”

As Theo Ratliff explained later, though, he didn’t really need Maxiell’s help. From A. Sherrod Blakely:

“I told him (Maxiell) to calm down,” Ratliff said. “There’s no sense in guys coming to my rescue. I mean, that was Rashard Lewis. He tried to foul me hard, but he’s a three-man (small forward). It was no big deal.”

Shard isn’t known to be the most physical player in the league, but it doesn’t mean that he doesn’t have pride, and he didn’t appreciate hearing from someone on Detroit’s bench:

Ratliff’s comments made their way back to Lewis, who was visibly upset.

“You can have a lot of energy in five minutes a game,” said Lewis, referring to Ratliff’s limited role. “What’s he played? 15 games. Tell him to come out and guard me.”

But that’s the thing: the Pistons know they have a lot of energy playing five minutes at a time. As Flip Saunders explained during Saturday’s post-game press conference, it’s literally part of their strategy.

“[The] big thing is we try to send a lot of bodies at him. And we wanted to keep a fresh body on him all the time,” said Saunders. “I took Maxey out, I think five minutes, six minutes into the game. Some of the guys on the bench are saying, ‘Why take him out?’ I said because I want to keep somebody fresh on him, and our guys have to know that they don’t have to play 10 minutes, they can play six minutes and they can go as hard as they can, and hopefully what it’ll do is when you get in the third and fourth quarter, it’ll wear him down.”

And as Krista Jahnke explains, that’s just what the Pistons did on Saturday:

Maxiell worked the first five and a half minutes on Howard before Saunders subbed him out. Then Rasheed Wallace took over manning up Howard. Later, Antonio McDyess switched onto him, and for 12 minutes Ratliff helped out, too. When Howard put the ball on the floor, the Pistons would occasionally send help, but they battled him for the most part one-on-one.

“We’ve got so many guys running in there 6-10, big guys stepping in there after them,” Ratliff said. “They really can’t match up with us.”

Pistons and Magic kick off the second round

Published by Matt Watson on May 3, 2008 in 2008 Playoffs and Magic. 144 Comments

I’ve been severely negligent in my DBB duties, but all of you seem to have gotten along fine without me. In any case, um, yeah, the Pistons beat the 76ers! And now they play the Magic! Starting tonight, in fact. Just to be thorough, here’s the complete schedule:

  1. TONIGHT @ the Palace, 7:30pm, TNT
  2. Monday, Cinco de Mayo @ the Palace, 7:00pm, TNT
  3. Wednesday, May 7 in Orlando, 8:00pm, TNT
  4. Saturday, May 10 in Orlando, TBD
  5. (if needed) Tuesday, May 13 @ the Palace, TBD
  6. (if needed) Thursday, May 15 in Orlando, TBD
  7. (if needed) Sunday, May 18, TBD

To be honest, I’m not sure the Sixers series could have worked out any better for the Pistons. They got a needed slap in the face to get their mindset right for the playoffs while also avoiding the dreaded lay-off between series that often results in rust seeping in. (Remember the difference between how the Pistons played immediately before and after the All-Star break? It was like night and day.) There’s a rhythm to playing every other day, and that’ll be maintained through the first three games of the series.

Also, I’m actually quite confident most of those if-needed’s will be needed. This season’s squad is light years better than what we saw 12 months ago. Dwight Howard is by far the most dominant force in the NBA, period, and he’s surrounded by guys who love to shoot from long-distance. In a lot of ways, they remind me of the Houston Rockets teams that won back-to-back titles during Jordan’s vacation. That said, Orlando’s backcourt will haunt them. Jameer Nelson and Mo Evans? Those two couldn’t crack Detroit’s rotation, let alone starting lineup. It’s on Chauncey Billups and Rip Hamilton to exploit that matchup ever night.

If you’d like a Magic-tinted view of the series, you’re in luck, because Third Quarter Collapse is one of the top NBA blogs in existence. Ball tips at 7:30 on TNT. I’ll be at the Palace for FanHouse; you, of course, are welcome to stay here to leave your thoughts on the game in the comments.

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