An opposing team's scout sizes up the Magic
Coming off the NBA Finals, Hedo Turkoglu became a free agent to earn himself a bigger long-term contract despite the fact he was in a great situation with Orlando. I don't blame him because this probably will be his last deal, but at the same the ripple effect could be that he isn't as successful in Toronto and his former team in Orlando won't go back to the Finals. They might say they'd rather have Vince Carter, but it just seems to me that they were backed into a corner when Turkoglu became a free agent, and that they ended up having to make more changes to their roster than they would have liked.
Last year with New Jersey, Carter showed he still has a lot left in the tank. Scorers like him aren't easy to find, and this team obviously needed someone who can score so that Dwight Howard doesn't always have to be the guy -- especially after realizing they weren't going to keep Turkoglu. Now that he's playing with Howard and Rashard Lewis, Carter won't have the scoring burden that he would've had in New Jersey, which means he can be more efficient in how he plays by scoring 20 but with a higher field-goal percentage. I've never thought of him as a selfish player, though there's no question scoring is what he does best. I don't think coach Stan Van Gundy will allow Carter to become a one-on-one player here. After all, this is the first time Carter has been on a real contender. He's never been out of the second round, and with this opportunity before him, I'm sure he will adjust to the needs of the team as a scoring complement to Howard and their other guys. At 32, he has become more of a jump shooter who is very good from the three-point line, but I remain worried about him driving it. He doesn't do it as often, but you still have to guard against it.
Another big pickup who may change the way they play is power forward Brandon Bass, a prototypical energy-effort guy. He's going to run the floor and get second-shot opportunities by being quicker off his feet and more relentless than the other guy. More often than not, he'll be giving away the size advantage, so his effort and quick leaping are crucial. Orlando was ranked No. 27 in offensive rebounding (10.0) last year even though Howard led the league (4.3), which shows how poor the rest of the team was in that category. So Bass will help there. He can also make the mid-range jump shot when the ball is kicked out to him. Dallas even ran post-up plays for him on occasion. Defensively they can put him on the opposing scorer up front, which can take some of the defensive pressure off Howard and help keep him out of foul trouble.
The interesting thing about Bass will be how much he affects their style, and how much Lewis winds up playing at small forward after making the All-Star team as a non-traditional power forward last season. I don't think it hurts him individually on offense, because if he's at the 3, he can post up the smaller defenders. After all, that's the position he played his entire career at Seattle. The bigger question is whether they lose their matchup advantage where teams struggled defending them with their four perimeter scorers surrounding Howard, as opposed to the typical NBA lineup with a big, physical power forward. They were atypical last year, but this season they'll be more typical when Bass is on the floor with Howard.
At the same time, they had to deal with their own weaknesses because Lewis often faced a mismatch defensively trying to guard a bigger man. In the Finals, the Lakers were so much bigger and longer than Orlando, especially when Pau Gasol and Andrew Bynum were out there together. Bass can help defend some of those matchups. The bottom line is that you try to get your best five players on the floor whenever possible, which was really all that Orlando was trying to do last year. So it won't surprise me if we keep seeing Lewis as the starter at power forward, in which case they can bring Bass' energy off the bench. There are a lot of things Van Gundy might do with all of the new pieces he has.
Another thing that surprised me was -- on top of signing Bass -- they matched Dallas' offer sheet to backup center Marcin Gortat. On the one hand, you can't blame them for not re-signing Turkoglu. But if they couldn't afford to keep him, how did they find the money for Gortat? Obviously, they were aiming to keep the young asset, and in the Finals Gortat showed he could be more than serviceable at center. I imagine they ultimately decided he was too valuable to let him walk, and eventually they'll be able to put him in a trade if needed.
Here's the game everyone loves to play: If you could start a franchise, who would be your first pick? Ninety percent of the basketball people would say LeBron James. But if you ask about the second pick, the majority would go with Howard. His position is more difficult to find than LeBron's, and there's less likely to be another guy who can match up with him in the future. Now, does Howard have the wherewithal and the drive to become the player he can be? I don't think anyone doubts LeBron will fulfill his potential. But I don't know I'm convinced that Howard wants it as much as LeBron does. I'm not questioning Howard's drive; let's just say we're evaluating skills, and to me that drive to be great is another skill, and right now I don't see that Howard compares as favorably with LeBron in that area. And at the same time, Howard's team beat LeBron's team to reach the Finals, so obviously there is a lot to work with in terms of Howard's future.
Howard is still not polished as a low-post scorer, and after five years in the league, you might think he'd be a little further along there. And yet, he led the league in rebounds and blocked shots last year, and those things don't happen without hard work. For him to be an MVP player, he needs to become a dominant low-post scorer who creates a mismatch and demands the double team every time he catches the ball. The preferred way to play them has been to not double-team Howard, to stay at home on their great shooters and not allow them to beat you with threes, because Howard wasn't developed enough offensively to make you pay for guarding him one-on-one. He also needs to improve on his 59.4 percent free-throw shooting from last season. But he is very good at running the floor and beating the other man to score, and in Game 6 of the conference finals against Cleveland, he showed what he is ultimately capable of by scoring 40 points to put his team through to the Finals. If you're one of the five best players in the league, you've got to do that more than once a series. He needs to be their No. 1 option for them to win a championship, and the reality is he hasn't been that.
Having point guard Jameer Nelson back is going to be a big lift after he missed the second half of last season [he returned to play in the Finals] with a shoulder injury. They were a better team with him in the lineup, and he was playing at such a high level when he was hurt. Creating for others is not his strength; he makes shots and gives you offense. He is not selfish. He is just one of those offensive-minded point guards, and his game is maturing naturally as he becomes a terrific deep shooter. When you shoot 45.3 percent from three, 50.3 percent from the floor and 88.7 percent at the foul line -- as he did last season -- those are elite statistics that put you among the league leaders in each category. His scoring opens up things for others because he becomes one more guy you have to contend with.
Jason Williams is making a comeback as Nelson's backup. He'll be doing his job if he can give them 15 to 20 minutes a night without a big drop-off in play. He showed he could play within his role when he was contending with Miami. But can he stay healthy? If so, he'll be a good change of pace to Nelson. Williams' strength is to create for others while still having the ability to score on his own.
Mickael Pietrus turned into a key guy for them last year. When he was with Golden State, he was known as a guy who played all-out in practice, and in games he would ballhawk the other team every possession and pick up the ball full court. But then his performances began to suffer because he couldn't play big minutes at that level. For energy guys like Pietrus and Bass, they have to know what they do best and focus on providing that effort. And then as a coach, you've got to realize that if you play them too many minutes, you'll get diminishing returns. The key is to find the right number of minutes so they can play all-out without having to conserve energy.
This is now a very deep team. They had to give up Courtney Lee in the trade for Carter, and maybe in two or three years they'll regret losing him. But every guy on Orlando's roster can play a meaningful role. They need shooting around Howard, and they've got it from J.J. Redick, Ryan Anderson and Matt Barnes -- all catch-and-shoot players. Barnes will also help them defensively, while Anderson is a smart and efficient player who is sneaky good in other areas, like rebounding.
There is going to be a lot of pressure on Van Gundy to pull all of these new pieces together while doing at least as well as last year's team that went to the Finals. He was in the same position with Miami where he had a team built to win a championship, and obviously the players and/or Pat Riley did not think he was the guy to get them there. I thought a lot of that was unfair, and really a lot of what undermined Van Gundy in Miami was that Riley was sitting there waiting in the wings. The harsh reality is that the questions about Van Gundy have not gone away despite the success he's had in Orlando, and they won't go away until he wins a championship. He is undoubtedly one of the best and most intelligent coaches in the NBA. Watching his team, you can see they've got a plan and they execute it. They're in the spots they're supposed to be and it's rare they have a clunker game or they play in an undisciplined way. In the end-of-game situations, he always seems to do a terrific job with getting the shot they need.
Now, are there things Van Gundy does that wear on players? Yes. But I don't think he's trying to play mind games or incite them. I just think he's not holding back. He's more prone to speak the truth, and that's not the norm these days. He doesn't absorb losses or errors as silently as Phil Jackson. But all of that goes hand-in-hand to making him the good coach that he is. Ultimately, how he is judged will come down to whether he can win it all. It's just that simple.
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