Lets just say that the sudden absence of Tmac didnt make the already tricky mental game any easier for the Magic: suddenly no bogey man and an "injured" opponent. Yao shows why he is, most of the time, loved by his teammates, former teammates and the rest of the league: dominating first half performance, puts the game away, but then game won sinks back into rather-more-passive-mode (and why not in a season of 82 games), and achieves his allocation of 10 rebounds and 20 points, almost on the nail. Classy. If the magic really wanted to win this one, they would have doubled Yao aggressively in the first half. Wiseass is perhaps human after all....
Gawd I hate to defend him but Weisbrod is not the coach and he did recognize how poorly the Magic play D when he traded Mobley for Christie. But if you're talking about their coach Johnny Davis, this is a very popular sentiment on this board. The Magic have a decent 1on1 defender in Kelvin Cato, a decent journeyman backup in Battie and a mobile PF that can wait until after Yao makes his move before doubling. What's not obvious is that the Magic don't stress defense period. They're team D is horrible. Forget Yao...they couldn't single cover and rotate to Mutombo. I have a suspicion that it's part coaching and part that the players have a "we can outscore them" attitude. Laying this all at the feet of Davis is too easy. With a huge half-time lead, the Rox (mentally) coasted making the doubles appear to be a lot more effective than they actually were.
Gater, I had remarked last week how amazing it was how Orlando can be such a bad post/interior defense team with long, athletic guys like Howard, Cato and Battie. Just goes to show you that not all coaches can coach D like JVG.
excellent point. and when you team up his defense with guys who can score like tmac, yao, and a bunch of shooters, good things will happen.
