[Sentinel] Magic lose their cool and 4th game in a row

damn, 7 years and this is his first ever ejection?

magic are free-falling right now. it did pretty much coincide with cato's absence (this was his first start in 10 games and they were like 2-7 in the previous 9 so it sounds like it matches up perfectly) but if cato is never going to stay healthy (it said he twisted his ankle in the game, hopefully it's minor) things could get bad. they won't play .200 ball the rest of the way, but they really need cato's defense and rebounding. he turns a sieve-like defense into a poor one and that's usually good enough considering how good their O is. so stay healthy dammit.

and what a shock Fegwu was all over this article. he'll convince us yet that mobley and francis suck and that all the orlando fans hate them.

 

I wonder what Weisbrod is doing right now? And yea, this sounds about right. THe Orlando Rockets have done it again. If you can't beat them, b**** and moan to the refs.

 

Mobes has never gotten any love from the refs, and moving to the Least isn't going to help him. Maybe when they hear about his big new contract next season they will start officiating him like a 7 year veteran instead of an undrafted rookie free agent.

 

Let's see what Cuttino says about that....

"Maybe it's because we cried too much from the beginning of the game."

It's hard to get respect when your whining is nearly on par with your skills.

 

I watched a fair amount of this game on NBALP and the Magic's defense is terrible. They just give up too many easy baskets and dont close down the lane at all for dribble penetration.
Also, what hurts the Magic right now is they have NO low post game. Howard looked great right out of the box but I think has hit the rookie wall. With no low post play the team just isnt getting as many good looks at the basket. Low percentage shots.

More than anything though, their defense is terrible.

It sure didnt take too long for the bloom to come off the rose with Mobley/Francis/Cato.

 

I watch most of the first half, was flipping between Heat sonics, and I have to agree with your points. The Magic just can’t stop anybody and when your shots aren’t falling it can get pretty ugly.

 

Should have drafted Okafor.

And trade Cat Whiney while the getting is good. Magic were better with Turkeyglue featured and Cat injured. Turkey is a great +/- player, which they need with SF3.

 

If the goal is to be a fastbreak team, the majority of your breaks will come from defensive boards. It's much harder to break when the ball is only slowed down by the cotton.

To compound the problem, the Magic coach extensively uses a zone. Because Francis likes to rebound, the zone lacks perimeter pressure and the ball moves around the perimeter fairly freely.

In man to man in the games I've watched, they also don't play the PnR very well. The defender slides behind the screen more often than not. If you have an athletic team, it makes more sense to go over the top and soft trap the dribbler.

On offense, Francis started out by trusting his teammates. When the road got a little bumpy, he reverted back to only trusting himself.

Playing in the EC, they've got plenty of time to get things worked out. But for the future if the Magic are smart, they'll break up Steve & Cuttino.

 

The Raptors broadcasters last night kept saying they thought the Magic should try to get a PG to allow Francis to move over to SG and allow him to be more of a scorer and take the burden of setting up teammates off of him. Where have we heard that one before? Funny when that gets brought up they never talk about what it will do on the defensive end of the court.

Nevertheless, I think the Magic need to get a defensive SG, someone like a Bowen or a Christie. Someone that will concentrate on defense on the perimeter. They have Francis and Hill (Turkgolu off the bench) at the other outside positions for offense so a defender mixed in I think would help a lot. Augmon playing more might help in the short term. I dont know.
Additionally they need a more consistant low post player. I think Howard in the long run will be better than Okafor but they have to deal with the growing pains in the short run. They knew thing going in and that's why they moved Gooden. They wanted Howard to START and not have Gooden come off the bench as they knew he would pout. Perhaps they should have kept Gooden and brought Howard along slowly? Tough to tell.

 

You know, thats strange b/c the same thing happened with us last year...Cato went down, our D suffered and never really recovered even when he came back.

 

The difference, Magic D has never been great this year. But with Cato he can at least block one or two shots and get rebs.

 

Is anyone really surprised?

DD

 

You're lucky I'm confined to MSPaint instead of Photoshop!