After an incredibly busy morning, and after seeing that the storm of hate for Fournier on my timeline has finally subdewed I felt it was finally time to go ahead and pen this masterpiece. Although getting your ass kicked it in the first round pretty handedly doesn’t make you feel good as a fan, what does make me feel good is the fact that we have all finally come TOGETHER as a fan base and everyone is finally ready to give Fournier the axe. As we we were all singing in harmony last night our hate and dismay for Fournier, I really started to get chills and feel great to atleast be feeling something as a group again. Now, I hope these same feelings continue as the ownership decides to not do anything but probably dump the young talent yet again! Hopefully we all in unison can feel our hate. At this point there are obviously even a lot more changes than the one that need to be made, but just being able to feel the harmony of hate for now it will satisfy my need and want for somehow the magic to get better by next season.

As the bright light begins to fade and the true expected darkness finally starts to slowly settle in on this season, there are a lot of things upcoming that I believe have been very highlighted, and will hopefully lead to true change. At this point, two years later I think the true colors are completely shown and I believe it’s understood that it is not going to work out having guards who love to make things work with the ball, being paired up with a 5 who also wants to do the same thing. Mainly because these guards could use someone who will get dirty and clean up the little easy things that come a guys way when they are willing to work for it. The magic could open up and really let guys show off their skills if they just had a center piece inside who wanted to work hard for position and go ahead and beat up who he’s going against. Rebounding and inside presence is what’s missing from the Magic when it comes to he being so well rounded and cohesive. Seeing the way Giannis can go inside and get busy around shooters, is the exact recipe the magic are missing. What having that centerpiece down low does is it immediately forces help to be drawn in, it immediately leads to longer close outs, and more open lanes off rotations. Look I understand Magic fans are so happy to be finally floating in the playoffs, but there are 30 teams in the NBA, and I wouldn’t mind it if the magic got their name up as one of the best, not just a fringe team who’s trying to hang around.

With what went on in Game 2 is almost a flip of the script for the two teams and honestly whats amazing is how much the Magic fans changed up how they viewed the game that went on. When it was game one the Magic were able to force guys like Middleton and Lopez to very poor percentages and allowed Giannis to take a lot more than his fair share of shots for very little production. Fly over to game two and you have the bucks for 12 minutes absolutely smother Vucci any time he got the ball within 15 feet, or if he tried to take a dribble. They made sure his life was hard, made sure he didn’t feel comfortable and he couldn’t predict where the double was coming from. Forcing the Magic to feel like they were only going to be given these wide open shots, and of course the Magic have only shown they are a team who will struggle with shooting quite often.  After a quarter of them doing that and being up 20 they could play really straight up basketball and they didn’t have to do any[thing to make Orlando feel like they had to make a deficit up in a quarter just absolutely speeding them up forcing them into taking anything they could possibly get. Honestly MIL came in today with a pretty much perfectly executed game plan, frustrate the man who’s most comfortable tearing you up, make him feel like he has to trust his teammates, and when he doesn’t trust them he will force everything up himself. It was the perfect recipe for game 1 and I’m not shocked to see it used back against the magic game 2, somehow no one who’s an Orlando fan seems to understand that though, they just truly believe that the shots didn’t fall and we will get them next time! Not that we have to change anything objectively just more along the line of, “well they are NBA players eventually they will make them.”

Never in my life did I think I would be writing a piece that first and foremost absolutely praised the defense that the Magic played, but not only am I going to be absolutely sucking the dick of the defense, but I am also going to be absolutely celebrating that his came during a PLAYOFF GAME. When it completely mattered, the team showed up and was actually able to control the pace just a little bit without even having the ball in their possession. A frustrated Giannis who needed 25 shots for his 30 points is someone I would absolutely spend my life savings on seeing over the next game in the series. I have done so much complaining about the defense as the year has gone on and honestly it wasn’t even a thought in my mind during the game. Well just hoping and praying that the trends would continue as they kept going is about all I needed to do. Vucci absolutely did a beautiful job here tonight of grabbing the torch and making sure that it stayed light and high. 

If anyone is willing to be a bandwagon jumper for winners in the city of Orlando, it is going to be me. If this team is going to go out and win some playoff series, then I will take back every word I ever said and happily ride this team out until it doesn’t feel right again. If we see another gentleman’s sweep out of the first round though I will be completely transparent and honest, it is going to be a long big time of me just going absolutely crazy about how this team has to figure it out, and whatever it is has to be different. 

For the time being though, the ORLANDO MAGIC are UNDEFEATED IN THE PLAYOFFS. What else is there to even say at this point? I know that teams that win the championship, also win in the first round so we are off to a hot start.

Well luckily last night the magic were able to go ahead and finish what will probably go down as the craziest season, on top. Doing so with a wide array of contributors, and a whole lot of O-Leigh defense. Never the less, even though it is very good news that the magic were able to end the season with a loss, I am happy to report I am not the only fan amongst people who hope to see this team get a reason to need to be rebuilt. The young talent stuck on this rosters fighting for touches with guys who have proven their worth is starting to just get discouraging. This is the exact way the magic lose all of their promising young talent. If the Magic would finally realize and be the team that takes the governor off their young talent and finally start to allow a face of their franchise be formed on their own. These playoffs will be crucial, because if fans are happy again with a meh regular season and an early round exit then honestly this fan base needs to go through a long mental check in the summer.

Honestly as heart wrenching and gut breaking as last night was I can say that I am so truly excited at how well the Magic were closing quarters last night and especially at how well they executed down the stretch. Multiple times Brad Stevens was forced to hit the clipboard in order to get his team back under control, something I wasn’t sure the Magic was ever capable of doing especially in 4th quarter situations. The flow of the offense here recently has been clunky at times but the ball doesn’t seem to freeze as much. Obviously the Magic still have a long way to go before they get all the kinks worked out. The Magic have great potential to be a free flowing offense, where the ball is the most deceiving part of the flow and it opens up scoring options 1 through 5 just based on the fact that keeping up with everyone is so incredibly tough. The one thing that can help the Magic more than anything at this point is just having time to get healthy and to work on things. I think Clifford has some potential, I am trying to be a lot more positive at this point in my life, but you know, options are endless and the possibilities are intriguing.

I know that there is a very popular saying that exists saying death comes in three’s, but at this point i am starting to get very worried that injury that kill the Magic is going to be coming in three’s. With what happened last night to Aaron Gordon is an absolute shame the Magic just can’t shut the season down, say their going home and coming back next year because honestly they have been absolutely screwed since the initial tip into ‘regular season’ play has resumed. The two leg injures that the magic has seen here recently too is something that is enough to make you cringe and pray because honestly people may want to down play it, but the legs are arguably the most important function that the body has when it comes to playing basketball in the NBA. Yes you may be able to come up with other leagues where that case may change a little but guess what, this isn’t an all leagues blog right now and I will wait until the wheel chair finals come around before I finally start getting heavy into covering them. Sorry. AT this point though, it is apparent that the Magic, like I have been saying for almost this whole season, have real problems and a lot of them come with where they are spending their money. So it could be a very long climb up the hill back before we start to see real true progress in things

Well, a couple things are about to be poured out here that I can’t lie I feel like I am just totally rehashing out and repeating myself over but honestly at this point, it isn’t my fault if history keeps repeating itself. I think if that is the case you would say that you are in a David v Goliath situation, and the Pacers this season are very much Goliath. What’s crazy about the situation is though, this isn’t the only thing I am repeating myself on. I just spoke about how the swings this Magic team can put you through is incredible from the way they can go from playing game to game. I’ll be damned if they didn’t come out and then completely flip the script from their game with kings coming into Tuesday’s contest. 

The Pacers this season though, have had so many different guys come out and absolutely dog walk the Magic and really just pull the Pacers through the end. Yesterday there wasn’t anyone who was ever going to be needed for the Pacers though, every single Pacers player decided they wanted to show up and they wanted to claim Orlando as their own. The thing that is making the Pacers so tough for the Magic is the fact that the guards are so damn fast with the ball and they have incredible play making bigs that can really take advantage of the holes in the defensive communication that the Magic have. When the Magic are constantly having to take the ball out and bring it up to a set defense they honestly truly rarely ever get it going in a game. Last night just absolutely allowed that flaw to shine bright. 

Well, the only thing I know in this world to do especially in a time like this is over react and be emotional so that is exactly what I am showing up here today to do. JI having the leg injury he sustained last night was the most disheartening thing that I think could have happened to the Magic if I am being objective. The man has been showing so much potential on the court that losing him on the court makes watching the magic honestly 36% worse than it was before. 

Last night though, was the first time in my blogging career where I have truly felt like the Magic’s game plan gained complete control in a game, on top of that they also used their game plan to almost complete effectiveness all game. Attacking the middle strongly, allowing the bigs to have extended touches, not even really creating plays off much more than rotation actions. What is the cold hard reality still of last night is that JI will be down for the rest of this season and hopefully that is all we lose of him, but knees are very scary. It is nothing but high hopes and well wishes for this man as he was one of literally two pieces of hope I truly enjoyed holding onto.

Am I the type of person who is going to watch those scrimmages and overreact to what I saw mainly because I enjoy just how happy it made me to see some of the things that have happened? At this point yeah I am going to be because yesterday John Isacc was going absolutely crazy with the basketball in his hand. He was working towards the middle and being strong with the ball and honestly I needed that for a glimmer of hope. John Isaac is showing signs now that he is going to be one of the next predominant forwards of the league. What is great is he is going to do it on both ends which is something that the Magic have finally done right. Finding JI and investing in him is really slowly starting to pay the dividends and at this point. 

At the end of the day the magic still really struggled in a lot of ways and honestly one of the only other few bright spots we got to watch was DJ Augustine, which honestly, has always been a fan. OBviously it’s a lot better if he is your back up over your starter but we are in some very weird times. Going into this week though I am hopeful for the Magic but realistically it may be a quick 8 games, It’s hard to see the Magic missing the playoffs but just having to imagine them having success is also something I am unable to do really.