Yoshi_magic

Not that I disagree but being pissed is never enough to make things happen. I'm sure that the AMD execs are pissed that Intel is running all over them but being pissed, and even throwing money at the problem, is not enough. All the more so when Intel plays dirty and even has been forced to settle for over a billion dollars because of it! And we don't even have that kind of leverage with Stern and the nonsense that he has allowed. Watching the bad calls thread is like playing a drinking game when all you want to do is get drunk. Another bad/inconsistent call? Drink! Ok, geek analogy over. My point is that I can appreciate what that article is saying but to my point I think that there needs to be a high level change at this point. Someone is clearly not getting it. And since the owners are not about to change given that they are the owners, I'd have to say it should be Otus. Otus has had more than a shot at proving what he thinks works and it got close but that only works in horse shoes, hand grenades, and thermonuclear devices. Further he now has us regressing. Were we like the Knicks of the 90's that kept going after the Bulls for a championship then I'd say yeah, we are doing all we can but we are facing a Juggernaut. And I suppose an argument could be made that the Lakers have been this era's Juggernaut but anyone watching this seasons Lakers knows better.

I have no clue what type of person Stan is outside of what I've seen of him coaching and via his interviews. So I'm going to disclaimer that what I'm about to say could be 100% wrong. My current gut tells me, and I'd really not formed any real opinion about Stan until this season, is that he is a control freak. And because of that, and I'm going to leave out Otis's role here for the sake of trying to keep this simple, he can run a good to very good team but does ultimately limit their potential. I've worked for/with my share of control freaks and they are not necessarily bad people. But they do ultimately limit the people that work under them. Mostly to the extent of what system you force, force, your people to work under. If that system is good then you will get good results, if the system is bad then most likely bad results. The pros of being a control freak is that if you have a good system you can bring up even lower/moderately leveled people to levels that they might not have reached on their own. You also have a lot of CyA value as you can always point to the system if things go wrong and say well if X had done Y like I TOLD THEM TOO it would have worked. Finally successful control freaks do bring confidence to a system that tends to impress their managers. The cons of being a control freak is that you limit what the true potential of your people. You also tend to alienate the people working for you as they always feel the need to be true to your vision rather than being able to be individuals. (Caveat: Many control freaks tend to pick one or a few people that they give a full pass to do whatever they want.) And finally as a control freak it is much harder to adapt given that your people never feel empowered to make their own decisions in real time. Rather they KNOW that if they deviate without permission there will be repercussions and it takes the control freak themselves to then authorize changes. So, having said all that and under the assumption that what I've said is close enough to the truth it would not surprise me one bit if the Magic owners, Amway, have placed a control freak coach in charge of their team. And ultimately, again I'm gonna leave Otis out of this post but he is not without his own story, that is who I blame. They, the Magic owners, seem to want to keep the Magic very well controlled. I remember when we had Matt Barnes. I was actually a little shocked that we were allowed to have a guy like that. And I know now we have Gilbert but he still 'looks' pretty clean. To me the whole Magic organization reeks of high levels of control that is way above even Otis and Stan. And so in closing while Stan, Otis, and our players are playing their roles; I am seeing something bigger from higher up. A tendency from the Magic owners to want control over all aspects of the team that can, and has, produced a good team but I do not see being able to produce a great team.

Banchi being Banchi. Being the Information Age if you want to find something to fire up your players you WILL be able to find something. Go Magic!

After thinking about what I've seen all year and what I've seen this series: 1. Hateing on Gilbert Arenas is not a good thing. But apparently benching him for 3 games was a good thing. I am confused as to what to say about him. 2. I was/still am a Hedo Fan. But he has not showed up this series. Hedo, wtf. 3. Stan is not at all to blame for whatever happens here. 4. Otis is much more likely the person to blame for whatever happens with the Magic. The more I look at this puzzle I think about the parts I've been given. I really have not wanted to hate on Otus but dammit he keeps giving me reasons.

So much this! Even when it's 5 vs 8 when the Magic are on they can do just about anything. But for a lot of reasons they have not been able to pull that level of play off consistently. I know we are all hoping that they will be able to because they are running out of time to do so this season.

Just curious then what motive do you believe that Stern, and via him the whole of the NBAs officiating track record under him, has for allowing such bad officiating going on under his watch? I can only imagine that you think it is Hanlon's razor. (Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.) However what many of us are saying is that is a hard, if not imposable, sell after so many years and examples of officiating that when taken in its entirety can be explained by something other than stupidity/incompetence.

Guess you changed your mind on that point.

Good sir, you mistake me for another! Seriously, I'm an oldschool Gator. Our old motto used to be, "Next year!" When I watched EPSN fawn over Ohio State as if they were gonna trump us in the NC game and then we kicked their frieken asses I watched as they said nothing. And I'm not out on the internet nor in the world lauding that over them. I just smile and nod. I understand that you might not know me. But that you automatically lump me into those who rabidly cheer or boo is unfair. And while I am a patient man, I am not above asking for an apology from someone who has unfairly judged me.

Hedo is not an all-star. Hedo is not LeBron, Hedo is not Shaq, not Kobie, not blah blah blah. One of the things that bothers me about he NBA is that people have this binary view of players. They are either superstars or just some player that is filling out the roster until the team can find a superstar to fill that slot. I've even seen a lot of basketball people who know a hell of a lot more about the game than me fall into this trap. They talk about how a team NEEDS 2-3 superstars to win big. Further the NBA seems to propagate this with the reffing. Again people that have been around the game longer than me and know a lot more than me say that the way officiating calls go in the game is directly proportional to the amount of superstar cred you have in the league. While I could go off on this particular point for pages I want to stay focused on Hedo here so I'll let my seething rage on this issue simmer for the moment. Hedo fills a role in our roster that seems to work for our current setup. Without him we tried having Vince but...well I think we can all agree that could have gone better. But even thou he is filling that role he's human and will make mistakes. Hell even our superstar has issues with making mental mistakes with the amount of T's he gets, not that I blame him-hell I even think he's been very restrained but again I'm gonna let that pot of rage simmer as I finish up my point about Hedo. In closing the NBA is not so much about a minute to minute or even game to game level of consistency but rather a 7 game level of consistency. To me those that dog on Hedo, and others, focus too much on the former. But overall a guy like Hedo gives us a pretty good bang for the buck on the latter. If I could invent cloning machine and pop a 25 year old Scottie Pippen into our lineup I'd do that. But for right now I'm ok with Hedo. In fact, pass me a slice of pizza. Mmm, pizza.

As a Hedo supporter I will admit to being a little nonplussed with his overall performance after the trade. However 'chemistry' does not happen over night and I also thought it was pretty clear that he was fighting a bit of an injury. Not a really bad injury that he needed to be sitting out just was not 100% physically and add that to the other chemistry issue I thought ok, well no need to go into panic mode. (I know delete my account here right now for such blasphemy.) But I think he is now getting back into where he was before he was traded away. He is getting to see the flow of the the offense and can make good decisions about when and how to pass. And to me that is when he works best. He's not a defensive monster but he does well enough imo. Why I want him on the floor, and why I wanted him on the team again, was that he works well as almost a project manager for the team. Horrible analogy I know but until I can come up with better there it is. His height gives him the ability to see the floor well, he can handle the ball well (even to the point of moving it up the floor with ease as needed), and if his shot is on he can strike some real daggers in the opposing teams hearts. Those fade away 3's when the clock is about to expire really can take the wind out of a teams momentum.

593 THIS SEASON! That is not counting the calls he does not get. 593. Five hundred and ninety three.

Are you saying that to the writer or to Gil?

Hubie making excuses for the NBA refs not calling a foul that leaves Dwight bloody.

I have heard Hubie say like half a dozen nice things about the Magic/Magic players. I wonder if he winces every time he does so.

This is going rather well. We keep up this effort and the zebras don't dick us hard we have a real chance.