Stock Meeting: Week Two.

Skywise316 · November 10, 2008

The second week of the regular season is over! For the Orlando Magic the second week was much different than the first, in mostly positive ways and its reflected in a 3-0 record for the week as opposed to 1-2.

Just so everyone knows, if I say someone went 20-7-4, it means they had 20 points, 7 rebounds, and 4 assists. Sometimes I'm just too lazy to type that out and use ##-#-#.

This is supposed to be a reflection of the difference between how we view the Orlando Magic after the second week of the regular season, as opposed to how we viewed the Magic after the first week. The whole idea is take the entire week into account, not just how things are going after the Wizards game. Which is pretty freggin' good, by the way.

Stock Up:

Turnovers. (The theory of two out of three. The Magic had a poor 19 turnovers against Chicago, but then only 22 turnovers against Philadelphia and Washington combined. In 3 of their last 4 games the Magic have had 12 turnovers or less, all of them coming in victories.

The Magic's biggest issue in Week 1 is trending in a good way through Week 2.)

Jameer Nelson. (In his combined Week 2 action Jameer had 18 assists against only 7 turnovers. He also had 10 combined boards, which is a nice plus. Even though he had no steals against the Wizards, he had 3 against Chicago and 2 against Philly. He also had scoring games of 13, 16, and 6. Again, in the Bulls/Philly games he shot for nearly 50% from the field, while against the Wiz he shot 2 for 6 but concentrated more on defense and playmaking in that game. As far as what doesn't show up in the boxscore, he's maintained aggression both in the half court and on the fast break. He's been much closer to what SVG wants out of his point guard this week rather than the first week.

Everyone wanted to bail on him after the preseason and the first two games of the season, but he's stepping up into the pressure of being the undisputed starting PG for the Orlando Magic. However he's only done this over 10 days or so, and he needs to keep it up. You gotta start to play well before you can play well though, and he's definitely done that.)

Tony Battie. (He was vanilla against the Bulls going for 2 points, 5 boards, an assist, 2 steals, and 2 blocks. The defense and the boards in limited minutes was pretty good. Then came the Philly game. Dwight got in massive foul trouble and Battie saved our rears. Well, Jameer, Hedo, and Shard saved our rears while Battie held his own, to be more accurate. But after his poor week one effort (and/or just getting his legs back under him), it was a relatively massive performance. 8 points, 6 boards, and 2 crowd-raising blocked shots in 22 and a half big minutes. He followed that up with a strong second half against the Wizards, finishing with 8 points on 4 for 4 shooting and 4 rebounds.

I may not agree with SVG not giving Gortat any minutes, but Battie sure didn't make the ol' ball coach regret giving those minutes to Battie this past week.)

Keith Bogans. (Keith had a couple of tough moments in week one with Joe Johnson and Rudy Gay shooting and scoring over the top of him, Gay's being a game winner. It actually happened again in the first game of the week versus the Bulls, but this time the Magic came out on top. And indeed Bogans was part of the reason why despite what happened down the stretch with 13 big points, 5 boards, an assist and a steal. Against Philly he hit two 3s and finished with 8 points and 6 boards. Against the Wiz he again came up with 13 points, along with a board, 3 assists(!?), and 2 steals. If you combine all 3 games he had a plus/minus of +8. Perhaps most impressively he played all three games with Dooling or Mo Evans-like high energy the likes of which we may have never seen from him before!

And the perks of Keith Bogans having good games is the Barry White tones of postgame interviews. There won't be much of a backup SG controversy so long as Bogans keeps up the good work.

Pietrus still needs to be in at the end of close games though. I'm lookin' at you, Stan-o.

Speaking of Air France-)

Mickael Pietrus. (His scoring understandably went down after scoring 20 in 2 of his first 3 outings. However he's still scoring his fair share and shooting the ball efficiently. He combined for 14 of 24 shooting over the last 3 games and more than stayed out of foul trouble in his last 2. I'm sure SVG would like a few more boards, but SVG's been known to be nitpicky.)

Stock In The Middle:

Dwight Howard. (Let's look at his last 3 games. Against Chicago Dwight was his "normal" self. 22-15-1 with 5 blocks and a steal. Against Philly, not so much. Mired in foul trouble for most of the game, D12 ended up with 14-8-2 with 3 blocks and terrible free throw shooting. Good game for an average big man, not so much for the best center in the NBA. But then against Washington with no Brendon Haywood in sight, Dwight exploded for 31 points, 16 rebounds, 3 assists, and he was credited with 3 blocks even though he actually had 4.

So even though his stock swung wildly, it ended up in the same high position as he started the week with. However, as much attention as his poor free throw shooting is getting, something else deserves attention.

In his last 4 games, Dwight Howard has a total of 7 turnovers.

I'm just sayin'.)

Stock Down:

Hedo Turkoglu. (Now, he's still doing enough to help the Magic win... but he's also giving us enough reason to worry. He has only 10 points against Chi-town but also had 7 boards and 7 assists. Philly? 20 points and 8 boards, but only 3 assists. Against Sacramento he had only 11 points, 2 boards, and 2 assists. He also had 2 steals and a block which is great, but the other things.. not so much.

But none of that is reason to celebrate or worry, as the case may be. Here are the two things to worry about with Hedo.

First he had 9 turnovers combined during the week. And second, he shot a putrid 15 of 48 from the field. That's not all-star quality, folks. People have accused him of being a ball hog and wannabe hero in the 4th quarter by jacking up contested shots that end up being bricks, no matter what the defense is giving him.

I agree with these people. He's pressing and he's forcing it.)

Anthony Johnson. (He was superb in the preseason. Then ordinary in Week 1. Now he's been well below average in Week 2. The best thing I can say about him is he scored 8 points against the Wiz, but that was after having only 3 points in the two games before that combined. Much more importantly, he fell to only having 5 assists against 4 turnovers this past week.

Remember last week when I talked about A.J. having 29 assists against only 6 TOs in the preseason?? Feels like a long time ago now.)

I nearly gave Rashard a Stock Down because much like last week he had 2 good games and 1 bad game, but if you matched his games this week compared to the first week his first week performances were much better. However, he still had 2 20-point games, and rebounding games of 7, 8, and 11, so because he's still such a force in what the Magic are doing I couldn't bring myself to nitpick Shard to that degree. So consider it a Stock Dip if you must.

So the Magic are definitely headed in the right direction, although being more efficient in 3 point shooting and free throw shooting are still areas of concern. Still the Magic are the very least holding their own on the boards, winning in the battle of fast break points, and now also holding their own in turnovers. If those three things keep up the Magic are gonna be tough to beat.

They say Greg Oden's gonna try to come back to the Portland Trailblazers lineup on Wednesday....

Luckily, the Orlando Magic play the Portland Trailblazers on Monday.

Good night and good luck.

Skywise316 · November 10, 2008