Stock Meeting: Week Five.

Skywise316 · December 1, 2008

This was a good week on the court. Bad week in the trainer's room.

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 ##-#-# instead.

The games this Meeting covers are Milwaukee, Philadelphia, Washington, and Indiana.

This is supposed to be a reflection of the difference between how we view the Orlando Magic after the fifth week of the regular season, as opposed to how we viewed the Magic after the first four weeks. The whole idea is take the entire week into account, not just how things are going after the Pacers game.

Stock Up:

Dwight Howard. (The two biggest disappointments of Week Four were D12 and Turk, so we need to start there with the two bigger swings upward. We know that most of his issues last week involved foul trouble. Well, he started off against the Bucks with foul trouble and finishing with 5 fouls but was fine the next 3 games.

Then we look at his weak areas, FT shooting and turnovers. He was bad against the Bucks, only 10 of 20. The next two games against the Sixers and Wiz he was good, shooting 23 of 32 combined. Then against the Pacers he was 10 of 17, closer to his average. So the water's settling off of his really good free throw shooting from Week Four, but it was still good enough to not cost us any ball games. However his turnovers are a different story, he's getting wild again. In his last four game he has turnover games of 6, 5, 2, and 3. That's not good and he needs to get that back under control.

However you'll take all of that when he has scoring games of 24, 21, 26, and 32. When he has rebounding games of 13, 14 twice, and 21. And block games of 6, 2, 3, and 4. But what's most impressive of all? When you watch the games, you can see a noticeable difference in Dwight's passing out of the double team. He only had 9 combined assists in the 4 games but he's getting a lot of hockey assists. Not to mention just a simple pass out is better than trying to split a double team and turning the ball over.

The NBA's in trouble as Dwight DOES keep getting better. But all we learned this week is that the Magic are better when Dwight stays out of foul trouble and stays on the court. Duh, we knew that already.)

Hedo Turkoglu. (It was a disappointing Week 4, but in Week 5 Turk had only one below average game and 3 good ones. Hedo's poor game was against Philly where he only shot 4 of 11 for 12 points, 7 assists against 3 turnovers, 5 boards, and a steal. A good number of assists while everything else was blah. But his performances against the Bucks, Wiz, and Indy were much better.

He shot 20 of 45 total in the three games and steady scoring games of 22, 20, and 22. He also rebounded nicely in those games with 9 against the Bucks, 10 against Washington, and 5 against Indy. However the one thing that makes you scratch your head is he didn't have more than 3 assists in any of those 3 high-scoring games from him. Where's the Mr. Do-Everything from last season?? It seems like either he can pass for you in a game, or he can score. But not both, heaven forbid.

So don't let David Steele and Matt Guokas' favorite player fool you. He's still trying to find his way again out there, but he sure did play a heckuva lot better in Week Five than Week Four.)

Anthony Johnson. (He had to step up when Jameer Nelson only played the first half against Milwaukee before getting hurt, and boy he sure did. He only had 6 points in 27 minutes against the Bucks, but also had 4 assists against only 1 turnover. Starting against the Sixers, he had 8 points, 7 boards, and 4 assists against 1 turnover again.

Then came Washington. The Wiz are always good for helpin' your stats out.

7 points. 4 boards. 12 assists. ZERO turnovers. then against the Pacers he had 16-1-4 with 3 turnovers. As the week has gone on he looks more and more comfortable and more like the Anthony Johnson that drove Magic fans crazy when he played against us... also 34 or not he doesn't look altogether tired out there.

Without Jameer, we certainly don't have an undefeated week without the sometimes better than solid play of A.J. Go ahead NBA.. keep leaving him wide open from Three Land.)

Assists. (The Magic averaged 20 and a half assists per game this week. I know that doesn't sound like a big deal, but I don't know how many times I've looked at Magic boxscores for Stock Up/Stock Down and seen 15 assists.. 14 assists... 12 assists... for a whole game, now. Not a half.

The Magic ball movement looks like a normal NBA team's right now. Funny what happens when you don't go one-on-one with your superstar every play down the floor while having the other four guys standing around eating popcorn.)

Three Point Defense. (4 of 13. 3 of 13. 3 of 17. 6 of 21.

What are those numbers you may ask? Those are the last four three-point shooting performances against the Orlando Magic for a total of 25 percent.

When you can't make a three and then have to deal with Dwight Howard in the paint... more often than not, you're gonna lose.)

Rashard Lewis. (Mister Overtime.

We all know the numbers, and he had his high average of a statistical week. But he and Turk's free throws put the Magic over the top against the Bucks. He hit the game winning three against Philly. He's 15th in the league in steals, very quietly. I mean you can go on and on about this guy, but this week he absolutely earned his hefty game checks and he did it in the clutch.)

Tony Battie. (He was his usual solid self in the other three games, but all hail Tony's performance one more time against Philly. 20 points on 9 of 9 shooting as he totally buried the Sixers, especially in the first half.)

Mickael Pietrus. (A minor Stock Up to Pietrus who played well in the first 3 games of the week before getting hurt. He played good defense all week and finished on an offensive upswing against Washington with 8 of 13 shooting for 17 points, not to mention the 4 boards, 3 assists, and 3 steals he got as well. Shame he's out but I'm sure there's a way to continue to learn SVG's playbook and system while he's on the sideline and then try to put that to good use once he returns.)

Stock In The Middle:

J.J. Redick. (It's a Tale of Two Players. What the heck happened to the geeky white guy with no lateral movement that's supposed to be the best shooter in at least the history of ACC basketball, if not all of college b-ball?

Now we've got a guy with Steve Nash-like conditioning who gets beat off the dribble or off a screen on rare occassions, but can't seem to hit a shot outside of 20 feet!

Okay so I'm exaggerating a LITTLE. He shot 9 of 25 for the field, 5 of 16 from Three Land. meanwhile, you can seriously count on one hand the number of times in Week Five J.J. was badly beaten on defense.

It's downright strange. But as long as he keeps playing solid contain defense with the occassional steal, then its worth it to have him out there because the other team must respect that the next Redick shot could go in, which spaces the floor for the rest of the Magic players. But his defensive stock is what it is at this point and he's got to start doing something else to get Stock Ups.

Strange. Our ultimate "we need a shooter!" draft pick, and right now he's our near ultimate out-of-the-boxscore player, right behind Battie.)

Stock Down:

Turnovers. (Well, it was nice while it lasted. The Magic only had one good turnover game of the week, that being only 11 against Washington. But they had 18 turnovers in each game against the Bucks, Philly, and Indy.

Buzzkill. Everyone had an equal share against Indy, Pietrus had 4 against Philly, J.J. was Mr. Turnover against Washington, and Dwight's probably the biggest contributer on average. It just seems like a different Magic player every game lacks concentration and gets fumblitis.)

Courtney Lee. (I hate to do this.. I had to recheck the stats and rethink what I saw from him this week, but yeah. Everyone's been so high on him the first month of the season, and rightfully so, but the first few games of the week he was nonexistent. He had a very good game against Indiana, we'll get to that in a minute.

For the whole week, CL Smooth only shot 4 of 13. If we're gonna bash Redick for his shooting, we need to bash a supposedly good shooter in Lee for his total lack thereof. What's more disturbing though is after doing a good job defensively in his 8 minutes on the floor at Milwaukee, he got beat more than a few times against Philly and against Washington, particularly Nick Young. So some of the shine rubbed off of the rook, at least until the Pacers game.

He played 28 minutes, had 2 points, 3 boards, 2 assists and a steal. His contain defense was better again, and his 3 big highlights were his crisp assists and a steal for the ages with a jumping, spinning takeaway from the much taller Roy Hibbert.

But I gotta practice what I preach and take the whole week into account, not just the pacers game. Hopefully it was just some normal rookie inconsistency from Lee and his stellar defense is what's the norm about him. Either way that shooting's gotta get better along the way though.

P.S. The word "stellar" is offically reserved to describe Lee's defense when it's "on.")

Like Phil Collins once said, "That's all." The Magic have a 4-0 week to go to 13-4 overall, which sounds a lot better than 9-4. The Magic start the Week Six with a tough game in Boston, but the schedule maker made it up to us with games against Minnesota and Oklahoma City later in the week. A win against Boston would be really huge, especially considering our first west coast trip begins in Week Seven. A 2-1 week would be plenty satisfying, but a 3-0 week would be really something for this team.

The Magic are 4-0 without Jameer, who's expected back sooner rather than later. Can they make it 5?

Good night and good luck.

Skywise316 · December 1, 2008