More Orlando Magic News for November 11th: Portland's Future is Brighter Than Orlando's

Three more links for today. Woohoo!

• Nick Friedell of Yahoo! Sports attended last night's Magic/Trail Blazers game and made this post about the contrast in styles between Portland GM Kevin Pritchard and Magic GM Otis Smith:

  By building through the draft, and holding off on signing any player to an outlandish contract, Pritchard has given himself the flexibility that Smith does not posses. He also has built a young and talented bench, which accounted for 40 points last night, compared to a Magic bench which accounted for just 12 (all of which were scored by Keith Bogans), and is one of the weakest in the league.

  Pritchard will be able to go out and sign a big name free-agent if he so desires in the next few years, and if Greg Oden could ever stay healthy and return to the lineup, the Blazers' young nucleus has a chance to become special, something that the Magic simply cannot say right now, because of the way they've been constructed.

• Brian Schmitz reports that the Sacramento Kings have made the Magic countless trade offers for Hedo Turkoglu since they signed him as a free-agent four years ago, although it's been a while since they made their last offer.

• Trainer extraordinaire and ESPN.com scribe David Thorpe likes what he sees from Courtney Lee on the defensive end:

  Lee looks to be what Stan Van Gundy likes in young players: Tough on defense and unafraid to make plays with the ball. After stating that he expects to go with an eight-man rotation (that did not include Lee), Van Gundy has played Lee in three of the past four games. Lee has played excellent defense on both Ben Gordon and Rudy Fernandez, but has only hit 3 of 12 shots this season.

  Lee did play the passing lanes well last night, and would have had a brilliant steal and open-court dunk if he hadn't stepped on the sideline when making the play. I just hope his shooting comes around eventually. Otherwise, we may have another Jeryl Sasser on our hands.

Once again, happy Veteran's Day.