and I don’t think stage fright can be completed dismissed after a decent start. FWIW, my wife the casual fan saw the game with me and her observation was that the Magic players looked lost. Sometimes outsiders can see things clearly, and it’s pretty rare for the Magic to be so lost so I wouldn’t count out stage fright.

But either way, no excuse in game 2, no more stage fright, not a lot of rest, and those rusts on Jameer’s joints came off a bit, so Magic got to play better.

1 – The biggest misconception about this game will be that the Lakers played great defense. Quite simply, they did not. They played well on the defensive end but they in no way played great. The rotations were poor on the double teams…Orlando just bailed them out by missing wide open shots. I told my buddy last night…if that’s the defense we see from the Lakers the entire series, Orlando will win. There is no way we will continue to shoot less than 30% with that many clean looks

2 – This sort of plays off of number one, but despite only having one field goal, Dwight did as much as he could offensively. He had 8 points in the first quarter. Then the double teams came. Dwight made good passes, there was good ball movement, and more times than not it resulted in a clean look that didn’t go in. With our shooters that cold, the double teams continued and Dwight correctly kept passing out of them. If we are making our shots, that will open things up for Dwight later on.

3 – Our defensive effort wasn’t great, but not terrible. This game played out much like Game one of the Cavs series. Early on bad rotations got the role players involved. Then we decided to play Kobe/Lebron straight up and keep everyone else quiet. Both Kobe and Lebron were locked in for those games and were a bulk of the offense. Lebron had 49 of 106 and Kobe had 40 of 100 (and if the game was close in the 4th like it was against Cleveland it would have been more Kobe late in the game).

4 – Jameer played too many minutes. I understand him getting those 4-5 late in the game when it was out of hand just to get him more run, but nearly 24 minutes was too much IMO. I wanted to see him in 6-7 minute spurts to start the second and fourth.

So all in all that was probably the most brutal game to watch this postseason. Mostly because we had plenty of opportunities but couldn’t capitalize. Courtney Lee (3-10) shot the best from the field of all of our starters. But I’m still confident…namely because we did more to kill ourselves than the Lakers did to kill us. If we get the same looks in Game 2 we got last night, we’ll go back to Orlando tied at 1.

If the rest days hypothesis is correct, and Orlando was missing shots because they didn’t have a good shooting rhythm after all the time off, would a game where they missed so many shots actually help them to regain their stroke? The Magic have definitely shown an ability to bounce back from bad shooting nights, but if this theory is correct, they would have only had one game in nine nights — is that enough to shake the effects that you are talking about? Definitely an interesting hypothesis but just wondering how it plays out in practice.

One other reason why I ask is it may explain why Kobe came back into the game in the fourth quarter when the lead was 20+ and there was no sign of a comeback. I’m guessing that Phil didn’t want the Magic to go on a mini-run during garbage time and regain some confidence, but perhaps he also wanted to keep the defensive pressure up to prevent the Magic shooters from getting their shooting strokes back. Pietrus was the only guy who seemed even close to getting back in the groove.

…..just pointing out that the last time these two teams played was on Wednesday the 3rd, and their next game will be on Sunday the 7th….that would make it a 3 days rest for both teams…is this an uh-oh! instance that the Magic needs to worry about, or is it within the parameters of not-having-to-panic-yet for Orlando?