Orlando Magic News for July 16th: A Loaded Roster; Reminiscing On Playoff Highlights

The Orlando Magic are stacked
Kelly Dwyer of Ball Don't Lie praises the Orlando Magic for a splendid off-season, in which the team has reloaded for the better, in his opinion.

Replacing Hedo the point forward, essentially, is Carter the scorer. He's two years older, his rep is no good, and he's two summers removed from signing his own bad contract in 2007. Replacing Lee is Ryan Anderson, who's not replacing Lee at all. Brandon Bass is on board, and instead of letting the Dallas Mavericks put together a mini-resurgence, the Magic cattily matched Marcin Gortat's contract offer, keeping the backup center as exactly that. A backup center. How rude.

How awesome.

More Aging Stuff
Neil Paine of Basketball-Reference continues his examination of player aging.

[...] Aside from essentially having more 30-somethings contributing from the start, there doesn’t seem to be an appreciable difference between the shape of the graphs for bigger players and smaller ones. Both saw an increase in production from older players during the mid-to-late 1990s (the smaller players saw a distinct spike) as some of the aforementioned superstars neared the end of their illustrious careers. But during this decade, the 2000s, we have seen a return to the youth movement of the 1970s and early 80s, presumably fueled by the simultaneous retirement of greats like Jordan and the inclusion of young early-entry/prep-to-pro players like Kevin Garnett, Kobe Bryant, Tracy McGrady, & LeBron James. In fact, 2009 represented the greatest % of league Win Shares earned by the under-25 set in nearly 30 years, meaning that while today’s older players don’t stack up well vs. their 1990s counterparts, the future is nothing if not bright for the league as a whole because of an exceptional crop of youngsters on the rise.

Nichols and Dime: Revisiting the Importance of Three-Point Shooting for Point Guards
Jon Nichols of Hardwood Paroxysm takes another look at the correlation between point guards and three-point shooting.

As you can see, not enough players qualified for the top right and lower left categories, and that’s a good thing. That means that the best shooters aren’t afraid to fire away and the worst shooters know their limits (to an extent). Another observation is that accuracy is more important than frequency. The players with the highest percentages had the most positive impacts on their offenses, regardless of the number of attempts. Additionally, it is better to be more efficient with a medium amount of attempts than less efficient with a higher amount of attempts.

Plays of the NBA Playoffs, Vol. 1 (25-13)
M. Haubs of The Painted Area takes a look back at the best highlights from the 2009 NBA Playoffs. Included in the list - Marcin Gortat,  Dwight Howard, and Courtney Lee.