Memphis Grizzlies 99, Orlando Magic 95

those couple of powerful dunks were a great sight to see, if i would have to choose a turnign point it was when we brought Bass in, H came in a racked up two turnovers and three fouls in 3 minutes,inexcusable. I usually am all for Bass but he deffinetlly doesnt gell with our system. The reason we lost was turnovers. It was rediculous. We would have been up by 30 points had we not turned it over so much in the first quater. I still get the feeling that we are playing really well with a high energy level. And with Vince playing in attack mode we should be fine. Another big problem last night with Pietrus, my god, he was awful. If you look at his stat sheet you will see every night every attempted shot is a three, for god sakes drive the ball. He is most efficient when he is driving and drawling fouls. when he is doing this he ,mixes in the occasional three pointer and gets in the flow of the game. I think we have a tough two games that could really let us prove ourselves.

The Orlando Magic cannot be a serious contender relying on Jameer as their starting point guard. 6 turnovers to 1 assist and a lot of poor decisions.

It’s time to trade him while people still remember he managed to be an All-Star last season. He’s downhill and will have no trade value in 2 or 3 years.

D12 already feels like we traded away his best friend and older brother, now if we trade Meer we may create such a chemistry problem we eill not be able to repair. Meer did have a dissapointing game but i wouldnt be so quick to blame things on him, He had been playing good basketball and wad pushing the ball up the floor well lasy night. I think we will be fine and are really begginning to mesh togheter. With 6 turnovers from ur pt guard it is hard to win but everyone plays bad games now and then.,

It’s like nobody from our media wants to critcize Stan. He should receive 100 percent blame for this loss. He makes terrible decisions with our rotation. Somebody needs to call him out on it.

The whole bit about the first half doesn’t matter much because teams will make runs in the NBA. Especially a team on a 10 game home winning streak playing in front of their crowd. The final minutes is where the Magic lost it, and yeah, Dwight looked to be the only one not culpable. Bad defensive rotations, bad shot selection, silly foul by Jameer on Gasol, it wasn’t pretty.

However, as was pointed out, this Grizzlies team is no joke. They have one of the best starting units in the NBA, in my opinion, and all of their starters played great. It’s not the end of the world that we lost this game. Hell, it wouldn’t be the end of the world if the Magic didn’t win again for the rest of the year. It’s a sport, take something to mellow out if you find yourself hyperventilating after your team loses.

But why keep ALL of our 2nd unit on floor? Memphis had all their starters in Then the leads starts to dwindle, no changes were made. We were in such a nice rhythm. Then Stan expects our starters to come in and bail us out, they were resting for way too long. It’s one game, I’m just waiting for this team to figure it out. Blowing leads gets annoying after awhile.

I left my house when the Magic had a comfortable 16 point first half lead. What I saw when I returned was a 15 point 4th quarter collapse in the Box Score.

How long will Dwight be happy putting up those types of numbers while having a horribly inconsistent cast of supporting stars? Honestly, do we have a true #2 star? I would be hard-pressed to check box scores and find a game I can single out Dwight as the reason for Orlando losing that particular game but I can find several within a few minutes of Vince, Jameer & Rashard. Last night just happens to be one where you can look at all 3 as the reason Orlando lost. Rashard 38% on 16 FG attempts, VC 40% on 15 FG attempts (6 3’s 2 freethrows) and Jameer 1 Ast to 6 TO’s (1 freethrow attempt)? Remove J.J. and our bench which is suposedly one of the best shoots 4-16 FG and 3-12 3-pt.

The word of the season for Orlando’s #2, #3 #4 Stars is “Underperformance”.
I know Memphis is a good team but Randolph cannot get 19 rebounds let alone 9 offensive boards. Rashard has got to stop getting crushed on the boards.

 J.J. aside, the bench sucked but they combined for only 16 FG attempts and hit only 2 less than Rashard who took the same amount of shots as the entire Magic bench less J.J. 12-31 combined for VC & Rashard. They took 40% of Orlando’s shots and hit only 39% of them. They shot Orlando out of the game and Rashard let Randolph get 19 rebounds including 9 offensive.

Still, we were blowing a lot of teams out last season and rarely doing it this season. I think we were 7-4 vs LA, Cavs, Boston & Denver. We’re 1-4 this season and some of those were meltdowns. 27 first half points against Boston, Dwight getting whistled twice in 3 mins vs Cavs, LA reminding us of the matchup at PF & the paint by shooting over 60% to build a 13 point 1st quarter lead and turning it over once or twice to the Magic’s 6 TO’s. We recovered really well in some of those games but still a reminder of their inconsitencies, matchups and much worse record. Now there’s 2 new starters and 2 of the All Stars from last season are underperforming in my opinion so I do think some criticism is warranted because we’ve seen how good these players can be. We can get a lot better and we’re on the right path with going through Dwight for the offense but they’re still not getting him enough touches and the TO’s have been a problem for much of the season. We were giving up only around 12 per game early this season and we have to get back to the 12-14 range.