Orlando Magic News for May 21st: Vince Carter on the Attack, Suggestions for Improvement, Stan Van Gundy's Philosophy, and More

I’m sick of all the negative articles towards Vince already. Before it was that he couldn’t lead a team to an ECF because he never has. Or people saying he wasn’t a team player, he wasn’t better than Turkoglu, or the fact that he’s soft. Come on now, between him, Dwight, and JJ, they’ve been the only ones playing decent against the Celtics. Vince has been on the attack the whole series and besides on ill-advised fadeaway and missed free throws there isn’t much to bash on him for. I just don’t get why the guy gets so much bad media attention. What’s sad is that people that aren’t real fans of the sport would believe everything they read. I’ve always been a fan of vince’s dunks but never followed him as a player so I was skeptical of him coming to Orlando. But he’s impressed me and you can’t argue that he has been good for the Magic. He didn’t just fill into turkoglu’s spot, he made his own. He’s the guy the Magic needed to drive the lane and draw a foul late in the game, or do we remember the great 4th quarter he had in boston early in the season that led them to a W?
The Magic needed a go to scorer who can get his own shot and he’s provided them that. I don’t know if anyone else has noticed, but the Celtics cannot guard Vince. He easily can get by Allen and Pierce and if he was just a lil bit younger those tough layups that haven’t been falling would be dunks. Give the man a break! This team has championship aspirations and if they fall short it won’t be because of Vince, it’ll be because they ran into either the Celtics or Lakers playing excellent basketball. The Magic have a tough decision this offseason with Vince and personally I think the only reason he wouldn’t be back in a Magic uniform would be because of his Age, not because of his play.

It’s like every though shot he makes is taken for granted, like he was supposed to do that, and every little mistake is a huge, galaxy-exploding catastrophe.

This is what I hate sooo much about the media. He could score 99 points and the media would be “he sucked, he didn’t score 100 points, Wilt was better”.

Has Rashard played any minutes at the 3? With Marcin at the 4? Wouldn’t that be a good way to get Lewis going with a smaller pierce on the perimeter? He could shoot right over him or post him up and hopefully draw a double. Defensively, pierce is not lightning quick and Lewis may be able to keep up with him using his length. The only issue would be to force KG to guard the 4 and not lewis, which could mean using either Bass or Anderson to stretch the middle out to give space for dwight while forcing kg to guard those bigger guys. The celtics could counter that with…scalabrine??? lol. Stan has got to force KG to guard someone else, Rashard is being shut down by KG’s length and excellent defense. Forcing a smaller player to guard lewis is going to hurt the celtics and if they choose to double, it free’s up a three pt shooter. Thoughts?

Dirk has decided to opt out of his contract. http://tinyurl.com/275l3fj chances are he is not leaving the Mavs, but could there be a more perfect PF for Orlando’s scheme than Dirk?

Hedo matchup up better against Boston & Cleveland but Vince matches up better against LA because he’s quick enough to get by Artest.

Unfortunately Rashard only matched up with CLE well (until Jamison) and is a bad matchup against both BOS and LA.

Am I out of line if I ask if Rashard is on the decline half way through his 6 year Magic contract? Is SVG not running enough plays for hm? I’m concerned about the 0-2 deficit but equally concerned about the next few seasons. With title hopes this season and the next 3 seasons a lot will fall on Rashard and his crippling $19 mill per year contract. If he can’t create for himself it then falls all on Dwight to draw a double team every possession in order to get Rashard open looks. If he’s on the decline it makes it that much more difficult.

Even if we can comeback to win this series and beat LA in the Finals I don’t think I can overstate the importance of Dwight developing much more of his offensive game and Ryan Anderson making huge strides defensively (namely post defense).

Yes he was incredible in those first 2 series but how much of that was because both CHA & ATL absolutely had to double Dwight on basically every possession, leaving Rashard wide open looks? Boston doesn’t have to do that so now Rashard doesn’t get to run around on the perimeter unguarded. This is the first “Well Rounded” team we’ve faced this post-season and Rashard has been the worst player on the Magic and has the biggest contract on the team. I’m not trying to be rude I’m just making the observation that Rashard HAS to be able to create on his own against BOS.. He can do it, I’ve seen it many, many, many times before but for some reason or another he’s not being aggressive. He’s posted the 1st and 3rd worst +/- on the team through the first two games of the ECF.

The Sky Isn’t Falling (I think we can still win this series and the Finals vs LA), I’m just saying Rashard played poorly these first 2 games which is scary because we’re down 0-2 and KG won’t keep shooting 4-14 & 5-16 so it’s going to get even more difficult.