As I mentioned in this roundup of sorts the other day, Orlando Magic guard Vince Carter has a lot at stake in this postseason, his first ever with a contending team. Fairly or unfairly, he has a reputation for wilting under pressure in big games; ESPN.com's Bill Simmons loves to pile on Carter, and did so most recently in this column.

Carter's played great since February, but his Magic playoff debut could scarcely have gone worse: he shot just 4-of-19 from the field, fouled out, and drew some criticism from coach Stan Van Gundy after Orlando's 98-89 win over the Charlotte Bobcats. "I would still like to see him attacking more. I didn't think he was really in a mindset to attack today," he said of Carter.

I'm not as familiar with Carter's days as a New Jersey Net as John Schuhmann is, so I sought his opinion on Carter's playoff performances there. The New Jersey-based Schuhmann is a regular contributor to NBA.com and covered the Nets' playoff series from press row in 2006 and 2007. Here's what he generously contributed between posts about this year's Boston Celtics / Miami Heat series.

I would say that Carter's postseason performances with the Nets were a mixed bag. It wasn't nearly as bad as Simmons makes it out to be, nor was he Mr. Clutch. He had some good games and he had some bad games.

Basically, he played well against the weaker teams (Indiana in '06, Toronto in '07), and not so well against the better teams (Miami in '05 and '06, Cleveland in '07). Obviously, he didn't have as much help as he has in Orlando, so those better teams were able to focus their defense on him.

The rest of Schuhmann's response follows the jump.

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In my last article for the Orlando Pinstriped Post, I compared the Magic's two great backup power forwards, Ryan Anderson and Brandon Bass.  As I mentioned last time, the Magic are blessed with a number of great frontcourt players, a luxury most teams would love to have.  Beyond Anderson and Bass, Dwight Howard, Rashard Lewis, and Marcin Gortat could all be considered above average players for their position (and they are paid like it).  The challenge for the Magic's coaching staff is finding playing time for each of these five players while also mixing and matching in order to find the combinations that are most effective.  Today I'm going to go through the play-by-play data of the 2009-10 season and see how the Magic have fared with each frontcourt combination.

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Blessed with two talented, young, and hard-working power forwards, Stan Van Gundy and the Orlando Magic are pressed with a tough question each night: who plays behind Rashard Lewis?  Each player has his own unique skills, and each is certainly an above average player and an asset off the bench.  Today I'll take a look at the two using various advanced statistics, some created by me and some created by others.

Using Basketball-Reference's player comparison tool, we can compare Ryan Anderson and Brandon Bass with a number of advanced stats.  A quick glance shows the two are pretty close in many stats, with Anderson generally holding a very slight advantage.  Anderson leads in PER, Defensive Rating, and Win Shares, while Bass has the edge in Offensive Rating.  However, each of these is a close race.  Bass has been a better offensive rebounder, while Anderson has been a better defensive rebounder.  Anderson is a better passer and gets more steals, but Bass records more blocks and turns the ball over less.  As you can see, there is no clear winner according to these numbers.  

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My last few posts have focused on tracking different aspects of the Magic that are normally ignored by the box scores we see every day.  Those posts included looks at the Magic's hustle and the Magic's defense.  Box scores generally do a good job of measuring offense, but even in that regard a lot is left out.  We may know how many points a player scored or how many assists he had, but we don't know how he scored those points or assisted others.

With that in mind, I decided to track the offense of one player in particular: Dwight Howard.  Howard's offense has a ways to go before it catches up to his defense, and in the two games over the weekend he really struggled.  I went back through the tape of the game against Minnesota on Saturday with the hopes of finding out why he's struggling. 

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Last week, I tracked the defense of the Magic.  Thanks to positive response from the readers, I have decided to do it again.  For a full a description of each statistic I track and what they mean, see last week's article.  Basically, what I did was watch the game last night and keep my own statistics (things that are not in the box score).  Defensive statistics are often quite limited, and techniques such as manually charting and looking for certain things are often necessary to get a clearer picture.

Without further ado, here are the numbers from last night:

http://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?key=0AvNKNGJ_AHijdHJqRkVlYmlhTTRETzRMZTV1OXh5Y0E&hl=en

Again, if you don't know what any of those things mean, please read last week's article. 

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For my previous piece on the Orlando Magic, I charted hustle stats such as deflections, loose balls, missed blockouts, etc.  While these things are all important, perhaps the area in which hustle is most important is defense.  Although it takes more than just good hustle to be a good defender (as a certain Mr. Dwight Howard will show us later), effort is one of the keys to being a good defensive team.  Therefore, I decided to track defensive plays in last night's contest between the Magic and the Pacers (this time, I only kept track of the Magic's stats).  I imagine most (if not all) NBA teams track these on their own, as well as companies such as Synergy Sports. 

To see the numbers, click the link below:

http://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?key=0AvNKNGJ_AHijdFVaanJkQ2xSSG5DU3ZNcUVPRHpfSkE&hl=en

The rest of this article will explain what those numbers mean.  I will also provide a few observations and notes about the contest.

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A week ago I tracked the hustle plays in a game between the Los Angeles Clippers and the Memphis Grizzlies.  Tracking hustle plays is presumably something most, if not every, NBA team does.  After all, box scores are pretty limited.  Even if we use the play-by-play data to do thorough analysis, it still doesn't include things such as diving for loose balls, deflections, missed blockouts, etc.  But teams would like to know these things, so they must track it themselves. 

I decided to track the hustle plays during last Saturday's game between the Magic and the Golden State Warriors.  During the game, I kept track of five things.  First, I tracked players going for loose balls.  In my experience with a college team, we only record plays where a player dove for a loose ball.  But since this is the NBA, and effort is often lacking, I include all plays in which a player ends up with the ball, regardless of whether or not he dove.  A second thing I track is drawn charges.  You can somewhat glean this from the play-by-play data, but it is much easier to just record it yourself.

Thirdly, I kept track of good sprints.  I define these as plays in which a player creates a play for himself or others by sprinting the floor and forcing the defense to adjust.  For this game featuring the fast-paced Warriors, I had to be more selective in my criteria or else we'd have a lot of good sprints.  A fourth thing I tracked for this game was deflections.  This is relatively easy to define and track.  Basically it includes any deflection that is not recorded as a steal, rebound, etc.  Finally, I kept track of missed blockouts.  These were most noticeable when they led to an easy offensive rebound, and they were much more rare in this game than in my first one.

Of course, these aren't all the hustle plays that players can make.  Traditional box score stats such as offensive rebounds and steals often reflect hustle plays.  Defense is also largely a product of effort, but that is something I will track another time.

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Ed. note: This post has been updated, as of 4:22 p.m. EST.

(Note: These stats are updated through November 27. Games from this past weekend aren’t included. )

For those who are unaware, every year I calculate a statistic called Composite Score (numbers are here and here) for each player. Composite Score is a rating system that combines six different advanced statistics, with three measuring offense and three measuring defense. The offensive statistics are Offensive Rating, Offensive Plus-Minus, and PER. The defensive statistics are Defensive Rating, Defensive Plus-Minus, and Counterpart PER (the estimated PER allowed on defense by a player). These numbers can be obtained from Basketball-Reference.com and 82games.com.

Although I can’t compute Composite Score for Magic players just yet (because of the way its calculated, I need the stats for every player in the league before I can calculate Composite Score), I can still present how every Magic player has fared in the individual components. I will break things down into offense and defense. Below is a table presenting every Magic player’s offensive performance so far, as measured by the three offensive statistics I mentioned earlier:

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