Losing in the NBA Finals isn't fun, but who would have thought the Orlando Magic would be playing basketball in June? Despite the many peaks and valleys during the season, Magic fans should be proud of how the team represented Orlando. 

Tt was one doozy of a year. Here are some of the highlights:

• made NBA-record 23 three-pointers against Sacramento Kings. 
  

• team had three All-Stars (Dwight Howard, Rashard Lewis, Jameer Nelson)
• Dwight Howard named Defensive Player of the Year
• Dwight Howard, All-NBA First Team
• Dwight Howard, All-Defensive First Team
• won 59 regular season games
• won Southeast Division Title
• won Eastern Conference Title
• played in NBA Finals 

With the impending news that Dwight Howard will be named Defensive Player of the Year, I wanted to take a moment to step back and reflect on what Howard accomplished this season (defensively and overall). Both Ben and I have written copious amount of material regarding Howard's effort on defense so no need regurgitate the same things over and over. But it doesn't hurt to do a quick "Bio Blast" for Howard (a la ESPN), Third Quarter Collapse style. 

Dwight Howard

2008-2009 Season - 

rebounds per game: 13.8 (1st)

blocks: 2.9 (1st)

total rebound percentage: 21.8% (1st)

block percentage: 5.9% (3rd)

defensive adjusted plus/minus: -1.09

opponent PER: 15.8 (against C's)

defensive net plus/minus: -1.1

eFG% allowed: 46.5%

- First career triple-double (30 points, 19 rebounds, 10 blocks) vs. Oklahoma City Thunder 

- 2009 NBA Slam Dunk runner-up

- 2009 NBA All-Star (leading vote-getter; first player in history to net 3 million votes)

- Career-high 45 points (19 rebounds and 8 blocks) vs. Charlotte Bobcats

- Youngest player in NBA history to reach 5,000 rebounds

- Four-time Eastern Conference Player of the Week 

- Nine 20/20 games this season

- Fifth player in NBA history to lead league in blocks and rebounds

- 2009 NBA Defensive Player of the Year (youngest ever)

You go ahead and add 2009 All-NBA First Team and 2009 All-Defensive First Team to the list too, for good measure. I haven't even mentioned any of Howard's many philanthropic endeavors. As Bill Walton would probably say, what we have here is a fine psychological, physical, and sociological specimen who has graced the earth with his many talents. 

Oh, and I think a word to describe the above list is - ridiculous. 

Before I wrap up, I think this YouTube video embodies the type of season Howard has had for the Orlando Magic. I like to say sometimes around 3QC that when Howard is on his A-game, he's in rare "Optimus Prime" mode. Well, watch the vid and see what I mean. 

Respect.

Orlando Magic center Tony Battie battles Milwaukee Bucks center Dan Gadzuric for a rebound

File photo by Fernando Medina, NBAE/Getty Images

Tony Battie is the freakin' man.

The Orlando Magic desperately missed his toughness last season as he recovered from shoulder surgery. Now that he's back, Orlando is stronger on the interior, and has an ideal post player to complement Dwight Howard. His modest per-game averages of 5.4 points and 4.4 rebounds don't tell the whole story. Tony's posting those numbers in a mere 16.7 minutes per game. On a per-minute basis, he hasn't scored at this rate since his third season or rebounded at this rate since his fifth. And he's never scored more efficiently, with a crisp shooting percentage of 61.8%, which blasts his previous career best of 54.1%.

It's tempting to compare this current Magic team to the one of the mid-1990s which featured Shaquille O'Neal, Penny Hardaway, and Horace Grant. The Howard/O'Neal and Hedo Turkoglu/Hardaway analogies are a bit stale, but this one rings true: Tony Battie/Horace Grant. Battie's per-minute statistics this season compare favorably to Grant's from 1994/1995, when the Magic made their only NBA Finals appearance.

More praise for Tony after the jump.

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Team U.S.A. celebrates defeating Spain for its first Olympic gold medal since 2000.

Photo by Chang W. Lee, the New York Times

Congratulations to Dwight Howard and everyone involved in U.S.A. Basketball for their gold-medal-winning performance in this Olympics. Howard scored 8 points (3-of-3 from the field, 2-of-6 from the line) and grabbed 5 boards as the United States defeated Spain, 118-111, to win its first Olympic gold medal since the 2000 games in Sydney. The New York Times' recap notes that Howard, along with four other core players, has already said he would like to return to Team U.S.A. for the 2012 Olympics in London. Here's to hoping he does.

U.S.A.! U.S.A.! U.S.A.!

...among other things.

Dunkin' Donuts and the Orlando Magic: A Real Breakfast of Champions

3QC Photo

All season long, the Orlando Magic teamed up with Central Florida-area Dunkin' Donuts locations to provide Magic fans with the opportunity to have a free donut the morning after each Magic win. There wasn't a catch: no minimum points-scored requirement, no ticket-stub requirement, no individual achievement requirement. All the Magic had to do was win, and all their fans needed to do was go to Dunkin' Donuts the next morning to reap the benefits.

Thankfully, this promotion carried over into the playoffs. So this morning, following last night's 102-92 win over the Raptors, which put the Magic in the second round for the first time since 1996, I sat down and enjoyed a chocolate frosted donut.

It was the most satisfying meal of my life.

Forgive the hyperbole, but the Magic's advancing is no small feat. Twelve years may not seem like a long time to a lot of you, but it sure does to me. When the Magic closed out the Hawks in the Eastern Conference Semifinals, I had just finished my second-grade year. Less than a week before the Magic beat the Raptors, I finished my second year of college.

But school isn't the only thing that's changed for me, personally, since the Magic last fielded a contending team. I've also met the woman I will one day marry -- love you, honey. I've been diagnosed for depression. I've had two stints in behavioral health clinics, one as recently as November. Hell, the only thing that's stayed the same is the house I call home. And, obviously, my love for the Magic.

That's why I had to fight back tears during the final moments of last night's win, which means more to me than my team advancing. It means I've been rewarded for supporting this team for all these years. So, too, has everyone else in the organization. Whit Watson says as much in his latest blog entry, in which he discusses the Magic mania taking hold in Orlando once more.

Two images from last night's game stick out to me as symbols of how the Magic have progressed, and neither of them ended up on any highlight reels. Before the game, Hedo Turkoglu was presented with the NBA's Most Improved Player Award in a ceremony at halfcourt. After posing for a few pictures with it and its presenter, Hedo called his teammates over to pose with him. They obliged:

Photo by Kevin Kolcynzki, Reuters

This team's camaraderie is unprecedented in franchise history. That photo shows just one of the literally thousands of expressions of Magic brotherhood we've seen this season. There isn't a single selfish player on the team. After years of employing players who valued themselves more than they valued the team -- and I won't name names -- it's refreshing to see a roster full of likable, fun-loving guys who just want to win.

The second image comes from late in the game, with the Magic's victory secured and both teams simply playing out the string. During a Toronto timeout, Stuff, the Magic's dopey-looking mascot, emerged from a locker-room tunnel wearing a grey hooded cloak and holding a sickle: Stuff became the Grim Reaper, and you can see it near the end of this video shot from the stands (Rated R for strong pervasive language). It was a fitting way to end the evening. The Magic showed the killer instinct they haven't had in over a decade by putting a team away when it counted, and their mascot was dressed for the occasion.

No matter what happens for the rest of the playoffs, the Magic will finish this season as successes, having re-established themselves as NBA-relevant and re-invigorated a formerly passive Orlando community. And I couldn't be prouder of them.

Two weeks ago, With Malice hosted Unsung Player Day. Although they invited me to participate, I never got around to writing what I wanted to. Well, better late than never.

The next time you're at a party, you can mention this fact and watch as the people to whom you're taking react with amazement^*: Of Maurice Evans' 253 field goals for the Magic this season, 73 were dunks and 80 were three-pointers. All told, dunks and treys account for 60.5% of his made field goals.

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File photo by Fernando Medina, NBAE/Getty Images

Let's praise Hedo Turkoglu.

The NBA named Turk the Eastern Conference Player of the Month for April; Kobe Bryant received the Western award. It's Turk's first-ever Player of the Month award, although he won Player of the Week twice earlier this season.

He's gotten a lot of love lately, that Hedo Turkoglu:

• Lang Whitaker of SLAM, who has an official NBA awards ballot (that is to say, his opinion counts), voted Turkoglu as the NBA's Most Improved Player. The decision was, in his words, "a gimme."
• Bill Simmons has him and Dwight Howard in a tie in 11th for NBA MVP. He put Turkoglu in the starting lineup of his All-Hombre team along with Steve Nash, Bryant, LeBron James, and Rasheed Wallace.
• He received 9 votes for Most Improved Player from ESPN's panel of 20 experts; the runner-up was Boston's Rajon Rondo, with 3 votes.
• He scored 487 points in fourth quarters, which is 30.4% of his total points. His 6.2 points per fourth quarter is seventh in the NBA this season, according to 82games.
• T. Jose Caldeford calls him "Mr. Under the Radar" and worries the Raptors may not be able to stop him.

Check out this neat profile of Turk from Stan McNeal of The Sporting News. And here, we expressed our outrage over Turk's exclusion from the Eastern Conference All-Star team, then made the case that he should have taken Joe Johnson's place.

Henry Abbott, of TrueHoop fame, finds it hard to repress his journalistic neutrality when he watches Dwight Howard play:

But over the last few weeks, as I have been watching Dwight Howard every chance I get, I find it is getting mighty tough to write about him with any measure or balance at all. All the things I'm thinking are so hyperbolic and salesy that it would sound like the brochure for Dwight Howard Enterprises.

Welcome to the club. Dwight has indeed been amazing this season, reaching new heights... literally and figuratively. Henry was particularly impressed by the levitation Dwight had on this block of an Austin Croshere dunk attempt from the other night:

Are you kidding me? Did that really happen?

Abbott also draws our attention to this piece in Sports Illustrated by Jack McCallum, who wrote the indispensable book Seven Seconds or Less. The article contains this nugget of info about the Suns' approach to guarding Howard:

At one point Suns guard Raja Bell, never one to shy away from contact, asked assistant Alvin Gentry what approach to take when Howard comes steaming down the lane on a screen-and-roll.

"Should I step in and plug?" said Bell.

"I'd just get the hell out of the way in that situation," answered Gentry.

"Just making sure we were on the same page," said Bell.

Raja Bell had the intestinal fortitude to clothesline Kobe Bryant, but not even he is willing to stand in the way of Dwight Howard. That's a testament to Howard's beastliness, and why he's worthy of our respect.