Because a preview is fun.
With the off-season moving along at a steady crawl, I've been able to divulge on a project I've been wanting to work on for a while. A few months ago, the Third Quarter Collapse community had a stirring debate about the Orlando Magic retiring jerseys. As everyone is aware, the organization has yet to retire a player's jersey. However, this hasn't stopped the fan-base from wondering when Orlando will finally immortalize one of its own players (like Nick Anderson, in the picture above) by hanging his number in the rafters.
I decided to approach the topic from a different point of view, atypical of what people have done in trying to rationalize which individuals deserved to be honored. With the help of Jon Nichols of Basketball-Statistics and Neil Paine of Basketball-Reference, I wanted to take a look at the statistical production of a few Magic players and compare them to individuals in the NBA that have had their jerseys retired. Rather than reveal which players I examined, I'll go ahead and leave people guessing until tomorrow. I figured it'd be good to build up the suspense.
So, stay tuned tomorrow for Part I of my mini-series featuring ???