Orlando Magic News for February 20th: Issues with Shot Selection; Vintage Vince Carter

Do Magic Take Too Many 3-Point Shots?
Tim Povtak wonders whether or not the Orlando Magic take too many threes.

The Orlando Magic are on pace to set NBA records for 3-pointers made and 3-pointers attempted in a season, but those numbers backfired Friday in a frigid shooting night against the Dallas Mavericks.

You don't win many games making 4-of-25 from 3-point land, the Magic's worst shooting percentage (.160) of the season. [...]

Orlando came into the game ranked sixth in the league in 3-point shooting percentage (.367), averaging 10.2 makes and 27.8 attempts per game, easily the most in the league.

Time for the Orlando Magic to "reign in" the quick shots?
Tania Ganguli notes that head coach Stan Van Gundy may take a look at some of his players' shot selections in games.

The general tenor of the Magic’s offense has been that if a player has an open look, he should take the shot. They almost always have the green-light to do it.

That’s the kind of strategy that works great when the shots are falling. But against the Dallas Mavericks, the Magic struggled even with open shots in their 95-85 loss.

That’s why Van Gundy stressed after the game that he wasn’t upset at his players. He said he wasn’t concerned about the effort or about the shot selection — he noted the Magic were getting many open looks. Timing, though, might be something to examine.

"We gotta look at maybe reigning a few guys in who are consistently not making shots," Van Gundy said.

Baseline to Baseline, your game recaps
Matt Moore of ProBasketballTalk recaps Orlando's loss versus Dallas.

Stan Van Gundy defends Dwight Howard against local and national criticism
UPDATE: Josh Robbins states that Van Gundy is tired of the criticism that Dwight Howard receives, unjustly sometimes, from the media.

"For whatever reason, though, it’s not just here locally," Van Gundy added later. "The national media, he’s just a guy that gets [dumped] on. You would think that he’s not one of the elite players in the league. I guess people haven’t noticed his offensive improvement. I don’t think anybody’s paying attention, the stuff I read about him. If there’s guys in the league playing better than he is right now, there’s like two or three of them. There are not many doing what he’s doing. He has carried our team."