Cigamodnalro wrote:"Boy, maybe it's a compliment to Hedo that people's expectations of him are so high that 17.5 ppg, 47% shooting, and 5.6 assists against one of the league's best defenders is considered "useless". I mean Prince shadowed him the whole series and the guy rarely got an open shot that he didn't have to create for himself. Anyhow, I digress... "
Plain and simple, Prince took him out of the game. Mr. Fourth quarter also failed to come up big when it counted. Turkoglu's primary value is as our ball-handler and distributor. He's also earned the undue reputation of a clutch player, which he failed to demonstrate on the big stage. His inability to feed Dwight in the post, to get the team working in sync, and to put up his own clutch points really cost us in this series. It is asinine to assume otherwise.
No, he has earned the reputation as a big scorer in the 4th and someone who can get his own shot. Pretty much the only way he scored this series was getting his own shot, because none of the guards were enough of a threat to draw Prince out of Hedo's shorts. As for final possessions, he hit some and missed some during the regular season; he was one out of 4 in these playoffs. He still had several good 4th quarters that got the Magic back into games. Maybe you need to watch games 4 and 5 again.
And as for distributing, the numbers disagee with your opinion. He averaged 5.6 assists against the Pistons, higher than his regular season average. He got teammates plenty of open shots, and if Rashard or Bogans had even average shooting Hedo's assist totals would have been higher.
The post passing was poor, but part of it was Prince's long arms in his face and part of it was Dwight making everyone look bad on post entries. Pretty much every post-entry pass has to be perfect for Dwight, because he sure as heck won't move his feet to get it, and he sure as heck wasn't holding off the defender from reaching around him.
I am in no way saying Hedo was great or saying he did not contribute to the losses. But what is assinine is people blaming Hedo primarily for the series loss. You really think the Magic would have been better off in this series without him? That he had an overall negative impact?
