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From the people at HoopsWorld the Magic are picked to finish as the 6th seed this coming season.
Here is what is being said about the Magic:

6. Orlando Magic: Rashard Lewis was supposed to help Dwight Howard lead the Magic on a deep postseason run. That didn't happen. The Magic fell short in the playoffs and have done little to spark hope for a championship next season. They will need more than Mickael Pietrus off the bench to make up for their thin backcourt, which boasts a mediocre point guard in Jameer Nelson and the rarely-used-but-never-traded J.J. Redick. Howard's shoulders are not big enough to carry this team.

http://www.hoopsworld.com/Story.asp?story_id=9710

Over at the O-Zone they are in an uproar over this pre-season ranking. And yes I agree with you, but at the same time many of teams picked a head of the Magic have improved so the Magic doing as well as they did last year in the seedings might be hard to repeat.

i hope we go into this season with all the outside media not expecting anything out of us... it just makes it that much sweeter when we dominate

cougar13 wrote:many of teams picked a head of the Magic have improved so the Magic doing as well as they did last year in the seedings might be hard to repeat.

Exactly, we didn't really upgrade anywhere and our weak front court may mean many a long night of our small guards (and now an old one) getting torched.

cougar13 wrote:Over at the O-Zone they are in an uproar over this pre-season ranking.

I don't really understand why people get so angry about these types of things. It's an f-ing prediction.

Read it, agree or disagree, move on to the next one.

Could we end up as the sixth seed? Sure. Do I think we'll end up in the top 4 though? Yes.

Some fans get WAY too defensive about these pre-season predictions.

We're ranked that high?

I'm predicting like 35-47

Wow, someone actually predicts the Magic being in the playoffs again!

MagicMadness wrote:

cougar13 wrote:Over at the O-Zone they are in an uproar over this pre-season ranking.

I don't really understand why people get so angry about these types of things. It's an f-ing prediction.

Read it, agree or disagree, move on to the next one.

Could we end up as the sixth seed? Sure. Do I think we'll end up in the top 4 though? Yes.

Some fans get WAY too defensive about these pre-season predictions.

its the nature of sports and fan bases...there are many types of fans, and people treat things completely different...no sense in trying to suppress these types as long as it's not harmful to anyone else...

Can someone tell me who MP will be backing up?

If they think that Battie is starting and MP is coming off the bench with Lewis at the 3 and Turk at the 2 then I hope they are wrong.

I like how they say that LBJ is a top 5 player and so he can carry his team but they say nothing about Dwight. Then they list his supporting cast, West, Sczerbiak, and Wallace, as if they are a strength.
Lets see, Nelson>West, MP>Sczerbiak, Hedo>Wallace, and Lewis>Ilgauskas. Some of those comparisons don't match up perfectly but you get the point. People just don't understand the greatness that is the Magic.

i honestly can't believe that the cavs, sixers and raptors got ranked ahead of us...

they dont realize that cleveland has done NOTHING! this summer, so let's see we were better than them last year and we will be better than them this year. sixers? they'll be good, but not better than us. i say they win 48-52 games and finish 4th, while we win anywhere between 55 and 60 games and finish 2nd or 3rd. raptors??? they have 3 players....enough said. JO is injured half the time, and when he's healthy they have bosh who plays exactly the same. they should be called the toronto caldenealoshes, because that's all they have. as we saw in the playoffs, bargnani blows, now they dont have a back up pg so jose will have to play a lot more and will be tired, kapono sucks. boston will be boston, although i do expect them to fall off a little bit due to the losses of posey, brown and cassell. detroit will be detroit although theyre getting old. the top 5 teams will be pretty close. my prediction is this:

1. boston, 61-21
2. orlando, 57-25
3. detroit, 56-26
4. philly, 51-31
5. cleveland, 49-33
6. toronto, 48-34
7. washington, 45-37
8. new jersey, 42-40

I'll take it, hell I'd love it if people predict we will be a lotto team.

Last year I laughed my way through winter at how stupid so many other teams fans and sports "experts" were. Today I saw a comment about how Orlando have a sucky defense and wont ever rank top 10, only for a mod to make them aware we ranked like 8th last year.

People like that should have their keyboards confiscated.

I agree that we should be in the top 3 for the east. I like the fact that our schedule is spaced out for the difficult teams and we dont have a back to back game with teams like San Antonio then the next night Houston. I can't wait for the season to start.

I dont care honestly, but I do think the person who made the rankings is pretty ignorant. How do you add MP / Battie / Lee and get worse? Sure the 6ers added brand but honestly that team still doesnt scare me untill they get Iggy locked in and even then they dont bother me. The Raptors added JO, thats cool, untill JO misses 3/4 the season. An even if JO is healthy all season I still think were better, we stomped them last year in the playoffs. Adding JO isnt gonna make up that big a difference. Like others have said though, keep underrating us Im sure itll only help.

These things are silly for the most part.

i see us winning 57-58 games this year if that puts us in 6th than hot dam the west will surly suck this year lol

hahaha this is funny to me. Philly has added Brand, sure, but at the same time, brand has just missed almost 2 seasons and IMO is vastly overrated in the first place. Toronto is better now, and i don't think JO will be injured. That was probobly a "shut it down my team sucks" set of injuries, but still Rashard showed that he can lock people down on D when called upon and dwight is a monster, so i see no imminent threat there. Cleveland is...not...a...good...team....period. LBJ will be crying about trading for different players again this year come deadline time... book it. To add to that, how does cleveland get ranked above us when they exited the playoffs the same way we did AND have done nothing in the off-season? This is the thing about the Magic... as far as anylists go, they either LOATHE us or they love us.

MoGrAdY wrote:I dont care honestly, but I do think the person who made the rankings is pretty ignorant. How do you add MP / Battie / Lee and get worse? Sure the 6ers added brand but honestly that team still doesnt scare me untill they get Iggy locked in and even then they dont bother me. The Raptors added JO, thats cool, untill JO misses 3/4 the season. An even if JO is healthy all season I still think were better, we stomped them last year in the playoffs. Adding JO isnt gonna make up that big a difference. Like others have said though, keep underrating us Im sure itll only help.

I don't think it's about the Magic getting worse it's more about the teams around them getting better. Lets really examine our additions not what we think their going to do, but what they've done. First let's look at Lee. How often to draft picks taken at the 22 spot make immediate contributions to their teams?

MP: He has done absolutely nothing over the course of his career that would make people think he's an immediate upgrade over Evans or Bogans.

Battie: Battie is not the answer and he's not that good he gives us depth but I mean the guys no good we need another big man.

Now do I think were going to be 6th absolutely not. We should be in the top 3, but could it happen? Yea it could because there are a ton of variables to consider. First is Howard going to improve his offense and FT shooting? Is Nelson going to actually prove he can play as well as he did in the playoffs for an entire season? Is MP going to be as good as people on this board seem to think he is? Is Battie even going to be decent? Can Hedo do what he did last year or better and if not can Lewis be better than the guy he has been over the course of his entire career. Last and most important is our defense going to improve so we don't have those terrible mental lapses this year that we sometimes seem to have last year.

All of this stuff is really dumb anyways. You don't really know how good most NBA teams are going to be until the season actually begins. You don't know who's going to improve and you don't know which new additions are going to make a great impact. Even people here saying were going to win 57- 58 games are thinking in a best case scenario stand point. Thats why I don't like to make predictions when it comes to the NBA cause it many cases it can be pretty unpredictable.