They are updating their power rankings throughout the offseason, with the latest update coming this last Monday, the 4th. Just a little blurb from their rankings about the Magic:
9) Orlando Magic (52-30) - We want to bump them higher, but other than Dwight Howard continuing to improve everyone else should pretty much stay the same. The team still needs to upgrade their guards. And it looks like Rashard Lewis will play out of position at power forward again. Worked well enough last season.
This is interesting because I think it is the difference between how Magic fans think about the team compared to how outsiders think about it. To them Nelson is mediocre with no room to improve, and so he must be replaced, and it sounds like the same goes for Pietrus. It also seems like having Lewis play at the 4 is considered a weakness.
I just don't see it that way. I think that it is not the rosey glasses that Magic fans wear that is skewing the picture but instead the determined effort by outsiders to not think outside the box. They can't get over the fact that Nelson is short, MP fell out of favor with GS, and Lewis is a perimeter player. Nelson has shown previous flashes of brilliance as late as last years playoff run when he single handedly kept us in several games. He is small but no smaller than TJ Ford, whom most expects sing praises for. Nelson owned both him and Calderon in the playoffs, but that doesn't seem to matter. MP is athletic and a natural 2, where he will get to play most of his minutes in SVG's system. As for Lewis, his perimeter style of play is actually perfect for the 4 and what Orlando tries to do on Offense. Very few teams can get the better end of that match-up and have to adjust to keep up. Until the outsiders get a handle on what is really going on with the Magic we can continue to hear that Howard just can't do it by himself, when in reality he doesn't have too.
