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Game Thread: Hawks at Magic, 04/05/19
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Game Thread: Hawks at Magic, 04/05/19
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jayu70
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Re: Game Thread: Hawks at Magic, 04/05/19
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Spud2nique
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Re: Game Thread: Hawks at Magic, 04/05/19
Oh man the Magic need this game! Spoil alert time! Hawks don’t lay down for anyone.
Re: Game Thread: Hawks at Magic, 04/05/19
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lethalweapon3
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Re: Game Thread: Hawks at Magic, 04/05/19
WARNING: I’m turning heel on y’all! No worries, just for a day or two. As far as heel turns go, it’s not gonna be Bash at the Beach ’96 bad.
I have always needed more than mere Lottery Oddz rationales to justify pulling for our Atlanta Hawks to wind up with at least one less point than their opponents. A key element to commandeering the New World Order that I dream about is nudging these Orlando Magic (7 PM Eastern, Fox Sports Southeast and 92.9 FM in ATL) into this year’s NBA Playoffs, and out of You Know What.
Come to think of it -- Hawt Take alert -- but Bash at the Beach was the greatest “sport”-ing event of July 1996. Go ask your pops, Trae, he knows what I’m talking about. And yes, I was right here in Atlanta, hoarding commemorative archery pins, hopping and hoping along with Kerri Strug on the vault, rooting on the Dream Team as they beat up on Botswana or whoever. Never mind a torch. The Games of the Whateverth That Was Olympiad couldn’t hold a candle to what went down earlier that month in Daytona.
That summertime spectacle, betwixt the turnbuckles down the turnpike from Orlando, was the piece de resistance for Atlanta-based World Championship Wrestling. A globally renowned superhero, the bandanna-bound, baby-oiled babyface to end all babyfaces, abandoned the ring promotion he turned into a global phenomenon, to show up as a black-clad badass in this one. What’cha Gonna Do, Brudder?
Lugging legions of “vitamin”-swilling maniac teens with him into chest-hair-growing maturity, and out of the conceptually tapped-out WWF/E, WCW was now, finally and definitively, on top of the rasslin’ world.
Now, hop into a Hot Tub Time Machine and head to July 1996’s Ocean Center, grab some departing fans smothered in tear-stained Sting facepaint, and catalog their reactions when you warn them that their dear WCW would cease to exist five years later, its assets folded into their Monday Night Wars archrival WWE.
Break the news that poor Billionaire Ted and Brainiac Bischoff would never see the chairshot from AOL Time Warner coming (that’s right, the AOL whose dial-up subscriptions you downloaded on diskettes can never be canceled… you can explain that whole corporate merger, and what happened to disks, and dials, later). Those poor WCW fans. You’ll probably want to arrange them an Uber… what? oh, sorry… a cab ride home.
It’s a stretch, but I’m drawing some parallels to the Dwightmare-fueled fans of the Magic, back in the lockout season of 2011-12. The young man Central Florida nurtured and cheered as he grew to become (in his mind) Superman, the All-NBA, All-Defensive Team star who put this team on his broad shoulders and carried into the 2009 NBA Finals, was turning Hollywood Hogan on them. His signature cheeky smile now came across more like a Cheshire cat grin. Everyone outside the NBA’s ring ropes could see he was setting up his tag-team partner for a back-stabbing downfall, something “Stan the Man” Van Gundy couldn’t sense until it was too late.
It’s Time Machine time again. Hop in the tub and head to Lake Eola, in the sweltering summer of 2012, and tell an embittered Magic fan about Dwight’s Plight, seven years after the mega-deal that allowed him a chance to pal around with Kobe like Shaq once did.
Zero NBA titles; burned out in L.A. after just one season; stopped short of a trip to the Finals before souring in Houston with James Harden (you can explain that part later); no All-Star or All-NBA honors after 2014; welcomed to his hometown in Atlanta, and then shipped out after one lost season there…
Traded, in part for 2012 draftee Miles Plumlee, to Charlotte, also one-and-done; traded, in part for the guy Blake Griffin savaged in 2010, to and then immediately dumped by Brooklyn, a team he once wanted to leave Orlando for. And finally, at least for now, picked up by Washington, where he sat for most of the season with (not so much, as) a pain in the rear, where everyone is hoping he will not sign a player option that would pay him less than he made here, in Orlando, the year before he took the Magic to the Finals. A multitude of once hopeful GMs are littered along the roadside in his wake.
When that Magic fan is through doing celebratory backstrokes for “winning” the big Dwight trade, it’d be a good idea to have the lake drained, before sharing the other side of the coin.
Of the players still active in the league from that August 2012 mega-deal, only one could boast of winning at least one NBA championship, and not with any of the four teams involved in that trade. And, no, that guy wasn’t Andrew Bynum. Orlando would glean a single All-Star out of that trade deal, but the honor would not arrive until 2019. And, no, turns out that it wasn’t Mo Harkless.
The 2014 first-rounder his Magic team got from Denver? He’d become an All-Rookie First Team member! But, not before 2012’s newly-hired GM would trade the pick on 2014 Draft Night to Philly. That wunderkind GM would attach, with that pick, his team’s only other first-rounder from the Dwight deal, a 2018 pick that might have earned an All-Rookie nod, too.
Orlando did so to trade up two Lottery spots for a point guard that would last three mediocre seasons before getting sent to Phoenix for a 2018 second-rounder. The sole draft pick acquired directly from the Dwight trade that Orlando kept? A 2017 second-rounder who is currently a reserve, averaging a shade under five points per game.
Tell that fan his team would draft, and acquire, some notable young gems over the ensuing seven years, including a replacement Slam Dunk Contest winner who leaps over Stuff the Magic Dragon on a rotating hoverboard. But the shine for most of those up-and-comers would not become apparent until they wound up elsewhere in the league. That included two guys Orlando would draft that are currently star contributors for playoff-bound Indiana, coincidentally the last team the Magic opposed in a postseason series. Speaking of postseasons…
After the Dwight Flight, the team’s longtime owner-patriarch would not live long enough to see the team he bought return to the NBA Playoffs. And the family heirs, and the fanbase, are all still tapping their toes waiting. Almost seven years have passed, and no multi-level schemes have panned out for the DeVos family’s NBA team. 37-29 in the last lockout-shortened season of Dwight, no more than 35 wins in the six full seasons after, five of those featuring no more than 29.
Inform the fan that the Magic (39-40) MIGHT get there in 2019, and maybe even notch their first winning season since 2012. But that’s only a certainty if they run the table in the final three games to close out the season, at home against Atlanta (relax, Magic Fan. Joe Johnson just left, right?) and then a pair of probably uneasy road games.
Then, Hawks fan, hurry back to the future, before that 2012 Magic fan tries to strangle you. If you followed my instructions, at least he can’t drown you in the lake.
We can’t do much about the disenchanted fans in the Magic Kingdom from back then, but our Hawks can offer a helpful hand to the hopeful ones left standing today. At least, I sure as heck hope we can. Granted, it may require getting Coach Lloyd Pierce to spew some Great Muta-style mist in his precocious point guard’s eyes, or maybe whack his most powerful forward with Jeff Jarrett’s guitar while Stuff distracts the refs, but I hope it won’t have to come to that.
It shouldn’t have to, not with the way the Magic have beaten the Hawks all season, and not with the way Magic coach Steve Clifford has his team playing of late.
Atlanta has lost by double-digits in each of its other three matchups this season, although the Magic would acknowledge that the footsteps have been growing louder: 122-103 on January 21, 124-108 on February 10, and 101-91 here at Amway Center on St. Pat’s. The latter win is part of a current 8-2 winning stretch for Orlando, plus an 8-game home winning streak, the longest since happier times back in January 2011.
Wednesday’s 114-100 home win, over Mario Hezonja’s Knicks, has inched the team into a statistical tie with Brooklyn for the 7-seed in the Eastern Conference (Nets hold the tiebreaker). Being a half-game behind Detroit for the 6-seed, with the possibility of avoiding Milwaukee and Toronto in the first-round within reach, there’s no reason for the Magic not to get greedy.
Atlanta would-be tied as a 7-seed, with Boston, if you counted only their 10-11 record since the All-Star Break. Orlando (12-8) would be third, thanks in part to the Hawks drumming the 76ers on Wednesday night. In the NBA East, only conference leaders Milwaukee and Toronto have performed better than the Magic (+3.2 post-Break Net Rating, 8th-best in NBA) down this home stretch.
Long heralded as the saving grace of the Dwight mega-deal, Nikola Vucevic hasn’t settled down since getting named to his first All-Star team (23 double-doubles in 27 games since Feb. 1: 20.8 PPG, 12.1 RPG). Vooch has gotten more than adequate offensive help from his fellow contract-year contributor Terrence Ross (NBA-high 2.6 bench 3FGs/game, min. 15+ bench appearances), Aaron Gordon and Evan Fournier.
The quartet has been ably assisted by point guards D.J. Augustin (6.2 APG, 1.3 TOs/game since February) and Michael Carter-Williams, the veteran signed on for the playoff run to replace an injured Isaiah Briscoe. Lest we forget that the young fella the Magic settled for – alright, sorry – took, once Trae Young came off the 2018 Draft board, Mo Bamba, was shut down at the end of January due to a tibia fracture?
Ultimately, the full season matters, sure. Yet, I posit, shouldn’t such late-season growth and improvement be rewarded, in some token way? (Hush, all you Lukatics out there, this matter doesn’t concern you. Go beat Tyler Dorsey and Tyler Zeller for a game, or two, then get back to us. Until then, stifle.)
All the Donces sitting in the corner, mumbling about, “FuLl BoDy Of WoRk,” would disagree vehemently with Penny & Pops podcaster Adam Papageorgiou, but, “If the Magic make the playoffs,” he tweeted yesterday, “we probably should be screaming at the top of our Orlando roofs that Steve Clifford should be Coach of the Year. A lot of candidates, but no one has a better game improvement from last season than Orlando. And it’s Steve’s first season.”
The Magic are getting desired results, at the right time, because they embrace Cliffy-Ball as fully as they have all season, perhaps better than his predecessor team ever could. Following their new coach’s precepts, Orlando continues to force opponents into stilted halfcourt play (98.1 post-Break pace, 3rd-lowest in NBA), then controls possession by being judicious with the offensive execution (2.17 post-Break assist/TO ratio, barely behind SAN for 2nd-best in NBA) while rebounding the slop out of the ball on defense (77.1 post-Break D-Reb%, 1st in NBA).
They won’t gamble for many steals, and that’s part of the reason they don’t waste time watching opponents shoot from the foul line (20.7 opponent FTAs per-48, 5th-lowest in NBA). Comparatively, Atlanta’s 27.9 free throws allowed per-48 is an NBA-high. But, as Sixers fans learned from this past weekend, you can only lead a horse to water (ATL opponents 75.6 FT%, 7th-lowest in NBA).
The Hawks (29-50) will try to make a tighter game of their final meeting with the Magic. Atlanta must find ways to coax them out of Coach Cliff’s comfort zone. Pierce will park Alex Len and his remaining bigs around the perimeter in hopes of drawing Vucevic and Khem Birch out of the paint, thereby allowing wings to feast on cuts and putbacks at the rim while diminishing the degree of difficulty on the paper-cut floaters by Trae Young (10-for-12 2FGs, 33 points, 12 assists, 2 late TOs vs. PHI).
On defense, Nique’s patented “K.Y.P.” principles apply, as the Hawks must find ways to deny Magic players the ball or the space when they’re in their favorite individual spots to attack on the floor. The more that DeAndre’ Bembry, Taurean Prince (EDIT: Baze and Red Alert got Load-Managed), and Vince Carter (was he at Bash at the Beach ’96?) can be destabilizing forces, the sloppier the overall play by both teams, the more effectively that the Hawks can wallow in the muck. Here’s hoping they fall just one point short in the attempt.
While the Hawks, who escaped AOL Time Warner’s cobra clutch long ago, will never suffer the fate of the doomed WCW, I can envision John Collins (25-and-8 vs. PHI, 2.0 BPG in past 4 games) and Young as the NBA’s Hall and Nash. A pair of talented, clever and brash young Outsiders, turning heads and shaking up the league, drawing so much attention that no one will be prepared for the superstar stunners sneaking out from the tunnel to join them. The invasion angle has begun. Heck, Andre Aldridge would make for a perfect Mean Gene. You can see it!
I’d be overjoyed if I could have gotten all of Atlanta’s Southeast Division rivals in the playoffs’ bottom-four tier. The Wizards went POOF! early, while the Hornets (Tragic Number: 2), after a late glimpse of hope, are looking like a lost cause. But the Pistons’ and Nets’ backsliding have given both the Magic and the heat a final chance to break through, with Orlando the more likely to pull it off, given a relatively healthier roster.
This “let’s go get our savior in the Draft!” business is cute, for a year or three. But there comes a point in every team’s life where you’ve got to leave the Lottery, and for the Magic, that time should’ve arrived about four years ago. Much like our ’08 Hawks, the ownership here, the fans, everyone around O-Town are all Playoffs-parched. Miraculous Lottery wins and first-overall picks? Been there, done that, bought the T-shirts several times over on I-Drive. Time to try a new tack.
Orlando, please, take this here victory. And regarding any notion of hanging out with us Hawks once more in the Lottery, allow me to make my thoughts clear, using my best Ari Gold impression, with a special message for you on the dry-erase board. “GET…”
Let’s [fingerquotes] Go [/fingerquotes] Hawks!
~lw3
I have always needed more than mere Lottery Oddz rationales to justify pulling for our Atlanta Hawks to wind up with at least one less point than their opponents. A key element to commandeering the New World Order that I dream about is nudging these Orlando Magic (7 PM Eastern, Fox Sports Southeast and 92.9 FM in ATL) into this year’s NBA Playoffs, and out of You Know What.
Come to think of it -- Hawt Take alert -- but Bash at the Beach was the greatest “sport”-ing event of July 1996. Go ask your pops, Trae, he knows what I’m talking about. And yes, I was right here in Atlanta, hoarding commemorative archery pins, hopping and hoping along with Kerri Strug on the vault, rooting on the Dream Team as they beat up on Botswana or whoever. Never mind a torch. The Games of the Whateverth That Was Olympiad couldn’t hold a candle to what went down earlier that month in Daytona.
That summertime spectacle, betwixt the turnbuckles down the turnpike from Orlando, was the piece de resistance for Atlanta-based World Championship Wrestling. A globally renowned superhero, the bandanna-bound, baby-oiled babyface to end all babyfaces, abandoned the ring promotion he turned into a global phenomenon, to show up as a black-clad badass in this one. What’cha Gonna Do, Brudder?
Lugging legions of “vitamin”-swilling maniac teens with him into chest-hair-growing maturity, and out of the conceptually tapped-out WWF/E, WCW was now, finally and definitively, on top of the rasslin’ world.
Now, hop into a Hot Tub Time Machine and head to July 1996’s Ocean Center, grab some departing fans smothered in tear-stained Sting facepaint, and catalog their reactions when you warn them that their dear WCW would cease to exist five years later, its assets folded into their Monday Night Wars archrival WWE.
Break the news that poor Billionaire Ted and Brainiac Bischoff would never see the chairshot from AOL Time Warner coming (that’s right, the AOL whose dial-up subscriptions you downloaded on diskettes can never be canceled… you can explain that whole corporate merger, and what happened to disks, and dials, later). Those poor WCW fans. You’ll probably want to arrange them an Uber… what? oh, sorry… a cab ride home.
It’s a stretch, but I’m drawing some parallels to the Dwightmare-fueled fans of the Magic, back in the lockout season of 2011-12. The young man Central Florida nurtured and cheered as he grew to become (in his mind) Superman, the All-NBA, All-Defensive Team star who put this team on his broad shoulders and carried into the 2009 NBA Finals, was turning Hollywood Hogan on them. His signature cheeky smile now came across more like a Cheshire cat grin. Everyone outside the NBA’s ring ropes could see he was setting up his tag-team partner for a back-stabbing downfall, something “Stan the Man” Van Gundy couldn’t sense until it was too late.
It’s Time Machine time again. Hop in the tub and head to Lake Eola, in the sweltering summer of 2012, and tell an embittered Magic fan about Dwight’s Plight, seven years after the mega-deal that allowed him a chance to pal around with Kobe like Shaq once did.
Zero NBA titles; burned out in L.A. after just one season; stopped short of a trip to the Finals before souring in Houston with James Harden (you can explain that part later); no All-Star or All-NBA honors after 2014; welcomed to his hometown in Atlanta, and then shipped out after one lost season there…
Traded, in part for 2012 draftee Miles Plumlee, to Charlotte, also one-and-done; traded, in part for the guy Blake Griffin savaged in 2010, to and then immediately dumped by Brooklyn, a team he once wanted to leave Orlando for. And finally, at least for now, picked up by Washington, where he sat for most of the season with (not so much, as) a pain in the rear, where everyone is hoping he will not sign a player option that would pay him less than he made here, in Orlando, the year before he took the Magic to the Finals. A multitude of once hopeful GMs are littered along the roadside in his wake.
When that Magic fan is through doing celebratory backstrokes for “winning” the big Dwight trade, it’d be a good idea to have the lake drained, before sharing the other side of the coin.
Of the players still active in the league from that August 2012 mega-deal, only one could boast of winning at least one NBA championship, and not with any of the four teams involved in that trade. And, no, that guy wasn’t Andrew Bynum. Orlando would glean a single All-Star out of that trade deal, but the honor would not arrive until 2019. And, no, turns out that it wasn’t Mo Harkless.
The 2014 first-rounder his Magic team got from Denver? He’d become an All-Rookie First Team member! But, not before 2012’s newly-hired GM would trade the pick on 2014 Draft Night to Philly. That wunderkind GM would attach, with that pick, his team’s only other first-rounder from the Dwight deal, a 2018 pick that might have earned an All-Rookie nod, too.
Orlando did so to trade up two Lottery spots for a point guard that would last three mediocre seasons before getting sent to Phoenix for a 2018 second-rounder. The sole draft pick acquired directly from the Dwight trade that Orlando kept? A 2017 second-rounder who is currently a reserve, averaging a shade under five points per game.
Tell that fan his team would draft, and acquire, some notable young gems over the ensuing seven years, including a replacement Slam Dunk Contest winner who leaps over Stuff the Magic Dragon on a rotating hoverboard. But the shine for most of those up-and-comers would not become apparent until they wound up elsewhere in the league. That included two guys Orlando would draft that are currently star contributors for playoff-bound Indiana, coincidentally the last team the Magic opposed in a postseason series. Speaking of postseasons…
After the Dwight Flight, the team’s longtime owner-patriarch would not live long enough to see the team he bought return to the NBA Playoffs. And the family heirs, and the fanbase, are all still tapping their toes waiting. Almost seven years have passed, and no multi-level schemes have panned out for the DeVos family’s NBA team. 37-29 in the last lockout-shortened season of Dwight, no more than 35 wins in the six full seasons after, five of those featuring no more than 29.
Inform the fan that the Magic (39-40) MIGHT get there in 2019, and maybe even notch their first winning season since 2012. But that’s only a certainty if they run the table in the final three games to close out the season, at home against Atlanta (relax, Magic Fan. Joe Johnson just left, right?) and then a pair of probably uneasy road games.
Then, Hawks fan, hurry back to the future, before that 2012 Magic fan tries to strangle you. If you followed my instructions, at least he can’t drown you in the lake.
We can’t do much about the disenchanted fans in the Magic Kingdom from back then, but our Hawks can offer a helpful hand to the hopeful ones left standing today. At least, I sure as heck hope we can. Granted, it may require getting Coach Lloyd Pierce to spew some Great Muta-style mist in his precocious point guard’s eyes, or maybe whack his most powerful forward with Jeff Jarrett’s guitar while Stuff distracts the refs, but I hope it won’t have to come to that.
It shouldn’t have to, not with the way the Magic have beaten the Hawks all season, and not with the way Magic coach Steve Clifford has his team playing of late.
Atlanta has lost by double-digits in each of its other three matchups this season, although the Magic would acknowledge that the footsteps have been growing louder: 122-103 on January 21, 124-108 on February 10, and 101-91 here at Amway Center on St. Pat’s. The latter win is part of a current 8-2 winning stretch for Orlando, plus an 8-game home winning streak, the longest since happier times back in January 2011.
Wednesday’s 114-100 home win, over Mario Hezonja’s Knicks, has inched the team into a statistical tie with Brooklyn for the 7-seed in the Eastern Conference (Nets hold the tiebreaker). Being a half-game behind Detroit for the 6-seed, with the possibility of avoiding Milwaukee and Toronto in the first-round within reach, there’s no reason for the Magic not to get greedy.
Atlanta would-be tied as a 7-seed, with Boston, if you counted only their 10-11 record since the All-Star Break. Orlando (12-8) would be third, thanks in part to the Hawks drumming the 76ers on Wednesday night. In the NBA East, only conference leaders Milwaukee and Toronto have performed better than the Magic (+3.2 post-Break Net Rating, 8th-best in NBA) down this home stretch.
Long heralded as the saving grace of the Dwight mega-deal, Nikola Vucevic hasn’t settled down since getting named to his first All-Star team (23 double-doubles in 27 games since Feb. 1: 20.8 PPG, 12.1 RPG). Vooch has gotten more than adequate offensive help from his fellow contract-year contributor Terrence Ross (NBA-high 2.6 bench 3FGs/game, min. 15+ bench appearances), Aaron Gordon and Evan Fournier.
The quartet has been ably assisted by point guards D.J. Augustin (6.2 APG, 1.3 TOs/game since February) and Michael Carter-Williams, the veteran signed on for the playoff run to replace an injured Isaiah Briscoe. Lest we forget that the young fella the Magic settled for – alright, sorry – took, once Trae Young came off the 2018 Draft board, Mo Bamba, was shut down at the end of January due to a tibia fracture?
Ultimately, the full season matters, sure. Yet, I posit, shouldn’t such late-season growth and improvement be rewarded, in some token way? (Hush, all you Lukatics out there, this matter doesn’t concern you. Go beat Tyler Dorsey and Tyler Zeller for a game, or two, then get back to us. Until then, stifle.)
All the Donces sitting in the corner, mumbling about, “FuLl BoDy Of WoRk,” would disagree vehemently with Penny & Pops podcaster Adam Papageorgiou, but, “If the Magic make the playoffs,” he tweeted yesterday, “we probably should be screaming at the top of our Orlando roofs that Steve Clifford should be Coach of the Year. A lot of candidates, but no one has a better game improvement from last season than Orlando. And it’s Steve’s first season.”
The Magic are getting desired results, at the right time, because they embrace Cliffy-Ball as fully as they have all season, perhaps better than his predecessor team ever could. Following their new coach’s precepts, Orlando continues to force opponents into stilted halfcourt play (98.1 post-Break pace, 3rd-lowest in NBA), then controls possession by being judicious with the offensive execution (2.17 post-Break assist/TO ratio, barely behind SAN for 2nd-best in NBA) while rebounding the slop out of the ball on defense (77.1 post-Break D-Reb%, 1st in NBA).
They won’t gamble for many steals, and that’s part of the reason they don’t waste time watching opponents shoot from the foul line (20.7 opponent FTAs per-48, 5th-lowest in NBA). Comparatively, Atlanta’s 27.9 free throws allowed per-48 is an NBA-high. But, as Sixers fans learned from this past weekend, you can only lead a horse to water (ATL opponents 75.6 FT%, 7th-lowest in NBA).
The Hawks (29-50) will try to make a tighter game of their final meeting with the Magic. Atlanta must find ways to coax them out of Coach Cliff’s comfort zone. Pierce will park Alex Len and his remaining bigs around the perimeter in hopes of drawing Vucevic and Khem Birch out of the paint, thereby allowing wings to feast on cuts and putbacks at the rim while diminishing the degree of difficulty on the paper-cut floaters by Trae Young (10-for-12 2FGs, 33 points, 12 assists, 2 late TOs vs. PHI).
On defense, Nique’s patented “K.Y.P.” principles apply, as the Hawks must find ways to deny Magic players the ball or the space when they’re in their favorite individual spots to attack on the floor. The more that DeAndre’ Bembry, Taurean Prince (EDIT: Baze and Red Alert got Load-Managed), and Vince Carter (was he at Bash at the Beach ’96?) can be destabilizing forces, the sloppier the overall play by both teams, the more effectively that the Hawks can wallow in the muck. Here’s hoping they fall just one point short in the attempt.
While the Hawks, who escaped AOL Time Warner’s cobra clutch long ago, will never suffer the fate of the doomed WCW, I can envision John Collins (25-and-8 vs. PHI, 2.0 BPG in past 4 games) and Young as the NBA’s Hall and Nash. A pair of talented, clever and brash young Outsiders, turning heads and shaking up the league, drawing so much attention that no one will be prepared for the superstar stunners sneaking out from the tunnel to join them. The invasion angle has begun. Heck, Andre Aldridge would make for a perfect Mean Gene. You can see it!
I’d be overjoyed if I could have gotten all of Atlanta’s Southeast Division rivals in the playoffs’ bottom-four tier. The Wizards went POOF! early, while the Hornets (Tragic Number: 2), after a late glimpse of hope, are looking like a lost cause. But the Pistons’ and Nets’ backsliding have given both the Magic and the heat a final chance to break through, with Orlando the more likely to pull it off, given a relatively healthier roster.
This “let’s go get our savior in the Draft!” business is cute, for a year or three. But there comes a point in every team’s life where you’ve got to leave the Lottery, and for the Magic, that time should’ve arrived about four years ago. Much like our ’08 Hawks, the ownership here, the fans, everyone around O-Town are all Playoffs-parched. Miraculous Lottery wins and first-overall picks? Been there, done that, bought the T-shirts several times over on I-Drive. Time to try a new tack.
Orlando, please, take this here victory. And regarding any notion of hanging out with us Hawks once more in the Lottery, allow me to make my thoughts clear, using my best Ari Gold impression, with a special message for you on the dry-erase board. “GET…”
Let’s [fingerquotes] Go [/fingerquotes] Hawks!
~lw3
"Dunking is better than sex." - Shawn Kemp, 1996
Re: Game Thread: Hawks at Magic, 04/05/19
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lethalweapon3
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Re: Game Thread: Hawks at Magic, 04/05/19
Get In Where Ya Fit In!
https://www.orlandosentinel.com/sports/orlando-magic/os-sp-magic-knicks-0405-story.html
~lw3
https://www.orlandosentinel.com/sports/orlando-magic/os-sp-magic-knicks-0405-story.html
“To be honest with you, I so don’t care about six, seven, [or] eight right now. Please, get in,” Fournier said. “We’ll see about the record maybe the last game of the season if everything goes well. Man, right now, just get in. Get in.”
~lw3
"Dunking is better than sex." - Shawn Kemp, 1996
Re: Game Thread: Hawks at Magic, 04/05/19
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ducler
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Re: Game Thread: Hawks at Magic, 04/05/19
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Mauro Pedrosa
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Re: Game Thread: Hawks at Magic, 04/05/19
Greetings!
I'm pretty sure both fanbases would be happy with an Orlando win after a competitive game.
Your team has been super fun and would be even more with two top 6 picks! Good luck
I'm pretty sure both fanbases would be happy with an Orlando win after a competitive game.
Your team has been super fun and would be even more with two top 6 picks! Good luck
Re: Game Thread: Hawks at Magic, 04/05/19
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lethalweapon3
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Re: Game Thread: Hawks at Magic, 04/05/19
"Dunking is better than sex." - Shawn Kemp, 1996
Re: Game Thread: Hawks at Magic, 04/05/19
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graymule
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Re: Game Thread: Hawks at Magic, 04/05/19
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REHawksFan
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Re: Game Thread: Hawks at Magic, 04/05/19
Trae vs the Magic:
3 games / 18.0 pts/gm on 50% FG% / 16.7% 3PT% / 6.0 ast / 4.7 reb / -31.9 +/-
Ouch. Really want to see Trae put a good game together tonight.
3 games / 18.0 pts/gm on 50% FG% / 16.7% 3PT% / 6.0 ast / 4.7 reb / -31.9 +/-
Ouch. Really want to see Trae put a good game together tonight.
Re: Game Thread: Hawks at Magic, 04/05/19
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HMFFL
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Re: Game Thread: Hawks at Magic, 04/05/19
Orlando is favored to win by 9pt.
Dallas and Memphis.
For Dallas the following will sit tonight.
Luka Doncic (thigh), Jalen Brunson (rest) and Dwight Powell (rest) have been ruled out of Friday's game vs. Memphis.
Sent from my SM-N920P using RealGM mobile app
Dallas and Memphis.
For Dallas the following will sit tonight.
Luka Doncic (thigh), Jalen Brunson (rest) and Dwight Powell (rest) have been ruled out of Friday's game vs. Memphis.
Sent from my SM-N920P using RealGM mobile app
Re: Game Thread: Hawks at Magic, 04/05/19
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marco102
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Re: Game Thread: Hawks at Magic, 04/05/19
HMFFL wrote:Orlando is favored to win by 9pt.
Dallas and Memphis.
For Dallas the following will sit tonight.
Luka Doncic (thigh), Jalen Brunson (rest) and Dwight Powell (rest) have been ruled out of Friday's game vs. Memphis.
Sent from my SM-N920P using RealGM mobile app
Let the tank wars begin!
Since Dallas wins without Luka, they sat the other players most likely to contribute to a win...lol.
Schlenk was like hold my beer. I'll put half the roster on the injury report and if they sneeze wrong, I'll sit them all for the game.
I'm working with my firm to assist small businesses apply for the stimulus assistance. If you're interested please pm.
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We are also offering a cashflow bootcamp for small businesses (https://www.aprio.com/whatsnext/covid-19-cash-flow-bootcamp/ ).
Re: Game Thread: Hawks at Magic, 04/05/19
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DirtybirdGA
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Re: Game Thread: Hawks at Magic, 04/05/19
1-2..... let's go
Where the offseason has more buzz happens.
Re: Game Thread: Hawks at Magic, 04/05/19
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Spud2nique
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Re: Game Thread: Hawks at Magic, 04/05/19
Lw3, I read some things in the game preview my pops wouldn’t even know! 
Also loved the entourage reference...anything with Ari is gold! (Pun intended)
Still Ari prefers to watch the Magic over the Bobcats ..
Also loved the entourage reference...anything with Ari is gold! (Pun intended)Still Ari prefers to watch the Magic over the Bobcats ..
Re: Game Thread: Hawks at Magic, 04/05/19
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Hazer
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Re: Game Thread: Hawks at Magic, 04/05/19
I know they’re starting tonight, but I LOVE Bembry and Anderson as backups at the 2 an 3 next year.
Hazerbeamidge 
Re: Game Thread: Hawks at Magic, 04/05/19
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Hazer
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Re: Game Thread: Hawks at Magic, 04/05/19
The USAA Bank grocery commercial girl GOTTA be Kevin’s sister 
Hazerbeamidge
Re: Game Thread: Hawks at Magic, 04/05/19
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Hazer
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Re: Game Thread: Hawks at Magic, 04/05/19
Told ya last year that Isaac was gonna be sumpin’, Spud 
Hazerbeamidge
Re: Game Thread: Hawks at Magic, 04/05/19
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Mauro Pedrosa
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Re: Game Thread: Hawks at Magic, 04/05/19
Don't reach, young blood
Re: Game Thread: Hawks at Magic, 04/05/19
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Hazer
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Re: Game Thread: Hawks at Magic, 04/05/19
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DirtybirdGA
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Re: Game Thread: Hawks at Magic, 04/05/19
Hawks taken out behind the woodshed.
Where the offseason has more buzz happens.
Re: Game Thread: Hawks at Magic, 04/05/19
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benhillboy
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Re: Game Thread: Hawks at Magic, 04/05/19
We might have to sign Vucevic for no other reason than to keep him off our ass. I’m so sick of dude. It’s like he don’t even go that hard and still dominates.