Magic Is Not Over; Chicago Is Just Better

Rich DeVos, the billionaire owner, and John Gabriel, the general manager, were virtually under assault after the game: How soon are the big changes coming? Will Brian Hill be fired as coach? Who’s to blame for this debacle, the Orlando Magic being swept out of the playoffs like this? Reporters, fans, even some of the Orlando players wanted answers, the sooner the better. The Magic got to the NBA Finals last year; people expected them to go back this year.

Fortunately, DeVos isn’t Steinbrenneresque. Standing no more than two feet from his team’s dressing room, DeVos smiled while discontent swirled around him and said: “We’re now into what I call the blaming stage. Has anybody considered that Chicago is just too good this year and probably nobody will touch them?”

Amen.

Okay, okay, Orlando didn’t set the world afire during this series. Even with Horace Grant out for three games, Brian Shaw out for one and Nick Anderson out for one, the Magic should have played better. Shaq took only one shot in the fourth quarter of Monday’s Game 4. Dennis Scott stayed cold as Alaska, missing 9 of 13 on Monday. The bench is thin. The team isn’t particularly composed in crunch time. And Hill, whom on balance I like as a coach, didn’t really distinguish himself either, assigning, for instance, a non-defender such as Scott to guard Michael Jordan for several stretches of Game 4.

But to take the position that Orlando has a bunch of bums is, well, stupid. And it misses the point.

Orlando got beaten by a better team. Probably, a much better team. When Jordan is cooking and Dennis Rodman is rebounding and Scottie Pippen is passing and Steve Kerr is shooting, forget it, because the Bulls are too good. Orlando at full strength can’t beat them, neither can Utah or Seattle. “Look,” Orlando’s Jon Koncak said, “it was up for grabs for two years with Michael retired. Three or four of us were on equal footing at the top. Now, we’re looking up at one team: Chicago. There was a pretty big obstacle in our way that wasn’t there last year and that’s a fact.”

Rodman wasn’t a Bull last year when Orlando beat Chicago in six games and Jordan wasn’t his vintage self, having played 17 regular season games after nearly two years away from the NBA. Rodman, in Monday’s Game 4, grabbed seven offensive rebounds, which is two more than all of Orlando’s players grabbed. Jordan was luminous, scoring 45 points, including all the killer points down the stretch. Asked what it was like trying to guard Jordan, Orlando’s Anthony Bowie said: “It’s like you’re playing Monopoly and he’s got all the little houses. You land on him and he just says, ‘Give me all your damn money.’ ”

Jordan was at his combative, confrontational, warlike best Monday. He screamed at teammates nose-to-nose, he waged a hostile duel with referee Hue Hollins. This series wasn’t going back to Chicago because Jordan said so. What’s wrong with Orlando is pretty simple, really: The team’s two best players, Shaq and Penny Hardaway, haven’t gotten to the point in life yet where they are ruthless enough to control their team with sheer will. Magic did it, Bird did it, Isiah Thomas did it, Hakeem learned to do it. Magic and Bird joined teams that already had Hall of Famers. It took Thomas seven years. It took Jordan seven years. It took Hakeem nine years. Some great players never get there. They don’t have the temperament, or maybe aren’t verbal enough, or most likely, don’t like the job of being mean, vicious and disliked from the season opener until the middle of June. The absence of such a force is why Orlando can win a playoff series when it takes Game 1, but has been swept all three times when it has lost Game 1.

Orlando has to wait on Shaq and Penny to grow older and tougher and meaner. Koncak, who’s been around 11 years, said, “You’ve got to have somebody who’s one of your best players be the leader. If you miss a shot, if you miss an assignment, if you don’t get a rebound you’re supposed to, he’s in your face. We just don’t really have that. Isiah, Bird, Magic, Hakeem and Michael do it, and it’s not an accident their teams have won all the recent titles.

“It definitely needs to be one of them (Shaq or Penny) and it doesn’t matter to me which one,” Koncak continued. “It’s not enough to look at the stats and say, ‘Here’s what I did.’ It’s making your teammates better. I heard Michael and Scottie chewing out guys on their team today. I haven’t heard anybody on our team do that. There’s a pecking order in this league, that’s just how it is. People sometimes don’t like to do it because it means teammates aren’t going to like you. But to win a championship you have to have one of your best players say, ‘This is my team and this is how it’s going to be.’ ”

With that philosophy in mind, Orlando about reached its potential this season. Reaching the Finals last year was wonderful at the time, but it created unrealistic expectations, which Gabriel said after Monday’s game. “It skewed the reality of our real potential,” he said.

It’s Gabriel’s job to tinker, when the overreaction is to overhaul. “The ship’s not sinking,” Koncak said. “In fact, it’s a pretty good ship we’ve got sailing here. It’s the best team I’ve played on in 11 years. It’s not like we’re running out of time. These two guys (O’Neal and Hardaway) are 24.”

Actually, Penny just turned 25, but again Koncak is correct. Assuming Shaq, soon to be a free agent, re-signs with Orlando (which isn’t automatic with the Lakers looming large), this is the beginning, not the middle or the end. Scott, trying to find something good to take from this four-game drubbing, stood at his locker and reflected on the NBA series of his teenagedom. “Back in the day,” he said, “Isiah had to fight through Boston, Michael had to fight through Detroit. I think this is our period. Sooner or later our day will come and we’ll break that wall down.”

As long as club management doesn’t give in to the now-or-nothing philosophy panic that sometimes takes over common sense, that day isn’t so far in the future.