On Being Wrong, and Why We Bother: Toronto at Orlando

It’s a difficult line to walk, between saying that an individual game means something and that it’s a long season, and a lot can change. There are some people—cough cough—who would have you believe that the shiny bubbles that wash up to our feet in the surf of countless hours of regular season basketball are actually enough. There are some who would suggest that the glimmers of hope or spikes of despair mean everything, that you can accurately predict something about the future from what we’ve seen so far—cough cough. There are some who would tell you it doesn’t mean anything and that you should be watching football right now. And then I suppose there’s me, just trying to make some sense of this Magic team.

Welcome to today’s installation in my slow journey into masochistic madness, the Orlando Magic versus the Toronto Raptors. First, let me say, I was wrong. I apologize. I said that Luke Ridnour should start over Elfrid Payton. Elf was out there, doing it. He had a few beautiful assists and a dunk he can frame and put on his mantle. 

What does one game against the Raptors mean? Nothing. But I’ve found that I care. Not for the elegance of small instances of perfection, not for the purposes of wager-advice prognostication. As Alex suggested previously, we care because we can’t not care. 

So I’ll also tell you that Dewayne Dedmon caught a couple of nice feeds from Payton, and maybe, possibly, Dedmon’s issue in the Wizards game was that Marcin Gortat is very, very good. Oh, yeah, BEHOLD THE BLOCK:

Vucevic and Channing Frye and even Evan “Transform” Fournier performed, yet it wasn’t enough. During the early late third and early fourth quarter moments of hope, you would see a Magic player battling through to make an improbable shot on his possession, and a Raptors player responding with an apparently easy basket in transition. The Magic eventually regressed to the mean and the final score, I believe, represents the game that was played.

Elfrid looked just a hairsbreadth away from ready, and maybe the rest of the team is in the same boat. Until then, I’m here with you. Because where else would I be?

-David

Stray thought:
Joey Colon, you are my ray of sunshine. Every game.