Midweek Update -- Some Basketball Happened

Sports fans exhibit a certain resilience, innately. Unless you came into the NBA as a Spurs fan within the last fifteen months or so, you’ve experienced your fair share of disappointments. Even in the losses, we carve out our personal wins: “It was crazy that the Royals even made it this far,” “The Lakers are rebuilding,” “Think what the Lions would be like if all of their players were on the field,” and so forth. 

We find ourselves reading blogs like these not because we follow winning teams. We hardly need the mildly-employed man telling us how good such-and-such could be when we’re fully immersed in the glow of excellence. We follow these things for potential. We want to be reassured we were in the right places, fully prepared when the right players break out. We want to say we expected it. We want to be the Dutchman, contentedly unloading coffee beans and tobacco leaves from his ship after months of the neighborhood telling him his boats were never coming back. 

Well we have coffee now, chumps.

For a long-time Bulls fan, the “what-ifs” all came up Millhouse yesterday. Post-Lakers-despair Pau looked like the good ole Pau we know, righteously collecting his points at the line. Taj can produce in the post. Derrick Rose didn’t re-injure anything. And even at a thirty-point lead, Thibs was there, shouting at the rafters like his audition for the Tempest was this weekend. It was the Bulls we love, with offense. Just like figuring out your favorite pajama pants have pockets now.

And as we’re ostensibly a Magic-related operation around here, what can we say? Tobias looked good in the way I’VE BEEN TRYING TO TELL YOU, JERKS, but that didn’t mean a lot. Harris baiting Davis into an and-one was a thing of dad game beauty (13:00 for the LeaguePass folk). How did it somehow escape me how paper-good the Pellies became leading up to this season? How was I surprised when that somehow played out exactly how it was supposed to on the court? 

For those of you on Team Unibrow, bask. It’s your time. For us on Team Middle-Florida, there’s not a lot to be proud of. Mighty Morphin’ Elfrid Payton looks very much the rookie, despite some glimpses of promise. He can still move. He can’t actually shoot around Anthony Davis. Ben Gordon still sucks. Aaron Gordon looked great, excepting the most whifftastic corner three attempt in recent memory.

Overall remain in your seats, Magic people, glory is still beyond the horizon. Aside from a scrawled missive delivered by mythical sea eagle (“Orlando is fine. I am doing alright. Send money. -Elf”), we’ve received no word. The ships are still at sea. 

-David

Let Us Now Praise Obscure Men

In early 2013, the Milwaukee Bucks traded Tobias Harris and sundry minor players to the Magic in exchange for J.J. Redick. As the blog’s resident Milwaukee fan, I’m driven to consider the year Milwaukee had in the wake of this: Redick moved, Caron Butler happened. Another of the Bucks’ “win now” moves resulted in a salad of mediocrity worse than the sum of its ingredients, a naive re-sorting of luxury cabins in the Hindenburg.

But we’re here to talk about the Magic, aren’t we? 2013 also marked the shifting of McRoberts to the Bobcats for coin. 2013 marked the changing of Tobias Harris’ number from Bucks 15 back to Volunteers 12—surely the number holds no significance for Magic fans. But there’s an engine behind the Bucks, an eptness in social media marketing as profound as the previous management’s ineptness at making a good basketball team. The Bucks present themselves perfectly to basketball Twitter as the team for the viewer that likes players individually, that likes promise and developing talent over realized greatness and W’s. It’s no surprise, then, that Tobias Harris somehow drifted below the radar even as he grew into a more competent player on the Magic. The Magic fail to grasp how they can be sold. The Magic don’t see the hordes of LeaguePass kids begging for a reason to like the team.

Look at that. This is the Magic reaching out to you. Does it register? Do you feel yourself represented by the man on the right? (Or the man on the left, for that matter.)

This is the same team that played U2’s “Vertigo” to get the fans hyped up for an important pre-halftime play out of a time out. It’s as if they’re trying not to get your attention.

And in all of this we miss Willie Green, without the LeBron-headband, boldly asking you to confront the reality that is his hairline. We miss the (romantic?) connection building between blog-favorite Elfrid Payton and Tobias Harris. We miss Tobias developing into a man that can do actual damage. 

Perhaps it’s not because of the Twitter Bucks Bias, or Twitter Magic Ignorance, perhaps it’s because he’s missing certain features. Braggadocio is certainly first among what Harris lacks. He brings an intensity to every play that utterly vanishes as he descends from the basket, as he walks up to the interviewer and tells her he thanks God that he’s even here. This after dropping twenty-plus points and assorted dimes in a game-winning effort. 

Maybe it’s because he makes one too many threes. He makes the kind of threes that reassure him it’s okay to take them from time to time, when his overall performance beyond the arc, stats-wise, is more reminiscent of Josh Smith than Kevin Durant. This is one of a few flaws. 

But watch him ram the ball home off a pass in the paint. Watch him exhibit self-control and humility and a commitment to the team, and not to himself. Really sit down, watch a Magic game, and tell me why you care about Khris Middleton more than you do Tobias Harris. 

Maybe he’s not out on the streets of Milwaukee getting photographed with BANGO THE DEER. Maybe that’s not where he’s supposed to be.

-David