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Which Came First, the Chicken or the Brick?

There are few questions in sports harder to answer than where good/bad defense leaves off and bad/good offense begins. The Orlando Magic are providing one, however. Their answer to the question is "yes."

That is to say, that if the Celtics were not playing such good defense in this series, they would still be leading it. Maybe not by 3-0 with almost never having been behind in a game, but they'd be ahead. That's because, all by themselves, the Magic are shooting, passing and (most of all) moving without the ball so poorly as to lose the series on the own lack of merits.

But if the Magic were playing better offense, they'd still be behind (again, probably not by as much), because Boston's defense has been of a quality that would have limited the Magic's ability to improve past the level of high mediocrity from its current baseline of abysmal.

Watching the Magic last night, it was as if they had a collective nervous collapse with one simultaneous thought" "Holy smokes, Dwight really CAN'T shoot!!" Like, they practice with the guy every day. Hadn't they noticed before?

This is not to denigrate Boston's play against Orlando, which has been faultless. But all routs in all team sports are essentially murder-suicide pacts.

posted by Michael Gee @ 8:15 AM