| 05 September 2010
The Amway Center is set to open its doors to basketball on October 10 for a preseason game between the Magic and the Hornets. The regular season starts October 28 as Orlando takes on Washington. With the countdown on to the premier of the Magic's new building, I thought it would be good to give Orlando Arena a proper send-off and recount some of the best memories from our old home.
We are t-minus 53 days until regular season basketball in the Amway Center!
Don't make T-Mac angry, you wouldn't like him when he is angry.
M. David Leads/Getty Images/PicApp
They say you always remember your first time -- or points in this case, at least. So after 10,000 points they can all kind of run together. Tracy McGrady had put together some incredible scoring performances so you could forgive him for not remembering how he scored his 10,000th point or the game in which it happened.
I am pretty sure McGrady remembers exactly what happened the night. It is not every day you try out for an NFL team while continuing your dominance of NBA defenses.
His actual 10,000th point probably came on one of his amazingly smooth jumpers with that slight tilt back. But what happened later in that game made it more memorable.
This time the Magic and the Nuggets were actually in a close game. McGrady was treating every possession like it was his personal play thing, as he always seemed to do. So when he came down the floor with time ticking away in the first half he knew exactly where he was going -- to the basket.
But when McGrady got there, he was met by Chris Andersen. Andersen blocked the shot as the buzzer sounded. And McGrady was irate.
He went after the referees letting them have it for not calling the foul. When they did not call it, he grabbed the basketball and punted it into the crowd. Yes, that's right punted it.
Technical foul, clearly.
As the teams started filing for the locker room, the Magic pulled McGrady away and he seemed to have calmed down. The storm was passing, but McGrady was still hanging around mid court.
A fan threw the basketball back onto the court. It bounced a few times in front of him and grabbed it. In a smooth motion he sent the ball deep into the upper deck.
Thanks, MagicFan4Life84 for the find!
That would be an ejection.
Interesting night at the TD Waterhouse Centre, for sure.
Orlando still rallied behind Desmond Penigar and Juwan Howard in what turned out to be a 102-98 victory (a rare one in that 2004 season). It was DeShawn Stevenson's first game in a Magic uniform and he and the rest of the reserves got pressed in to duty to get the win. I can only recall it being a scrappy effort because McGrady's punt took all the headlines.
Also burying the lead was an incident involving Stuff.
Stuff was running around the stadium behind the Fat Guy in the fourth quarter when his tail accidentally hit a woman. Her husband did not take too kindly to that and wrapped Stuff in a headlock. In perhaps the greatest show of teamwork in team history, fans -- with the police -- helped separate the two and save Stuff.
As Brian Schmitz of The Orlando Sentinel wrote of that night: "Just another night at the TD Waterhouse Centre."
We will be reminiscing about Orlando Arena for the rest of the summer. Have a memory you would like remembered? Tweet us with your memories @OMagicDaily, comment to this article or contact us through the Web site.
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