New: Tania Ganguli has Orlando’s Sunday practice report.
I began to ask Van Gundy if that meant he’d rather lose now with the wrong lineups than in a month when the games actually count. But he cut me off at “lose.”
“I don’t want to ever say lose, but in priority order, the priority is to make sure we’re looking at different people and different lineups,” Van Gundy said. “Within that we would certainly like to win but not at the expense, let’s just put it the way, I don’t want to make winning the priority over that where we’re foregoing lineups.”
In other words, Van Gundy knows playing Dwight Howard, Rashard Lewis and Jameer Nelson 36 minutes a game will give the Magic the best chance to win in Dallas. But what would he really learn? With
See her full report here.
Tania Ganguli has Orlando’s Saturday morning practice report. She’s discusses the comments that were made about Vince Carter’s defense by Head Coach Stan Van Gundy and how overblown they became.
"If you missed it, Van Gundy said Carter didn’t play defense well on Wednesday and that he’s capable of playing a lot better. Carter filled us in on the details. He let J.J. Redick go backdoor on him and Van Gundy “let [him] have it.”“I won’t make that mistake again,” Carter said on Wednesday.I wanted to see what Carter thought about how big that story had gotten. Carter said when it happened, it was a fairly minor issue.He said he wasn’t even aware of what a big story Van Gundy’s critique of the eight-time all star became, but Van Gundy approached him to talk about it. Carter said Van Gundy told him how the story had blown up and wanted to make sure they were on the same page.“I was just sitting there talking to J.J. about the philosophy of it. The last 5 years, was somewhat the same, but some things we do differently. He doesn’t want us to come out of the corners on shooters and … you’re supposed to help if a guy’s beaten from that first man,” Carter said. “Things like that are still on my mind but I don’t really see the big deal about it."
The Magic took the afternoon off. Read her full report here.
Josh Robbins has a nice piece about Brandon Bass and his potential role as a garbage man.
"For three consecutive weeks this summer, the first thing Brandon Bass saw in the morning and the last thing he saw at night was a dry-erase board that included messages written in red marker.“REBOUND.” “RUN THE FLOOR.” “DEFEND.”"
Read the full story here.
According to Magic General Manager Otis Smith, Orlando’s attempts to acquire Point Guard CJ Watson from Golden State “got personal.”
"Smith tried to acquire Watson, 25, in an apparently generous sign-and-trade attempt after the Warriors made it clear they would match offers for the restricted free agent. The offer was believed to involve various combinations of a first-round draft pick, cash and a player (believed to be Anthony Johnson).“You wouldn’t believe what we offered them,” Smith said. “I think it got personal.”Smith said he wasn’t aware of any previous bad blood between himself and Golden State. He once played for the Warriors and then worked in their front office as executive director of basketball operations in 2002-03."
That’s a shame because I would have loved to see Watson in a Magic uniform. See the full story and other Magic notes here.
Here’s an interesting bit of news about Kevin Garnett that should be intriguing to Magic fans. Kevin Garnett was noticeably limping in Boston’s practice. You can see the video here.
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(Andrew Melnick is Howard the Dunk’s lead blogger. Subscribe to his RSS feed and add him on Twitter to follow him daily.)