What we learned about the 1995 Orlando Magic from “Blue Chips” oral history

The 1995 bench wanted its chance and blames Brian Hill for the series loss

"Anthony Bowie: If they just utilized the whole bench during that series, I honestly believe we would have won. I’m sitting there for the first game. They can say I’m a bad guy or whatever they want, but sitting there for the first game and watching that we’re up 20 going into halftime, and you never take none of your bench players and let them play? Those [starters] are tired. I can hold my own on defense and they know that. Ain’t too many guys that are going to just blow past me or go around me or Donald Royal or other guys that we had on the bench. You can’t win an NBA Finals with six guys."

The NBA Finals turned into a disaster for the Magic. Let’s not dig into it any deeper than that.

To a man, everyone on the 1995 Magic believed and still believes that if they had closed out Game One it would have been a different series. Everyone on that team believes they are better than the Rockets — despite the sweep — and would beat them if given another chance.

Everyone wanted their chance.

In the Finals, the Magic starters played 831 minutes out of a possible 985 minutes in the series — roughly 84.4 percent — according to Basketball-Reference’s box score database. Donald Royal, a full-time starter during the season, played just one minute in the series. Brian Hill shortened his rotation to eight players during the Finals.

Anthony Bowie played just 26 minutes the entire series. He averaged 16.4 minutes per game in 77 games that season and 6.9 minutes per game in 17 Playoff appearances.

Hill was in his second Playoffs as a coach and was leaning extremely heavily on his starters. It was clear how emotionally drained the players were. The Magic’s bench wanted its opportunity. Maybe they had earned a little more trust in getting the Magic to that last stage.

Next: Penny Hardaway did not get along with his coach