Team Dreamin' 2011: Orlando Magic

At No Regard, we love basketball. We love the spectacle and strategy of the game, but sometimes the league's lack of imagination confounds and disappoints us. Call us optimists, visionaries, or kids who watched too much Space Jam, but we have ideas. Damn are we gonna share 'em.

Hi Orlando Magic. Yeah, we see you in the back refusing to make eye contact with us, trying not to get called on. But we didn't forget about you.

Because Magic, your plans for this year are as important as any other team's 2010-2011 strategy. You need to capitalize this season or never, because in Dwight Howard you have the one piece that no other team has (Pau is 3/4 the player Howard is; Brook Lopez is about 2/5, but on his way up), but his athleticism will only last so long. And your former All-Star Rashard Lewis (who gets paid $10 million too much each year) is clearly the favorite to gain 35 pounds during the inevitable lockout of 2011.

Unfortunately, you've surrounded Dwight with mediocrity, albeit an opulence of mediocrity. But as we've learned from the Mavericks, you can have as many third options as you'd like, but you cannot win a ring without two sincere stars, one at least seven-feet-tall and the other capable of creating his own shot.

(Yeah, OK. 2004 Pistons, I see you in the back, you can put your hand down now. Right, you won a ring without following this rule. Your outlandish collection of role players masked as all-stars worked together to create a demonic mega-lord with Larry Brown for a brain. When a squad regularly holds teams to 68 points, you can disregard whatever algebra other teams use to chase rings.)

What I'm suggesting here is the NBA equivalent of "write what you know": Hide your deficiencies by playing to your strengths.

Your deficiencies: Lack of traditional post-up scorer; having a point guard who's merely very good during the New Golden Era of Point Guards; the aforementioned missing second banana; no one willing and able to take over offensively in the last two minutes of a close contest; the dangerous trajectory of losing interest in an effective and outspoken head coach; Patrick Ewing on your coaching staff.

Your strengths: Dunks.

So, a humble suggestion for the upcoming season...

Fill your roster exclusively with past and future Dunk Contest contestants.

Look, I never said I had an idea that would cure the deficiencies, just one that would hide them. Hide them behind a thick fog of impossibly angled alley-oops, windmills, 360s, and gimmicks through which not even Sacagawea would be able to navigate her way.

You already have the Greatest Dunker Ever (Vince) and the Greatest Dunker of His Generation (Dwight), so the groundwork is there. Then, just complete this four-team trade: http://games.espn.go.com/nba/tradeMachine?tradeId=2eb37fl. Huh, look at that, the Nets ended up with Melo. Who knew? Anyway, here's what the Magic starting lineup could look like.

PG: Terrence Williams


SG: Vince Carter
SF: Terrico White



PF: Chris Anderson
C: Dwight Howard
Coach: Darvin Ham


Then sign James White as your sixth man:


During the Dwight Howard Dunk Contests I forgot about everything that is of this Earth and the heavens. The only thought running through my head was, "If Dwight Howard isn't already our President, he really should be." His performance was so forceful that even LeBron was momentarily brainwashed into thinking that dunk contests weren't bourgeois and that he'd give it a shot (even though he went back on this vow like Michael Scott did to Scott's Tots). The cape dunk was the stuff of seductive sirens.

With every player on the roster capable of similar feats, the hypnosis would would be overwhelming, leaving opponents unable to exploit the Magic's clear vulnerabilities.

Like every one of our "Team Dreamin'" ideas, this plan would unfold swimmingly until it slammed head-on into Kobe Bryant, who is unfazed by anything these days.

So actually, Orlando Magic brass, scrap everything above this sentence and heed only the following: Get Chris Paul. Because then nothing else would matter.