Come To Think Of It: What Do The Magic Have To Do? Just Win, Baby!

I don't know about you, but I'm getting tired of listening to all the sports talkers and media wrangling over just what the Orlando Magic need to do to get back in the series against the Los Angeles Lakers.

Look, it doesn't take a PHD to know one thing: they need to win, baby!

Now, how they do that is up for debate, of course. Going back to Orlando will certainly help, though it's not the ultimate panacea.

One can say they need to get more easy, inside buckets from their superstar Dwight Howard. Or that they need to get their point guards going.

But we wouldn't be talking about any of this if Courtney Lee's alley-oop had gone in.

"We missed it. I don't know what else to say," Magic coach Stan Van Gundy said. "We executed well, Hedo [Turkoglu] made a great pass. I'm not trying to be a pain...Hedo made a great pass and he just missed it."

As Frankie Valli once sang, "so close and yet so far."

But it does show you just how close the Magic came to stealing a game in Laker territory. Yet to hear some analysts talk, you would think they got blown out.

No, they didn't, so they don't really need to do anything different. Except win.

Admittedly, it's a daunting challenge. In NBA history, when the home team wins the first two games of a best-of-seven series, they've gone on to win that series 94.2 percent of the time.

But the Magic have trailed on three other occasions during their playoff run, and each time they've come back to win the next game. 

So I don't want to hear about whether Jameer Nelson should start or come off the bench.

The Magic head home, where there will be no Jack Nicholson, Leonardo DiCaprio, Warren Beatty, or Denzel Washington in the house, come to think of it.

As Al Davis says, "Just win, baby!"