2011-12 Orlando Magic: The Dwight Howard Experience Failure to Launch Tour

After the Orlando Magic’s loss to the Oklahoma City Thunder, it appears that they are done. No heart, no hustle, no talent. You might as well chalk them up as a lottery team. They have no hopes of ever retaining Dwight Howard’s services. He’ll be taking his talents to the city of angels or the one that never sleeps, right? Not so fast!

In the first game of the season, the Magic looked lethargic, Jason Richardson looked awful, Glen Davis was in foul trouble and out of control, and Chris Duhon displayed his lack of abilities, as usual.

But the Magic were on the road, on a shortened preseason schedule against one of the West’s best teams on Christmas Day. Don’t hit the panic button quite yet.

The defending champion Dallas Mavericks lost in a blowout at home. The Boston Celtics, Los Angeles Lakers and the Golden State Warriors lost their openers as well.

The way I see it, the Christmas day games were simply a third preseason game.

In a normal season, the players have eight games before the season starts to adjust to their new schemes, teammates and player rotations. The NBA teams had two games to prepare for the current season.

The Magic have five more games of adjusting until you can hit the eject button on the Dwight Howard experience.

If the Magic are below .500 after playing Houston, New Jersey, Charlotte, Toronto and Detroit in their next five games, I’ll be the first to scream re-build. Truthfully, I do not see that happening, and I’ll go as far as to say that the Magic will either win them all or lose just one of those games.

The play of newly named starter Ryan Anderson was encouraging. Dwight Howard had a poor offensive performance but brought the same defensive intensity. Jameer impressed with some drives to the basket.

As in any loss, there are some gleaming problems that the team will need to address in quick order.

Three of the most obvious are:

Hedo Turkoglu needs to take the open shot when it’s there.

Jason Richardson needs to be the player that can create his own shot.

The Magic need to find a better option than Chris Duhon as the back-up point guard position.

If these deficiencies are taken care of, the Magic will be a team to reckon with. If not, my next article may be titled, "Orlando Magic: The Re-build Process Begins."