Orlando Magic News & Notes: Magic Defeat the Bulls, Ranked 8th by the Sporting News

Click here to see my game recap.

The Magic are still trying to figure out what to do with their lineup and Brandon Bass will be an important part of that decision whether he is a starter or not.

To prepare for forward Rashard Lewis’s 10-game suspension, the Magic sat Lewis the entire game.

In his stead, the Magic will start Bass, Ryan Anderson or Matt Barnes. That jumper is one way in which Bass has distinguished himself, but all three have impressed their teammates and coaches, leaving Van Gundy with a difficult decision.

Barnes played mostly small forward Monday night, scored 10 points and notched five rebounds. Bass finished with 10 points and four rebounds and Anderson tied Howard with a team-high 18 points.

Van Gundy called the team’s performance “awful,” but mentioned Anderson’s play as one of the bright spots.
“Offensively he has a real good idea of how to play and how to stretch the floor,” Van Gundy said. “Where he needs to continue to improve is the defensive end. That’s what we’re looking at more than anything with him.”

Read Tania Ganguli’s full story here.

Magic Head Coach Stan Van Gundy doesn’t want the Magic to make the same mistakes now that the regular season is almost here.

“It’s not any one specific thing,” Magic Coach Stan Van Gundy said. “We’d like to see improvement in what we do at both ends of the court. Certainly taking care of the ball better, not turn over the ball as much.”

Eliminating turnovers has been a major focus of Van Gundy’s workouts the past few days.

“Little things that maybe the first couple of games it was acceptable,” Magic guard Vince Carter said. “Now we’re trying to fine-tune things for the beginning of the season so we’re trying to cut that out.”

See that and some other notes here.

Click here to see the Chicago Tribune’s view on Monday night’s game.

Alex Kennedy discusses the Magic’s preseason success.

By limiting their starters, the Magic have been able to evaluate their talent while still getting into a rhythm and building confidence as the season nears. “Everything is good,” an optimistic Jameer Nelson told HOOPSWORLD. “We have to continue getting better and we’re still learning each other. “

See Kennedy’s full story here.

Check out my weekly college football blog here.

The Sporting News ranked the Magic as the eighth best team in the NBA. Wow. If you want to read that article, you can see it here.

This should come as no surprise since the Sporting News ranked the Magic eighth in their power poll last month.

We’ve beaten the Vince Carter-Hedo Turkoglu comparisons to death and it’s been pointed out by several different sources, including the Third Quarter Collapse and here at Howard the Dunk that Vince Carter is actually a better passer and commits less turnovers than Hedo Turkoglu. 3QC pointed out that Carter actually had a higher assist percentage than Hedo Turkoglu did last year. And guess what they used to prove it? Simple statistics. Maybe Tim Povtak should try that…

(Andrew Melnick is Howard the Dunk’s lead blogger. Subscribe to his RSS feed and add him on Twitter to follow him daily.)