There’s No Magic in Orlando

As the final second ticked away, the roar of the crowd drowned out the game-ending buzzer.

Players hugged and fans embraced.

Heading to their locker room, the players ran a gauntlet of high fives from well wishers.

In the locker room, the music was cranked up and the coach was presented with the game ball.

He also got a bottle of champagne from the media in the postgame news conference.

Had his team just won the seventh game of the NBA Finals?

The seventh game of any postgame series?

No, the Orlando Magic merely won a regular-season game, their second-regular season game. But it came after 19 straight losses, it came after 11 straight defeats at home and it came nearly six weeks after Orlando’s first victory.

By beating the Phoenix Suns, 105-98, Monday night at TD Waterhouse Centre, the Magic improved to 2-19 and avoided becoming the fifth team in NBA history to lose 20 in a row in a single season.

“For the first time in a long time, we have a very happy locker room,” said Orlando Coach Johnny Davis when he finally caught his breath. “For the first time in a very long time, I can smile.

“Now we can get our season started in earnest.”

Orlando figured it had done that in its season opener when it edged the New York Knicks at Madison Square Garden, 85-83, in overtime.

And then nothing.

Loss after loss after loss. When the streak reached 10 in a row, coach Doc Rivers was fired, replaced with Davis, one of his assistants.

Ahead loomed the 23 straight losses suffered by the 1997-98 Denver Nuggets and the 1995-96 Vancouver Grizzlies, the single-season standard of ineptness, and the 24 straight defeats suffered by the Cleveland Cavaliers, the all-time losing record, which stretched over two seasons, 1981-82 and 82-83.

“We did not want to be recognized as the worst ever in the history of the game,” Davis said, “and we only had so many more shots at negating this thing.

“Hopefully, from this point forward, we can start a streak we can be proud of.”

It certainly didn’t appear that the Magic was going to be proud of Monday night’s game, not after they fell behind the 8-12 Suns by 22 points in the first quarter.

Further frustrating the Magic was that Penny Hardaway, who rose to stardom in Orlando, was having a big night. Hardaway would finish with 22 points and fellow Sun Shawn Marion with 29.

But with four players in double figures, led by Drew Gooden’s 21, and a 46.8% shooting night from the floor, the Magic pulled off the third-biggest comeback in their history, their biggest at home.

When he found a media mob surrounding his locker afterward, Tracy McGrady, the team captain and resident superstar smiled and said, “Have the playoffs started already?”

He admitted he had been worn out from answering questions about the losing streak.

“Now,” he said Monday, “we have something to talk about. People were saying, ‘T-Mac’s value is going down. T-Mac is not a superstar.’ It was getting heavy on me.”

It’s been getting heavy in Orlando for a long time, the losses piling up for over seven years.

Comings and Goings

Any discussion of the Magic has to begin with Shaquille O’Neal. He was, is and will remain for the foreseeable future the towering figure in the team’s history.

In its early years, the club seemed to be aptly named. Magically, Orlando won the No. 1 pick in the draft after both its third and fourth seasons. Its first top pick was O’Neal, who would go on to become the dominant player of his era. The second No. 1 was used to select Chris Webber, who was then traded for Hardaway and three draft choices.

Instant dynasty?

Orlando made it to the playoffs for the first time in 1994. The Magic reached the NBA Finals in ’95 but lost to the Houston Rockets and reached the conference finals in ’96 but lost to the Chicago Bulls.

Surely it would only be a matter of time until the championship rings were forged. But the Magic suddenly ran out of time.

In the summer of 1996, O’Neal, a free agent feeling slighted when Orlando management only belatedly matched a Laker offer, or intrigued by the idea of playing in the entertainment capital, or anxious to join a franchise steeped in a winning tradition or all of the above, took his massive frame to L.A.

Left to lead the troops, Hardaway, plagued by knee injuries and perhaps intimidated by the prospect of being The Man, was never the same, his scoring average and playing time going down steadily until he himself was gone three seasons later.

An era of lowered expectations set in, but it wasn’t easy on the populace.

“They were so spoiled,” said Brian Schmitz of the Orlando Sentinel. “They fell into the lottery with Shaq. They fell into the lottery with Penny. Until then, this was just a cow town where people were satisfied going to football games.”

Expectations were raised again in the summer of 2000. The Magic got Tracy McGrady, Grant Hill and maybe, just maybe, Tim Duncan.

Once again, though, the dream far exceeded reality. The magic turned out to be black magic. The Spurs, refusing to concede Duncan’s departure, got David Robinson to rush back from a Hawaiian vacation to talk some sense into his frontcourt mate.

And Duncan wound up telling the Magic, thanks, but no thanks.

Hill did indeed put on a Magic uniform. But only sporadically.

Signed to a seven-year, $93-million contract, he has limped around on a left ankle broken so badly that it has required four surgeries and limited him to only 47 games in his 3 1/2-season stay in Orlando.

Hill refuses to concede his playing days are over, talking of a possible return in February on the one hand, but conceding he’d consider a fifth surgery if necessary on the other.

In the meantime, he works out at the Magic’s training facility and commiserates with his losing teammates.

“It’s just frustrating,” he said after a workout early Monday, referring to both his own situation and that of the Magic. “As a team, when you lose confidence, you forget how to win and find ways to lose. It’s pretty cut and dried now. We have to win. There are no moral victories.”

Now 31, does he ever find himself falling into a depression at the thought of the years he has lost?

“I try not to look back,” he said. “I’m trying to focus on the future, for myself and this ballclub.”

Losing Armstrong

Much of the blame for this year’s failures came down to the decision in the off-season not to re-sign guard Darrell Armstrong.

Rivers told the New York Post’s Peter Vecsey it was primarily his decision.

“I didn’t want Darrell back,” Rivers said. “He’s my all-time favorite player, but the only way to take a step forward was to have Tracy McGrady leading the team.”

It was a role McGrady, however, has rejected, even though Rivers had a “C” sewn on McGrady’s jersey, just like they do in hockey.

Only after the streak had reached 19 last Saturday in Dallas was a team meeting called. It would have been called after five games, Schmitz said, if Armstrong was still around.

In the postgame euphoria, Magic media relations director Joel Glass rejoiced that he no longer had to hear reporters’ questions about the streak.

But, he was told, the new question would be whether the Magic can win 10 games, avoiding the 9-73 mark of the 1972-73 Philadelphia 76ers, the worst record in NBA history.

Always a new record to shoot for. Always another bottle of champagne on ice.

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