The Magic's Trick

When you sit down to watch the Magic try to end the Cavaliers season tonight, they are going to look, to the non-NBA obsessed eye, like a lot of other basketball teams. But they aren't. Here's why.

What you have with the Magic is something of a unique hybrid that straddles a middle ground. On the far left side of the spectrum (yes, everything eventually goes back to politics here), you'd have a team like Phoenix -- fast shots, three pointers, run your opponent into the ground with superior conditioning and score easier points than them; the signature play here is a three in transition as a soul-crushing unequal trade for the opposition's hard-won deuce.

The downside of that approach is that the defense usually falls to pieces, because the coaching staff needs to spend all of their time getting the players to recognize good shots and forget their own numbers, despite the fact that compensation is based on numbers. Also, it's a team based on jumpers, and when they aren't falling -- particularly in half-court grind games, or late in a series when the legs aren't there anymore -- you lose. When this kind of team works, they are a joy to watch, and beloved by fans as if they were a champion, even though they almost never are.

On the far right side of the spectrum would be an old-school walk-it-up power team, like the Shaq and Kobe Lakers, the Billups-era Pistons, and on some level, the Spurs. Here, you stress the importance of every possession and try to make sure that you are always taking more shots than your opponent with superior rebounding and ball-handling; you also get to the line more. This kind of team is more consistent and less explosive, and the downside is that talent acquisition and evaluation is harder, because fewer elite-level players really want to play like this.

Even when it works, it's not very pleasing to the eye, and whether you like it or not, there's a level of artistry to pro hoop, especially among the best and most highly compensated, that has to be indulged. If you don't accommodate this to some extent, you get guys just executing the game plan, rather than being a fanatic about it, and in such differences, wars are won and lost. When this kind of team works, they seize games in the fourth like an anaconda, because the opponent is just unable to get points for 48 minutes against this kind of relentless pressure.

So here is the Magic, and to the naked eye, they look like the Shaq and Kobe Lakers, in that Dwight Howard resembles nothing more than a young and lithe Shaquille O'Neal. His hands aren't as good, but he's a better leaper and more committed on defense; he's also been better at the line, so that you aren't as afraid of using him late in games. It's not a perfect match, but it's 90 to 95% of the way there, and Howard's demeanor is also a good match for Shaq, in that he alternates between determined bulldozer to foul-prone flake.

But he has no Kobe. Hedo Turkoglu is a point forward with a good passing eye and fourth quarter confidence. Rashard Lewis is a matchup problem small forward who is very good from distance, but prone to giving you absolutely nothing if his jumper isn't falling. Neither has Kobe's all-around game, the ability to finish in a game and mood-altering way, or the curse/gift for scoring 1-on-5 if his teammates aren't bringing it.

In the backcourt, the similarities to the Shaq champions really falls apart. None of the Magic guards are the kind of oversized defensive stoppers that the Shaq teams employed. Instead, they are guys that can create their own shot off the dribble more than creating for others, and they all push the tempo. No one calls them tough, or defensive-minded, though they actually are, at least this year.

So are the Magic closer to the Suns-Kings axis? No... because those teams are, by necessity, defined by their point guards, who keep everyone involved and positive by meting out the opportunities to shine, like a conductor. The Magic have no one like that.

They also, and this is really where they aren't like any championship-level team I've seen, do not have a key player who you can neutralize as a tipping point to victory. When Howard is unavailable due to suspension or foul trouble, it makes for better ball movement on offense. When Turkoglu can't find the range, Lewis has a game that can compensate, and vice versa. Sporadic explosions from the guards -- today Rafer Alston, yesterday Courtney Lee, tomorrow Mickael Pietrus -- seem to come easily, because the opposition just has no one they can play off, and in pro hoop, unlike football or baseball, good offense always beats good defense.

When the Magic aren't committed, they look like a soft Euro team, just another in a long line of hoopsters that feel like a passing dome team in football -- i.e., a regular season mirage. But what they are really are, this year and this playoff, is a covert defensive hammer.

Cleveland came into this series as the lockdown masters of opposing three-pointers; after four games, that reputation lies in a smoking ruin. Cleveland has the best player on the floor and the planet, and honestly, I don't think I've ever seen a player better than LeBron James in the first four games of the series. He's a defensive monster, and breathtaking on offense. When he isn't scoring, he's generating some of the easiest looks you'll ever see in a playoff game. His teammates aren't hitting them, not because they are terrible basketball players, but because, despite the easy road in the first two series, their legs have been taken away by this Borg-like team from central Florida.

I've never seen anything like it before, and I don't think we're going to see it for very long, like, say, this year's Celtics. (That team was doomed as soon as they signed Marbury, Garnett injury or no Garnett injury, and now that he's in a career-ending way with that knee, they are a 50-win and timber mode, because Allen and Pierce can't stay this good. But I digress.)

The Magic will tune out Stan van Gundy soon enough. When Howard develops more of a post-up game (honestly, what he's got now is kind of embarrassing for a guy with this level of publicity; it's Ben Wallace-esque) and Jameer Nelson returns, the balance will be thrown out of whack. They also won't be able to keep all of the pieces over time, and the loss of someone like Pietrus could be as problematic for them as, say, the Celtics losing James Posey last year.

But for the time being, they are fascinating, dangerous, and could have the highest ceiling of any of the final four teams. For a club that looked vulnerable in the first round to a middling Sixers team, heart-free against the D-league deep Celtics, and the near-universal fast out against the Association's best regular season team with playoff rest and home court... well, it's all unprecedented stuff.

And no, I'm still not really believing it myself, because my faith in James is nearly absolute.

But with just one more win, they'll prove me, and the rest of the world outside of central Florida, definitively wrong.

At least for this year.