The Magic, thanks in large part to Jonathan Isaac, are one of the very few teams who have a defensive identity. Which SUCKS. Back in the old days, a decade ago or more, there were plenty of teams who hung their hat on their defensive ability. And it sucked. Those days sucked and are not missed. No one wants to see shots NOT go in. The whole psychological reason that humans watch basketball at all is because the sight of a ball going into a hole is PRIMAL. PRIMAL SATISFACTION.
The Magic aren’t even, on a per-possession basis, a super-duper elite defensive team. But they play at one of the slowest paces in the league (another remnant of the past that no one misses: slow, grind-it-out basketball) which makes their raw points scored against numbers look really good. I’m blaming D.J. Augustin for this one. There’s no way that midget can play effective defense at all. I’m also blaming Michael Carter-Williams. Because he sucks and deserves blame, earned or unearned.
The Lakers only managed 97 points, which would be good for Orlando if they themselves didn’t score only 86. God damn. That’s a final score from the past that I thought was gone forever. I hope no one watched this one, but since it was a Lakers game, I bet a lot of people did. For those of you who wisely avoided it, enjoy this creatively-distilled highlight package of Isaac scoring 19. If you watch it, you can totally pretend that the Magic (and Isaac, by extension) don’t totally suck on offense.