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David Aldridge
Monday, March 13
Rivers uses practical Magic



The visitors' locker room was filled with sullen players. They had been run ragged by Doc Rivers' Orlando Magic, and they weren't happy at being embarrassed.

Darrell Armstrong
Darrell Armstrong and the Magic like to run opponents off the court.
"Man, no way should we be losing like that to that team," one veteran said.

After four-plus months, it's still a stigma to be run off the floor by the Magic. It's still not acceptable to let Darrell Armstrong and Chucky Atkins press you into madness. It's still earns a scarlet letter when Ben Wallace and Bo Outlaw board you to death. It's still horrifying when Pat Garrity and Michael Doleac drop 3s on your bean, or when Corey Maggette jumps over you, or when John Amaechi posts you up.

People better recognize.

The Magic are no joke.

The players aren't. And, most certainly, Doc Rivers isn't.

"I don't think teams realize how well we can run until we play them," Armstrong said. "A lot of teams look at our roster, especially early in the year when we were on the road. We were really winning games on the road. Teams were looking at us like, 'We're going to take them tonight; it's going to be easy.' And then all of a sudden, you look up-- bam, bam, bam -- we're up at the half. And the first thing I say to the refs in the second half is, 'you ready to run now?' And they're like 'ready to run? We ran the whole first half.' "

This is an amazing thing, what coach Rivers is doing. He's setting conventional NBA wisdom on its ear. You're not supposed to win when most of your players are in their contract years; too much emphasis on putting up the numbers needed to get the big bucks. You're not supposed to win without a big man. You're not supposed to win when your roster is comprised, mainly, of kids. You're not supposed to win when you've never been a coach before on any level. You're not supposed to win when you make 33 separate transactions in one season. You're not supposed to be able to get your players to run after made baskets and press 94 feet after the All-Star break.

And the Magic are doing it, night after night. Well, at least enough in the sodden Eastern Conference to compete for the eighth playoff spot. Enough that when Armstrong pulled up for a 3-pointer on a fast break against the Nets, Stephon Marbury whispered to him in awe back up the floor, "Doc lets y'all do that?"

Enough that Anthony Mason, trying to get back on defense, had enough breath to say, "Man, I like the way y'all play."

"I don't think you gain any credibility by losing," Rivers said this week. "I don't care who you are. Especially a first-year coach. And that was my whole thought. We're gonna go for wins. We're not going for anything in the future. Because right now is the future."

The irony is Rivers had to coach this way because he had no choice.

He took the job thinking he'd have Penny Hardaway and Nick Anderson and Horace Grant, but ultimately agreed with GM John Gabriel that the best thing to do was strip the roster of its high-salaried guys. Take every one-year contract he could, maxing out the available room the Magic would have to go after Tim Duncan and Grant Hill next summer.

The cost for having that room was supposed to be a season of nightly butt-kickings, while Rivers identified the two or three guys he really wanted to keep for next season. Instead, his young guys have been a revelation. Armstrong has set the tone, throwing his 170 pounds in front of anybody who comes down the lane.

Rivers has done the rest. He wouldn't let them use the obvious excuse the night after Orlando traded Chris Gatling and Tariq Abdul-Wahad to Denver for Ron Mercer. The Magic played in New York, and Mercer hadn't yet arrived. Orlando had just nine players.

Aldridge's Rankings
THE TOP 10
1. L.A. Lakers
2. Portland
3. Indiana
4. Utah
5. San Antonio
6. Phoenix
7. Miami
8. Minnesota
9. Toronto
10. Philadelphia

THE BOTTOM FIVE
25. Vancouver
26. Washington
27. Golden State
28. Chicago
29. L.A. Clippers

And won by 20.

"Some teams talk about running, and then they revert back to their old ways," Rivers said. "One advantage I had is we didn't have an old way. Because everything I did is new. So I never introduced the walking game. I don't want to introduce it. For this team, when we're in the halfcourt set, we're not that great."

With Milwaukee and Detroit sputtering, the postseason is a distinct possibility in the Land of the Mouse. That is the springboard to wooing Duncan and Hill and Tracy McGrady. When Lon Babby, Duncan and Hill's agent, was in town last week, the local media went into full tampering alert. Both the Magic and Babby swear he was in town to talk about Garrity, another one of his clients.

Whatever. As long as owner Rich DeVos is willing to spend the money next summer, Rivers doesn't care.

"Every day, I look at the stocks and see how Amway is doing," Rivers said.

Worm turned away
The not-so-good ship Rodman went down quickly this week, taking on water and taking shots at the one team that was stupid enough to put up with his antics in the first place. And yet, Mavs owner Mark Cuban remains steadfast in his belief that he did the right thing.

"If I had the chance," Cuban e-mailed me this week, "I would do it all over again. I like Dennis as a player, as a person. I enjoy being around him. I love to watch him play. But we told him we wanted him to help give us a shot at the playoffs. He gave it all he had to help get us there. It just didn't work out. If we were three or four games out of a playoff spot, we would not be making this move ... that is the only reason we brought in Dennis.

"Risky, in some respects, yes, but I would have been incredibly upset with myself if we had finished three games out of a playoff spot, and I had punished myself all offseason by asking, 'What if.' "

I told Cuban not to take it personally, but that I was a cynic as a child and couldn't quite believe that Rodman's post-game shots at everyone in the Dallas organization, starting with Cuban, had nothing to do with him being excised.

"Cynicism is cool," Cuban responded. "I'm a born cynic ... (but) if I had thin skin, I wouldn't have signed him in the first place. If his comments were the reason for releasing him, I would say so. Why wouldn't I? ... Dennis vents. Only when he vents there are usually cameras in his face, and he has a hard, if not impossible, time knowing when not to talk. But with Dennis' passion and emotion, that's what you have to expect."

Cuban claims Dallas' braintrust started thinking about letting Rodman go on Monday, after the Kings immolated the Mavs 130-109 in Sacramento. That was, conveniently, the day before Rodman's scorched-earth comments after the Mavs were beaten by Seattle.

"We basically discussed what we would do with Dennis if we didn't turn at Seattle," Cuban said. "It's not like we can just put Dennis on the end of the bench and give him 10 minutes a game. That would be waiting for the powder keg to explode. ... So this was the only logical step."

Whether he's spinning or not, whether he's the real cynic and just used Rodman to bring suckers into the tent, Cuban makes one valid point. The Mavericks were, for a second at least, being viewed as more than a joke. One veteran GM thought that Dallas had a real chance at sneaking in to the eighth spot in the West until this past week.

Feedback for David
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"A company or team has to start looking to achieve and accomplish if it ever hopes to," Cuban said. "This is not BS. In an organization that has been far from the playoffs for so many years, you have to start thinking about it, believing it, facing the pressures of trying. Then good things happen. We aren't there yet, but we have built a base of belief to work from for next year. We are a playoff team next year."

Strange, that's just what Nellie said. Two years ago.

Around the NBA

  • Stark contrast: Speaking of which, John Starks' appeal to be released from Chicago might be heard on Tuesday. Bulls coach Tim Floyd says he hopes to meet with Starks on Monday.

    "If the ruling does not go in John's favor, Jerry (Krause, the GM) and I have to sit down and talk," Floyd said. "I'll sit down with Jerry and just review everything at that point, in my mind, and make some kind of determination that's not only good for John, but good for the Bulls in the long haul. This is a proud organization, despite our record this year, and we do have young players that we still like that are a huge part of what we're trying to do in the future.

    "And it's very important that they look at those guys that are around them and every day have reminders about how you should approach your job day in and day out."

  • Plummeting Hawks: Rumors abound about the fate of Lenny Wilkens in Atlanta as the Hawks go through the floor. Team president Stan Kasten won't bite on talk about the Hawks pursuing Kentucky coach Tubby Smith.

    "All I can tell you is the problem isn't going to fix itself. So, we have to fix it, and I can tell you, we are going to fix it," Kasten said. "I can't fathom a team that was two games from having the best record in the East last year talking about lottery picks"

  • Somebody sparks the Wiz: Wizards coach Darrell Walker saw enough after his team blew a late lead Monday night against Orlando. After Pat Garrity's game-winning shot at the buzzer -- when rookie Richard Hamilton failed to switch and help on a screen and roll -- Walker lit into his team in the locker room, railing that none of his players had any heart. They responded by beating Minnesota in Minneapolis and the Knicks in Washington within 48 hours.

    The three games in three nights set-up came about after the Knicks-Wizards game in January was snowed out, forcing a reschedule for this week

  • Bullish on the draft: Don't think the Bulls won't still pick a power forward if they get the first pick in the draft, even though they have Elton Brand. Remember, Jerry Krause dealt for Horace Grant on draft day 1987 even though he had a young Charles Oakley on the roster.

    But, obviously, Kenyon Martin's status and recovery from a broken leg will be a major factor. Just a hunch, though: I wouldn't be surprised at all if Chicago went for Iowa State power forward Marcus Fizer.

  • Seikaly decision coming: Rony Seikaly's grievance against the Nets is being heard this week. Seikaly is seeking the $4.5 million in salary he would have been paid had New Jersey not cut him last year. He claims the Nets cut him because he was injured, a violation of the collective bargaining agreement. The Nets counter that it was because Seikaly's skills had diminished. A decision should come down in the next few days

  • One thing Jordan can't sell: Interesting take on the relative ineffectiveness of Michael Jordan's endorsement of Bill Bradley from Chris Matthews, the host of CNBC's political talk show "Hardball:" Jordan did an ad for Bradley that ran nationwide, but in the end, Bradley didn't win one of the 15 Democratic primaries on Super Tuesday.

    "What I thought was inauthentic about it, watching it, was that Bradley wrote this," Matthews said, laughing. Jordan "was using terms that were just, like people with different slanted eyes, you know, the thing about different eye shapes? I go 'wait, that's not something that Michael Jordan would have naturally said' ... Asian facial features would not have been one of his big issues, probably."

    Matthews also thought that Jordan's first endorsement might have reached a little high.

    "It takes a little prelude, a little prologue ... to know the guy's interested in politics before you hear from him," he said. "It would be nice if he had said something before, before he pops out all of a sudden and says 'I'm for Bradley.' It's like 'what does that mean?' ... he hasn't marched in any parades, or he hasn't done anything in politics, he hasn't even given a speech at a convention, and all of a sudden, he's endorsing his buddy.

    "You can't endorse up. You can endorse down. If he had endorsed a mayor, or a senator. But you're endorsing a president, and everybody looks up to the president. And nobody's gonna tell me who to vote for for president, because (Jordan) says so."


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