A (Jump) Shot at Conventional Wisdom

LOS ANGELES One hundred years of basketball convention goes out the door with the Orlando Magic. Players and coaches watch them play and are equal parts amazed and confounded.

There have been playoff teams, most recently the Suns and Warriors, built largely on jump-shooting, but it betrayed them before they could advance this deep in the postseason. Probably, no team as reliant on the jump shot as Orlando is has ever reached the NBA Finals.

Jon Barry, an ABC/ESPN analyst, is part of basketball's greatest jump-shooting family and was an ace shooter for 14 NBA seasons. Yet, on the topic of Orlando's approach to offense, Barry says: "They're totally unorthodox. They go against everything you learn growing up in the sport. Instead of protecting a lead in the final couple of minutes, they'll come down like they did in Game 4 against Cleveland and take three-pointers with 10 or more seconds on the shot clock. There's no 'milk the clock, dump it down, let the big guy kick it out.' That's not what they do.

"By the time you're 12 years old you know if there's a big guy on your team the ball has to go to him first," Barry said. "You're throwing it down to your big hoss. You can't teach height, right? That's not what Orlando does. It's as if they'll say, 'Let's slow it down and get a three.' . . . But you know what? It works. It works for them."

It's such an uncommon approach that defenders are caught totally off guard because they've been taught from Biddy Basketball through high school and college and into the NBA that teams simply don't prefer to take the shots Orlando's players will gladly take.

Even trying to identify the Orlando players by position is a waste of time. In reality, there's 6-foot-11 Dwight Howard playing "Big Man" while 6-10 Hedo Turkoglu, 6-10 Rashard Lewis, 6-6 Mickael Pietrus, 6-5 Courtney Lee, 6-2 Rafer Alston and 6-foot Jameer Nelson shoot the ball . . . from anywhere and everywhere at any time. Score and clock at times seem secondary considerations for them.

Turkoglu, nominally a power forward, is too quick and plays too far out on the perimeter for traditional power forwards to guard effectively. Lewis, nominally a small forward, is the same kind of matchup nightmare. When those two and Pietrus are on the floor together, Orlando has at least three long, athletic shooters roaming in space, and it can be four if Lee is with that group. Very few teams have three or four defenders who are as athletic and versatile enough to counteract all that firepower, though the Los Angeles Lakers appear to be one of them.

Eddie Jordan, the former Wizards coach hired by the Philadelphia 76ers just this week, has worked hard to devise defensive game plans for Orlando the last couple of seasons. The Magic had been on his mind a lot in the 24 hours before our conversation. "Wouldn't 40 points in a Game 6 of the conference finals convince you to throw it inside to him all the time?" Jordan asked of Howard. "Not for them. But it's evolving, because just two years ago we didn't have to double down on Dwight. He'd turn it over or throw up some half-assed hook shot. We'd say: 'Let them dump it inside. Hell, Dwight isn't going to score more than 10, 12 points.' But his skill level has escalated tremendously. This kid has exploded right out of his socks."

Jordan played point guard in the NBA for seven years and has earned the reputation as a terrific offensive basketball coach. He absolutely bubbles about Orlando's unorthodox approach. "They absolutely rely," he said, "on Turkoglu's creativity and it's so difficult to guard him, at 6-10, in the pick-and-roll. Point guards, guys who are 6-3 and 6-4 are trying to do that. How many teams have bigs who can go out there with Turkoglu and Lewis?"

Jordan is one of many who credits Orlando Coach Stan Van Gundy, a man rooted in traditional basketball, for adapting to the talent he has. "Definitely, it's his personnel," Jordan said.

A few hours later, here in Los Angeles where the Finals begin Thursday night, Van Gundy agreed with Jordan's assessment. "I think that what you do, at least from an offensive standpoint in this league, is pretty much determined by your personnel," Van Gundy told reporters at Staples Center. "I look at our team, I'm very confident that the way we play and shots we try to create are best for our team. I don't think you can sit down and say, 'This is the style of play that wins in the NBA' and then try to replicate that. I think you have to play the style of play that gives your team, your personnel, the best chance to play, to win, and I think -- you never know how this series is going to go, but we're sitting here now with the way we play.

"I like the way we play. I understand that people look at a game where you shoot 35 threes, 38 threes, whatever, and say you can't win that way consistently. . . . But we like to think we're not setting out to get a number of threes. We're trying to take what the defense gives us. If they're going to double-team Dwight, if they're going to put people in the lane, if they're going to trap pick-and-rolls, we're going to look inside. And if you're going to stay in the lane, we're going to shoot the three."

Jordan points out that defenses, traditionally, are taught to "help," which usually calls for leaving the power forward (in this case Turkoglu) in drive-and-kick situations to stop the ballhandler from penetrating all the way to the basket. But leaving Turkoglu is disastrous. Leaving Lewis is disastrous. Leaving anybody in an Orlando uniform to help double-team or trap, even reserve guard J.J. Redick, is usually disastrous. So, you have to guard Orlando straight up, one-on-one.

The Lakers are one team that, in theory, can do this. Andrew Bynum would have to take Howard, which leaves Trevor Ariza to take Turkoglu and Lamar Odom to chase Lewis. Problem is, that leaves out the Lakers' second-best player, Pau Gasol, who doesn't have the foot speed to match up with Turkoglu or Lewis, nor the strength and explosion to stay with Howard. Even so, the Lakers (unlike the Cavaliers) have the wherewithal to cover most of the bases, which is why I'm picking the Lakers to win in six games.

No matter, it should be an entertaining series, a superstar like Kobe Bryant on one side and a team that laughs at convention on the other. Is it possible that a team with no regard for the time-honored warning, "Live by the jump shot, die by the jump shot," could win the NBA championship?

"They don't have to die by the jump shot," Jordan cautioned. "With no post presence you would die by the jump shot. But they have an alternative."