<div class="quote_poster">Quote:</div><div class="quote_post">With their momentum from last season's stirring closing kick and this season's promising start clearly long gone, the Orlando Magic are dogged now by two questions: Who are they and who are they going to be? Are they the team that looked like world beaters early in the season, starting 13-4, or the team that has been mired in a six-week, 10-16 funk? And come playoff time, assuming they still have a pulse in late April, will they be postseason pretenders or contenders? Facing a stretch of seven consecutive games against teams with losing records -- starting tonight against the woeful Atlanta Hawks -- the Magic might very well have reached a make-or-break point in their season. Is it the steely squad that went into Cleveland on Monday night and returned every volley from all-star LeBron James in an impressive victory? Or is it the one that has lost its last two home games by a combined 27 points? "It's time to make our minds up about what we want to be," Magic point guard Jameer Nelson said. "I'm not a guy who looks at the standings too much, but we're in a situation where we can either take off or give in," Nelson continued. "It's up to us to figure out what we want to do. We're in the middle of the pack in the East. I'm not a true veteran like Grant Hill, but I'm old enough to know that when you are in the middle, you can either go up or down, but it's rare that you just stay there in the middle." Out of the playoffs each of the past three seasons and winners of just 36 games the past two years, Orlando could very well be pleased with being 23-20 and just three games behind the Eastern Conference-leading Detroit Pistons. But as they crossed the midpoint of the season, the Magic are actually lamenting the fact that they are back in the middle of the pack when the East seemed to be there for the taking just a month ago. The 13-4 start to the season gave Orlando its finest start in 10 seasons, excluding the lockout-shortened 1999 season. It also put the Magic on top of the Southeast Division for 43 consecutive days. But injuries to Grant Hill, Hedo Turkoglu, Trevor Ariza and Nelson sabotaged Orlando's ideas of taking control of the conference. Losing streaks of three, four and five games knocked the Magic out of not only the conference lead, but also the division lead. Particularly bad losses -- to the Hornets who were without three starters, to the Grizzlies who were without Pau Gasol and to the Raptors who were without Chris Bosh -- have left Orlando wondering if it can recapture the magic it once had firmly in its grip. "I thought we'd be better than we are. We are better than what our record reflects," said Magic guard Keyon Dooling, who strained ligaments in his right thumb Tuesday night and is expected to miss at least a week. "We have been inconsistent. But I look at other teams, and up and down their rosters, I don't see many having as much talent as we do. "Some kind of way we've got to get it turned around. We're in decent shape, but we're so much better than how we're playing now." The Magic have made tremendous strides defensively under coach Brian Hill, but the offense has been a mess for months. And as the quality of the competition has gone up, the flaws have become more evident. The Magic are 27th in the league for points per game (93.5), 29th in free throw percentage (69.5 percent), 26th in 3-pointers made (181), 28th in assists (18) and 30th in turnovers (17.1). With those numbers, its surprising to some that the Magic were able to stay on top of the Eastern Conference as long as they did. "I've never questioned our team or myself, but we're in the middle of the pack for a reason," Nelson said. "We got off to that great start and we struggled and now we've got to get it back. We've got to refocus and get back to being that team that knew what it wanted to be early in the year. We've got to get back that trust." Grant Hill, a veteran of 13 NBA seasons, said that last year's strong finish -- one that included wins against Miami, Dallas, Detroit and San Antonio -- and this season's solid start against mostly losing teams might have masked some of the growing pains of a still relatively young team. The Magic lean heavily on three 21-year-olds (Dwight Howard, Darko Milicic and Ariza), and point guards Travis Diener and Jameer Nelson are still new to running NBA teams. "Even with our great start, we'd like to be better and could be, but we're still learning how to be better," Hill said. "Where we are is a step from last year. Even after winning 16 down the stretch last season, we still only won 36 games. "We're not as good as our best record and not as bad as our worst record, just somewhere in between. We just have to see how it all plays out. We're still fighting for our identity and who we're going to become." Who the Magic will become, Howard stressed, is a team that will be a factor in the Eastern Conference come playoff time. Just for fun, Howard did some reporting work for NBA TV during the playoffs last spring and he was blown away by the intensity of the postseason. He vowed then that he would do whatever he could to ensure that the Magic evolve into serious contenders. Now, with the second half of the season just under way, Howard said the Magic have to develop a sense of urgency if they are to recapture their place back among the elite. "We know we're a playoff team and can be very successful in the playoffs, but we have to adopt that mentality now," said Howard, the NBA's third-leading rebounder at 12.5 boards a game. "Two of the teams we just played, Washington and Dallas, they came out and showed us how playoff teams are supposed to play. That's how we have to approach it if we want to get back to where we were early in the season." </div> Link
