Last night while watching the Magic play, I grew very disturbed at what I had witnessed. The Magic were up by one at half time, and had been looking good most of the first half. That all turned come the second half, where the Magic let up 60 points. They allowed the Lakers to come onto their home court and pimp slap the Magic. The Magic was plagued with second half turnovers, poor defense, poor shot selection, and just poor shooting all around. All of this was troubling, but what baffled me the most, is why Diener didn’t even step on the court tonight. He was on the sidelines. Diener is a good point guard, and proved he deserved to be a big contributor to this team.When Nelson was out Diener showed a few things. For starters, he rarely ever turned the ball over. Just look at how through five games with 18 or more minutes, Diener had only two turnovers. In the Phoenix, Toronto, and Charlotte games he had no turnovers at all. In the New Orleans and Cleveland games where he played for 28 and 30 minutes, he had only one turnover in both games. Diener protects the ball better than anyone else on the team, makes good passes, and doesn’t try to do to much fancy. Arroyo will turn the ball over trying to be fancy, and just making poor decisions with the ball. Arroyo has a problem carrying the ball when he has to go to his left, that is called alot of times. Nelson ties to force passes inside to Howard that are not there, and turns the ball over. Diener doesn’t do any of this.Because of Howard’s limited offensive moves, he can be quite predictable and turns the ball over alot. Him being unable to score from anywhere off the low block, makes the team try to force alot of passes inside to Howard that are not there. Teams also love to go to zone on the Magic because of our lack of three point shooting. Diener has a three point shot, and when he is in the game teams can not just go to zone on the Magic. This allows players to not be crunched infront of Howard, we can get the ball inside to him much easier and allows our offense to be ran to the max. We need some three point shooting desperately, and Diener helps out alot with that.Finally, Diener in my view has the best on ball, man to man defense of any of our point guards. He was rarely ever beaten off the dribble without a screen coming at him, he knows how to fight through screens well, and is very good and fundamental. He slides his feet well, gets his but down, arms out into passing lanes, and is just a very sound defensive player. His defense at the one, would help out the team defense alot.In summary, I feel that Diener deserves more playing time. If I was the coach, Diener would be cutting into Arroyo and Nelson’s minutes big time. If that means trading Arroyo in the future, to clear room for Diener at backup Point I am happy with that.
