Orlando fights for its season and future

The Hawks are scoring a respectable 104.9 points per 100 possessions with Jamal Crawford on the floor, as opposed to 89.3 points per 100 perssessions when he's on the bench. (AP)

A lot is at stake as the Magic host the Hawks in Game 5 of their first-round series. With apologies to Magic fans, if Orlando bows out tonight, it would be hard to blame Dwight Howard for believing his best chance at a championship lies elsewhere. That is not hyperbole or unmerited doomsday talk; it is reality for a team scheduled to pay Hedo Turkoglu and Gilbert Arenas more than $32 million combined in 2012-13 – more than half the current salary cap — and, depending on what happens with the final year of Turkoglu’s contract, perhaps an even larger amount in 2013-14. No contract is unmovable — the Magic’s deal for Arenas proves this — but Howard would be justified in leaving if the Magic’s supporting cast fails again, and if all the team’s front office can provide are vague promises that perhaps they might be able to move one of those guys at some point. 

A win Tuesday might not change the long-term picture for Howard, and it doesn’t necessarily mean GM Otis Smith was wrong to think the Jason Richardson/Turkgolu/Arenas combination might give the Magic a better chance to win it all this season. Marcin Gortat was always going to be a role player in Orlando, Vince Carter hasn’t exactly killed it in Phoenix, and Rashard Lewis was an injury-prone non-factor in Washington. They might have fit Stan Van Gundy’s system a little better than the guys the Magic received — Vince Carter can still work a pick-and-roll, and a healthy Lewis is probably better all around than his power forward replacements — but Orlando’s current situation might not be much different today had Smith declined the trades.

This is nervous time for Orlando. Here are some things I’ll be looking for in Game 5:

• Can someone on the Magic make a shot? 

There are reasons Orlando is struggling from deep, but despite those reasons, its 22 percent mark from three-point range screams “regression to the mean!” But the mean remains untouched after four games, and perhaps Orlando’s shooters are just never going to get the space they need to knock down outside shots against a defense that has been able to stay close to them. We all know the reasons for this — Atlanta is mostly using single coverage on Howard, Jason Collins has contained Howard well enough that the Hawks’ perimeter defenders can mostly stay home, and Atlanta’s big lineup is long and athletic enough to sag down on pick-and-rolls and recover to shooters. 

Still, at some point, you have to make shots, or you’re dead. Which brings us to …

• How can Orlando create better shots for players other than Howard? 

This is the issue. This is what Stan Van Gundy is talking about when he complains that he does not have players who can create chances off the dribble. Turkoglu was that kind of player once, but he’s older now, and the space between him and his defender on those fading jumpers seems to have shrunk. Jameer Nelson can get into the lane against just about anyone, but his height is an issue against big teams like Atlanta. 

Most disturbing of all: Orlando’s pick-and-roll, it’s bread-and-butter play, is producing nothing. Orlando is getting only 0.82 points per possession on trips when either the roll man or the ball-handler finishes the play; that ranks just 11th among the 16 playoff teams, and it’s especially bad for Orlando, because nearly one-quarter of its possessions end this way, according to the stat-tracking service Synergy Sports. 

And get this: Howard has been the finisher on just 5.4 percent of all those pick-and-rolls. That doesn’t mean Howard is irrelevant on those plays, of course; he’s the Magic’s centerpiece, and his presence rushing down the paint draws attention and, in theory, opens up perimeter looks for others. But those looks aren’t falling, and that 5.4 percent figure shows the Magic can’t seem to get Howard the ball when he’s on the move. Brandon Bass has probably been Orlando’s most reliable pick-and-roll scorer. He has been good at popping into open space near the foul line, behind the play, and hitting mid-range shots.

Still, if the pick-and-roll doesn’t start producing points, where are the Magic going to go? They have tried running Jason Richardson off of Ray Allen-style curl plays, but Richardson hasn’t capitalized on those chances. Richardson has done good work posting up Jamal Crawford, but those opportunities are rare. J.J. Redick has been a non-factor, and Quentin Richardson is not a consistent offensive threat, even if he can post up smaller guys and hit spot-up threes. 

Will Orlando go small, with Turkoglu at power forward, as it did for much of the fourth quarter in Game 4? Will it play Nelson, Redick and Jason Richardson together? That lineup creates a size mismatch for Joe Johnson, which is probably why the trio has logged just 19 minutes together in this series, according to Basketball Value. But it might represent one way Orlando can score. 

And then there’s Arenas, who earned minutes Tuesday with his play on Sunday. Can he do it again? 

• Jamal Crawford can’t keep playing like this, right? 

Crawford’s impact on this series has been insane. He is lifting Atlanta’s offense and killing its defense (as it has always been), and he has been hot enough over four games that the Hawks have come out slightly ahead. With Crawford on the floor, the Hawks are scoring a respectable 104.9 points per 100 possessions, per NBA.com’s StatsCube. In the 68 minutes Crawford has been on the bench, Atlanta’s offense is scoring a pitiful 89.3 points per 100 possessions. All hail Jamal Crawford!

But in those 68 minutes of Crawford pine time, the Hawks’ defense has turned into a total monster, allowing the Magic to score just 79.8 points per 100 possessions. That’s unthinkably bad offense. With Crawford on the floor, the Magic have actually resembled an NBA offense, scoring 105 points per 100 possessions. 

You can’t blame Crawford for all of this, especially given the small sample size, but the same pattern held for all of last season and fits generally with Crawford’s set of skills and liabilities. The Hawks have won this trade-off so far mostly because Crawford has hit 13 of his 23 three-point tries (56.5 percent), pretty heady stuff for a career 35 percent three-point shooter. If he cools off, as the math says he should, the calculus changes.

• Can the Hawks avoid shooting themselves in the foot?

Atlanta has won these games by playing ultra-simple basketball. It has relied more than any other playoff team on isolations, which makes sense given the advantages Johnson, Josh Smith and Al Horford have in their one-on-one matchups. But they have shown a tendency to hurt themselves. Josh Smith’s jumper-happy performance in the second of game 3 was so bad at times that Bret LaGree of the Hawks-themed blog Hoopinion termed it a “heel turn.” And Larry Drew helped Orlando rally in the second quarter of Game 2 by stubbornly keeping Horford on the bench because of alleged “foul trouble” that did really exist.

The line between wins and losses here is thin. Atlanta can’t afford too many screw-ups. 

• Howard must take care of the ball. 

It feels bad to say, considering how brilliantly he has played and how often he is fouled, but Howard must take better care of the ball. He has turned it over 26 times in four games, equivalent to a turnover on 22 percent of possessions he finishes. Only five players (minimum of 1,000 minutes) had turnover rates that high this season, and all five are point guards, according to Basketball-Reference. Even considering Howard’s burden, he’s coughing it up too often. Shaquille O’Neal, another big center who drew just as much attention and was officiated the same way, never approached this kind of turnover rate in his prime. Lots of things have changed since then, but Howard has to clean things up.