Magic show they still have pride

Home

Community

Sports

Other Sun Publications

FREE DELIVERY!
Get Free Delivery! Request your Osceola News Gazette Today.

Login Form

2013 Osceola Health

2013 Sexual Predator Sexual Offender List sexualpredatorcover13

Windows on the Classroom March 2013

School Calendar
2012-2013

View our other Special Sections

Magic show they still have pride

Sports

Saturday, 29 May 2010 12:22

Regardless of what happened Friday in Game 6 of the NBA’s Eastern Conference finals, the Orlando Magic have at least earned back the respect they so pitifully squandered during the first three games of the series.
It took considerable courage to wear anything remotely resembling Magic Blue after that 94-71 no-show at the Boston Garden last weekend that saw the Magic fall into an almost hopeless 0-3 fissure.
If that effort didn’t rank among the bottom 1/10th of 1 percent of Magic performances over the past 20 years, please don’t show me what was worse. It was like watching the cartoon roaches keeling over in the Raid commercials.
But the Magic, softer than a cheap hotel mattress to that point, finally realized that the endorsement money isn’t so good when the entire nation is pointing and laughing at you. Unless you’re endorsing Silly Putty.
The gutty 96-92 overtime win at Boston Monday parlayed with the 113-92 romp over the Celtics Wednesday at the Amway Arena confirmed, finally, that this is a team with a backbone, one that planned to draw some blood before it departed the 2010 NBA playoffs.
Sports fans usually ask too much of their teams for a gazillion reasons that requires psychotherapy to completely understand, but at the very least fans deserve a determined effort from their favorite players. Especially in the third round of the playoffs.
Imagine if the Magic had lost Game 4 Monday. The stench of a four-game sweep against the Celtics would have hung heavily over the franchise during the offseason.
Now, the Magic look like a team worthy of the plush new Amway Center they soon will inhabit.
...
Attention hockey fans. Or, is that, attention, hockey fan? There’s not many of you out there, especially with the Magic hogging headlines while trying to overcome a 0-3 deficit against the Celtics, but the Stanley Cup Finals begin tonight when the Philadelphia Flyers travel to Chicago.
One Blackhawk, winger Marian Hossa, already has made NHL history before the first faceoff for becoming the first player ever to reach the Finals three straight years with three different teams.
Hossa played for Pittsburgh in 2008 and Detroit in 2009, losing both times.
Hossa, with more bad luck, has a chance to become the one-man hockey equivalent of the 1990-93 Buffalo Bills, who went to the Super Bowl four times in a row and came up bupkis.
By the way, that orange, white and black blur you see sailing around town would be resident keyboard pounder Ken Jackson wearing his Flyers jersey. Counting Jackson and Display Supervisor Jean Ramirez, the company’s Blackhawks fan, that makes at least two people in town who will watch the Stanley Cup Finals.
Haven’t heard about the wager, but it has to be cheese steak vs. deep dish pizza, right?
...
The prep football equipment is in storage for a couple of months after spring drills wrapped up Friday.
There will be a few schedule changes for the local teams next season.
St. Cloud again will play 11 regular season games, counting a Sept. 17 contest at Key West. St. Cloud swapped a trip to Fort Lauderdale, where it played Deerfield Beach last season, for a home game against Orlando Evans Oct. 1.
Liberty added a home game with Spruce Creek Sept. 10 in place of a road date at Florida Air Academy.
Osceola has open dates Sept. 24 and Nov. 12 and will play a home game in one of those spots. The Kowboys could have scheduled Class 5A state runner-up Bradenton Manatee in November, but with an inexperienced roster and a schedule that already includes Dr. Phillips, Daytona Beach Mainland, Lakeland and Madison County, OHS Coach Doug Nichols said, “No, thanks.”
Last September, Osceola defeated Carson, Calif. at ESPN’s Wide World of Sports.