Letter to Magic Fans
January 13, 2005
Dear Magic Fans,
In light of the circumstances that have occurred over the past few days, we felt it necessary to touch base with you regarding the direction of our Orlando Magic team. Simply stated, like you, we are not happy with how our season has started. Having said that, we are extremely confident that during what is a long NBA season, we will still be in the playoff picture come the end of this current campaign.
We are confident we have building blocks for the future in Dwight Howard and Jameer Nelson. Additionally, we are all pulling for the healthy return of our classy veteran leader Grant Hill. We have had strong performances from our other players such as DeShawn Stevenson and Tony Battie. We look forward to the day when our roster is healthy and we can see the benefit of contributions from newly acquired Keyon Dooling and others on this Magic team such as Hedo Turkoglu. We are also confident that with a healthy roster in the second half of the season, under the direction of Head Coach Brian Hill, we will be competitive with all of our Eastern Conference counterparts in the stretch run to our goal of the NBA Playoffs.
As an organization we believe we are instilling a more accountable and disciplined approach to the manner in which we play the game. That approach has led to the suspension of Steve Francis yesterday due to conduct we feel is detrimental to this system and the culture we are implementing with our team. We found it necessary to take this action in order to improve the manner in which we approach our goals as a team. We certainly hope that this short term action will lead to long term improvement.
We also want to assure you that we are working every day to find the right personnel to improve our performance on the court. We will continue to actively pursue discussions with other teams around the league to seek trade possibilities, as well as look to improve our team through free agency and in the draft.
You have the commitment of the DeVos family ownership that we will not accept anything other than improvement that results in our return to the NBA Playoffs. You deserve a winning team, our community deserves a winning team and we will not rest until we reach that level of competitiveness.
As always, we appreciate your support and patience as we rebuild our organization to a level that we can all be proud of and return Magic basketball to the level of competitiveness that we all enjoy.
Sincerely,
Bob Vander Weide President/CEO
Dear Magic Fans,
In light of the circumstances that have occurred over the past few days, we felt it necessary to touch base with you regarding the direction of our Orlando Magic team. Simply stated, like you, we are not happy with how our season has started. Having said that, we are extremely confident that during what is a long NBA season, we will still be in the playoff picture come the end of this current campaign.
We are confident we have building blocks for the future in Dwight Howard and Jameer Nelson. Additionally, we are all pulling for the healthy return of our classy veteran leader Grant Hill. We have had strong performances from our other players such as DeShawn Stevenson and Tony Battie. We look forward to the day when our roster is healthy and we can see the benefit of contributions from newly acquired Keyon Dooling and others on this Magic team such as Hedo Turkoglu. We are also confident that with a healthy roster in the second half of the season, under the direction of Head Coach Brian Hill, we will be competitive with all of our Eastern Conference counterparts in the stretch run to our goal of the NBA Playoffs.
As an organization we believe we are instilling a more accountable and disciplined approach to the manner in which we play the game. That approach has led to the suspension of Steve Francis yesterday due to conduct we feel is detrimental to this system and the culture we are implementing with our team. We found it necessary to take this action in order to improve the manner in which we approach our goals as a team. We certainly hope that this short term action will lead to long term improvement.
We also want to assure you that we are working every day to find the right personnel to improve our performance on the court. We will continue to actively pursue discussions with other teams around the league to seek trade possibilities, as well as look to improve our team through free agency and in the draft.
You have the commitment of the DeVos family ownership that we will not accept anything other than improvement that results in our return to the NBA Playoffs. You deserve a winning team, our community deserves a winning team and we will not rest until we reach that level of competitiveness.
As always, we appreciate your support and patience as we rebuild our organization to a level that we can all be proud of and return Magic basketball to the level of competitiveness that we all enjoy.
Sincerely,
Bob Vander Weide President/CEO
