Moving On
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He didn't get anywhere near this much heat when he was director of basketball operations for the Golden State Warriors.
And certainly nothing like this ever happened to him when he was vice president of marketing for the Boys and Girls Clubs of Central Florida.
Otis Smith has seen some fires burn around him during his apprenticeship for the job as co-general manager of the Orlando Magic, but he has never had his feet held to the flames like media and fans did when the Fran Vazquez story broke this summer.
"I definitely know how it feels now when a decision you make doesn't go exactly as planned," Smith said. "There is a lot of disappointment in the organization, and I hear enough about Fran everywhere I go to know how the community feels.
"But what I'd like people to understand is that one single incident does not determine a season. We wanted to have Fran here but it didn't work out so let's move on. There are a lot of good things happening that are going to have a lot more to do with our success or failure this season than whether Fran played."
"I would agree with that," said Brian Hill, who as a coach has been through situations similar to this many times when key players or support players are injured and are lost for long periods of time.
"I don't mean to be insensitive, but you worry about the guys you have, not the guys you don't have. I'm concerned about the guys we have returning and the new additions and trying to put the pieces together so we make the best use of their abilities."
The best news the Magic have enjoyed during the off-season is that for the first time in five years, Grant Hill didn't spend the summer rehabbing a bum ankle. He sat out the final nine games of last season because the organization didn't want to risk further damage to an injured leg, but he didn't need any visits to the doctor's office, surgery or rehab to get things right this off-season.
"The only conversation I had with the doctors this summer was them calling me to ask how my family was doing," Hill said. "I've played a little basketball, played a little tennis, worked out, done some traveling with my family ... just doing the kind of stuff I used to do in the off-season and it has felt really good." Hill did make a trip to Duke for a week in July to play some five-on-five with other alums of the school and said he noticed something during those games.
"I was a little more athletic than I was all last season," he said. "I remember telling everybody last March that I felt like I was getting better and better all season and that has extended into the summer.
"I feel like my ballhandling is improved, my shooting is better, my quickness is better. I'm getting back to being athletic. That's the best feeling I've had in five years."
Another bit of notable news this summer was the leap forward Dwight Howard made offensively at the Las Vegas Summer League. He was a first-team all-star selection at the event that included first- and second-year players from 16 NBA teams.
He played just under 25 minutes a game for the Magic and averaged 19 points, 7.5 rebounds and 1.5 blocks while shooting a healthy 64 percent from the floor. He not only was better, he was bigger. Though he still looks lean, he is up to 265 pounds and that will come in handy when he starts banging with the big men in the Eastern Conference.
"Dwight has spent the summer working on the little things, like learning to score inside on something other than a dunk," Smith said. "He really is a lot better offensively, but to be honest, I think the biggest improvement you're going to see from him this season is going to be on defense. He's learning the game, learning his position and I don't think you're going to see him get in foul trouble as much this time."
The other news maker for the summer was the signing of free agent point guard Keyon Dooling, who played in Miami last year after four seasons with the Los Angeles Clippers. Dooling was a backup for the Heat, averaging 5.2 points in the regular season, but his game improved as the season progressed.
He appeared in all 15 playoff games for Miami, averaging 7.3 points while playing about 18 minutes. It is his size (6-3, 190 pounds) and willingness to engage opposing point guards at the defensive end that really interests the Magic.
"You've got to find a niche to make it in this league and I've found mine on defense," Dooling said. "Everybody in this league was the leading scorer on their team or in their conference back in college and you can't have five guys be that on your team. Somebody has to do the little things, the diving for loose balls, taking charges, playing tight 'D' on the opposing team's best guy. That's what I do. That's what I bring to this team."
And that is precisely why Brian Hill wanted the Magic to pursue Dooling.
"You want a guy who can pressure the ball coming up the floor and make it difficult for teams to get into their offensive sets," Hill said. "Ideally, we've got a guy who will get his teammates jacked up about playing defense when they see him pressuring the ball."
If nothing else, Dooling's presence should create quite a bit of competition at point guard with holdovers Steve Francis and Jameer Nelson and second-round draft pick Travis Diener.
"Bring it on," Nelson said of the impending competition. "I'm not afraid of competition and I'm sure they're not either. It's only going to make us better."
Grant Hill thinks that will be the defining story of this summer: Did the players learn anything from their second half swoon last year and did they do anything to prevent a recurrence.
"I know the draft and free agency are the hot topics over the summer for fans, but once we get to training camp, none of the players are going to be saying, 'Oh, we'd be so much better if we had drafted this guy or signed that guy,' " Grant Hill said.
"Bottom line is, we've got better players and a better coaching staff this season. We need to take it as a personal and collective challenge to be better than we were last season and from the guys I've been talking to this summer, I think we are going to do that."
Bill Fay, an Orlando freelance writer, has covered the Magic since their inaugural season. This story originally appeared in the September issue of Magic Magazine.
