Summer League Time! More Exciting Than A Trip To The Dentist's Office!

First of all, an obligatory congrats to Kasey for demolishing Kim C. in the Cheerleader Tournament. Demolishing is a kind way of putting it, as she was winning by 7 times the amount of votes at the time of this entry. Kasey moves on to round 2 and will go up against some stiff competition in Jane.

This past weekend was a nice one, with beautiful weather in the northeast. I checked the blog numbers at one point and was amazed to see that the readership for the blog had gone from around 400 people to upwards of 7,200! I blinked several times and investigated further, discovering that many of those people had actually stumbled across the site by doing a search on that Barricade Transformers photo that I had posted. New site strategy: "All Transformers photos, all the time!" Today the blog is already at over 5,000 people viewing and it's not even lunchtime.

Back to the Magic, this week is an interesting one with the NBA Summer League opening. This "league" normally has all of the legitamacy of something the XFL pooped out, with games that are closed to the public and scrappy free agents playing...but this year is different.

Today Stan Van Gundy said that this would be an important opportunity to get a glimpse at the defensive abilities of JJ Redick to determine if he could be a starter at this point in his career. With the departure of Grant Hill, suddenly JJ finds himself on the cusp of being named the starting SG for Orlando despite a minimal amount of playing time his rookie season. His challengers in Keyon Dooling and Trevor Ariza are better suited to playing other positions and all signs would appear to JJ being given the chance with a strong Summer League showing.

Even more interesting (in my opinion) is how the possible vacancy of Darko's position is creating the opportunity for PF/Cs James Augustine and Marcin Gortat. With the other free agents in the NBA getting a slew of offers already (You'd think Varejao was Tim Duncan with his level of interest), chances are good right now that the Magic's backup PF will be either Auggie or Gortat. Alright, I'm going to say it: this matchup between Auggie and Gortat is going to be a bloodbath. Both want to be in the NBA more than anything and you can already tell from some of the quotes how amped up these players are for the shot. Gortat, my choice to get that Darko slot, came out swinging today by declaring:

I just believe that last year was so crucial for me and I believe now that I can make it in the NBA. To be honest, I don't feel like any of those other guys in the Summer League can challenge me for the experience and playing time I've had. Most of those guys were playing in the D-League or sitting on the bench in the NBA for 70 or 80 games during the season. I had 70 games in Euro League, German League, National Team games and in most of those games I was playing over 30 minutes per game. I believe I'm the more experienced guy and that's what I want to show on the floor.

James Augustine must have read that this morning and had the people in his posse wag their fingers and say, "Oh no he di'int!" As much as I would like for Darko to return, he still is telling teams he wants 9-10 million and his agent hates our GM. Couple that with these two eager players and I say we give one of them a jersey. Our 'worst case scenario starting lineup' next year would look like this:

PG: Nelson

SG: Redick

SF: Lewis

PF: Howard

C: Battie

That isn't horrible and it isn't fantastic either, but it definitely is better than last year's team. With the Cavs being so aggressive to keep Varejao, Drew Gooden might become available and we could probably sign him if a sign and trade with Seattle is achieved.

In the next few days free agents will get signed, but while we are working on that sign and trade the summer league is a happy diversion. If Darko does flee, we have a good idea where his replacement will be coming from.