With their backs halfway out the door, this writer thinks Orlando would love to swap their new toy Vince for the older more reliable Hedo Turkoglu

SCOTT JACOBS

Hindsight’s a funny thing.

We can take something, usually way after the fact, break it down, tear it up, crunch it up into a little ball, and vehemently proclaim, well, “that failed horribly.”  ”They should have done this.”  ”Not that.”

Orlando, it’s your turn.

When you made the much scrutinized Vince Carter trade in the off-season, basically sending Hedo Turkoglu his informal walking papers, you broke up the heart of a team that was coming off a tough NBA Finals defeat, with the ideology that a little more star power, and a little more conventionality could ultimately get you over the top.

Then you came out and owned the regular season, winning a cool 59 games and blasting listless Southeast division co-tenants Charlotte and Atlanta right out of the post-sesason before they ever knew what hit them.  We jumped on your bandwagon faster than Kobe Bryant’s wife could wear a controversial t-shirt, throwing herself right into the Phoenix immigration law madness.

You guys were the best team in the playoffs.  It was definitive.  The only blemish, albeit a strange one, on your post-season resume had been that you hadn’t played a close game.  Who did you think you were?  UConn?

So when Cleveland got pushed aside by the hard-charging, but old veteran-laden Celtics, it seemed almost a foregone conclusion that you guys would be there to give them a reality check.  Owning the home court advantage and a giant chip on your shoulder to prove that this team was better, deeper and more prepared for the championship gauntlet, there was no way the streaking Celtics were going to light you up and send you heading back to Beantown with nothing less than a smile on your championship deprived faces.

This was why you brought in Vince.  He was going to be your money player at the end of games.  Just like Hedo, only he had a jumpshot from anywhere on the court that could light up the Central Florida night sky.  He had a house in Orlando, a yearning to shed his tissue soft reputation, and he was going to be the man to get a much maligned franchise to the top of the NBA mountain.

And then you guys promptly came out in game one on your home court and nearly got run out of your own- downtrodden gym.  Sure, you made a valiant comeback, and nearly pulled off a wild win, but the reality is you didn’t.  Okay you thought to yourself, we’ll get game two.  We got this figured out.

And then the Celtics came right out in game two and outplayed you again.  The game was closer and much more hotly contested, but the result was the same: a disheartening loss, this one probably ruining your chances to repeat as Eastern Conference Champs.

Which brings us back to Vince, who, well, flopped once again.  For a Magic fan it had to be painful to watch.  First it was Vince falling and slipping alongside the side of the three point line with no one anywhere near him, removing himself and his offense briefly from a game that the Magic had to have.  Then it was two back-breaking misses at the foul line with a chance to cut the deficit to 1 in the waning moments.

Clank.  Clank.

There had to be a fan sitting at home, thinking to themselves, well, “what would Hedo do?”

Not that.

Two clangs and a panic in judgement by J.J. Redick were pretty much the final two daggers in a post-season run that looked so damn beautiful and so remarkably promising.

Somewhere in Canada Turk must have been thinking, “I would have made those.”

And back in America, it’s my belief that he would have.

The Magic made a trade back in the summer that looked sensational on paper and for a while, awe-inspiring on the court, but a basketball player’s true colors usually come out eventually, and once again Carter’s rap sheet reads like this: “he is, who he is.”

A brilliant athlete who has always wowed us, who has defied logic, who can score a lot of points, but someone who wants to be great, but ultimately never will be.  He will forever be a soft player, someone who flies through the air with ease, but lacks the toughness that elevates a great athlete into a championship piece.

Turkoglu spread the floor and created matchup problems all over the court.  He was akward, and his shot was weird, but he got the job done.  He craved the big stage, and his team-mates fed off of it.  The Magic knocked out the LeBrons last year because of it.

It’s not all Carter’s fault.  Truth be told, if the Magic didn’t look so stagnant on offense and hit some threes to spread the floor for Dwight Howard to get some dunks maybe this series is completely different.  But Orlando looks like a shell of the team that made a surprising run to the finals last year.  They look nothing like the unit that rose up to the challenge in tight games.  They aren’t getting to the 50-50 balls.  They aren’t pulling down the ever-crucial rebounds in crunch time.  They aren’t making their foul shots when it counts.

And oh yeah, they no longer have Hedo.

Hindsight is exactly that, hindsight, but boy if Orlando could take back that trade and overpay for Turkoglu, it seems obvious they would do it in a heartbeat.

Glitz and glamour gets you on posters and sells magazines.  If you can’t back it up with substance though, it doesn’t mean squat.

At the end of the day, that’s exactly what the Magic have going back to Boston.  Squat.

Photo: Getty

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