Lakers-Magic Game 2: Tempo-Free Boxscore Breakdown

This is going to be on the test, class, so please listen carefully: the Orlando Magic were the best defensive team in the NBA this year.

What? Don't look at me like that. Honestly, they were. Possession for possession over the course of the season, they were the most difficult team to score against.

That statement tends to generate more than its share of error messages among the audience. Many reject it in spite of its empirical validity. Present it to a roomful of even reasonably knowledgeable NBA fans, and you can almost see the cognitive dissonance take hold. I regard this phenomenon - the inability or refusal to accept the Magic as an elite defensive unit - as having two latent causes, both arising from flawed but deeply rooted analytical biases about the sport of basketball that many of us carry around.

The first is the tendency of many commentators and fans to measure defensive performance on a per-game, rather than per-possession, basis. In terms of points allowed per game, Orlando was seventh best in the league this year - not bad, certainly, but not such a gaudy ranking as to bring the Magic D to the attention of Breen and Van Gundy. What separates Orlando from the six teams ranked above them, however, is simply pace. Each of those teams was in the bottom half of the league in average possessions per game, whereas the Magic were in the top 12. Those six teams weren't actually better at keeping points off the board; they just played more slowly and thus held down the number of opportunities both they and their opponents had to score. This concept of tempo-adjustment hasn't yet entered mainstream NBA discourse, and as a result Orlando's defensive excellence is being obscured by a cloud of inferior data.

The second reason the Magic D is not so widely praised is considerably less wonky: when we watch the Magic play, they just don't look like the great defenses of yore. Aesthetically I mean. We as longtime NBA observors attach certain visual associations to top-quality defensive play. The Kevin Garnett scream and MEAN FACE. The Bruce Bowen hip-check. The Bad Boy Pistons' considerable willingness to risk criminal prosecution by inflicting violence in the lane. The Magic don't bring it like that.

No, their defensive style is of the disciplined and businesslike variety. Maybe they don't yowl and make ridiculous Gatorade commercials, but they rotate and stay on their assignments. They have the self-control not to gamble or bite on shot fakes. They foul less than anyone. They have deceptive size and length available for deployment. They have Dwight Howard to deter casual approaches to the rim. And they rebound - honey, do they ever rebound. A huge part of good D is ending your opponent's possession after one missed shot, and the Magic do that better than almost every team out there.

All of which is my long-ass way of saying that nights like Sunday - when the Laker scoring machine spit parts and made strange noises and could barely scrape together a point per possession - those nights are going to happen against these guys. They really are that good. It's not like they arrived in the NBA Finals and decided to start sucking. The Lakers can handle it, of course, but remember the second and third quarters of Game One? That was more the exception than the rule. LA Times columnists may have decided that a single game defines an entire series, but our readers here at SS&R know better. The three games in Orlando - and I personally will be very surprised if there are only two - are likely to be more struggle than not.

The full Game Two numbers are after the jump. Thankfully Orlando doesn't have a guard who can make a shot right now, otherwise these would look a hell of a lot worse.