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Let’s get a few things straight.

The Orlando Magic did not lose Game 4 of the 2009 NBA Finals just because Dwight Howard missed two free throws with 11.1 seconds to play in regulation, either one of which probably seals the game.

The Magic did not lose Game 4 simply because Stan Van Gundy told his players not to foul on the ensuing Laker possession—a decision that he says will ‘haunt him forever.’

They didn’t lose only because Derek Fisher made the cold-bloodedest (just made that up) three-pointer of the series, with Jameer Nelson inexplicably still on the floor and inexplicably playing Fisher to drive.

Nelson’s presence on the floor throughout the second half—as opposed to, say, Rafer Alston, who was coming off the game of his life 48 hours earlier—did not decide the game. Nor did 15 missed free throws, 17 turnovers, character, experience, savvy or ‘stupidness,’ as Hedo Turkoglu put it afterwards.

Sure, all of that mattered. But none of those points, alone, decided Game 4.

Game 4 was decided when the Lakers erased a 12-point halftime deficit in the first six minutes of the third quarter. Game 4 was decided when, in that six-minute span, Trevor Ariza—a Magic castoff, and perhaps the last man in purple and gold that Orlando expected to go off—went off.

In those six minutes, Ariza scored on a dunk, a runner, a three, a free throw, and another three. By the time Andrew Bynum sank a pair of freebies at the 5:58 mark, Los Angeles had outscored Orlando 18-5, with Ariza accounting for 11 of those 18 Laker points. Ariza’s outburst was the haymaker from which Orlando never recovered.

The Magic wobbled through the rest of the quarter, allowing 30 Laker points to their own 14. From our seats in the media section of Amway Arena, it was like watching a prize fight that should have been stopped. That quarter, friends, was the difference in the game.

Dwight’s free throws never should have mattered. Stan’s decision, and Fisher’s three, never should have mattered. The Magic, simply put, never should have been in that position.

30-14 in the third quarter. That was the game. Trevor Bleeping Ariza.

As a sidebar, I wrote in this space that Lamar Odom has been the Lakers’ X-factor, but I’m prepared to amend that. While I still believe that the Magic have no answer for Odom, he’s been less than deadly in the last two games of the Finals, averaging a very manageable 10 points and 3.5 rebounds in Games 3 and 4.

However, the one guy that Orlando hasn’t been able to manage is Pau Gasol, who has averaged 19 points and 8 rebounds on 58% shooting in these Finals. I have to admit, I haven’t seen much of Gasol up close this season, but he’s much, much better than I imagined. Rashard Lewis, bless his heart, can’t handle Gasol in the post; when the big Spaniard steps back, he can knock down jumpers like a 2-guard. He’s tougher than I expected, has Go-Go Gadget arms on defense, and has earned at least a modicum of Kobe’s trust. He’s better than I thought. Expecting Ariza to blow up like that again is a stretch, but Gasol is a serious problem.

Game 5 is Sunday, and I’ll once again be Tweeting live at twitter.com/sunsportsFOXFL, with a live postgame show to follow on Sun Sports. Hopefully, we won’t be covering the Lakers’ victory celebration. In the meantime, if you haven’t already signed up to be a fan of Sun Sports / Fox Sports Florida on Facebook, you should.  We’ve been using a Flip camera to record behind-the-scenes stuff and some video blogs from me, which have turned out much better than I expected.  Check it out.

See you Sunday.

Let’s jump into the Wayback Machine for a moment.

It’s February, 2006. The Orlando Magic were flailing. The John Weisbrod Experiment had ended abruptly the previous spring, Chris Jent’s legendary coaching arc had drawn to a close, and Brian Hill had been recalled from reservist duty to theoretically infuse the franchise with some level of organizational discipline.

Shortly thereafter, the ‘05 draft pick, Fran Vazquez, humiliated the franchise by refusing to report. Grant Hill, who was supposed to (finally) be healthy, was instead fighting his way back from surgery for a sports hernia and was playing only sporadically. Jameer Nelson hurt his foot and was out for a month. It was a springtime of meh.

In February of 2006, Otis Smith and Dave Twardzik were still listed as co-general managers of the Magic, and together they decided (correctly) to blow it up. The first move, on the 15th of that month, was to send Kelvin Cato’s winning attitude and charming personality to Detroit in exchange for Darko Milicic and Carlos Arroyo. The second move was to get the hell rid of Steve Francis, who was slowly choking the life out of the franchise.

Two years prior, I had covered the Miami Heat in the NBA Playoffs for Sun Sports. That Heat team—the team that Pat Riley had dumped into Stan Van Gundy’s lap about one week before opening day—had reached the postseason despite a 5-15 start, roaring back to beat the Hornets in the first round and take Indiana deep in the second.

It was during that assignment, following the Heat to New Orleans and Indianapolis, that I became completely enamored with Lamar Odom. And two years later, I used my remembrances of that ‘04 Heat playoff run as part of my plea to the Magic to get Odom as part of any Francis deal:

“Odom was the Pied Piper of the Miami locker room [during the ‘04 Playoffs]. His coaches adored him, so much so that they were almost afraid to talk about it, for fear of jinxing it, or letting some secret spill out. His teammates, especially rookies [Dwyane] Wade and [Udonis] Haslem, shadowed him like puppies, and Odom never led them astray. Point-forward, garbageman rebounder, three-point shooter, he did everything except sell hot dogs. Yeah, he took some dumb shots, but he also brought a Grant Hill-style sense of calm to the floor. Wade was Miami’s best player, but the Heat belonged to Lamar Odom.”

I was reminded of that post, and my experience with Odom that preceded it, as I watched the first two games of the 2009 NBA Finals. Odom did not go to Orlando, of course—he’s still in LA, and he’s largely the reason why the Magic are down 0-2.

Note that I say “largely.” Rafer Alston is 3-17 from the field in the first two games of this series, 0-8 from three. Dwight Howard has attempted only 16 shots over two games (Kobe: 56 FG attempts). The Magic shot less than 30 percent as a team in Game 1. They committed 20 turnovers in Game 2. There’s plenty of reasons why the Lakers won the first two games.

However, heading into these Finals, I really believed that Odom was the X-factor. The Magic had nothing for Lamar, offensively or defensively, and I felt that if he played well, Orlando would be in trouble. So far, the numbers bear that out.

Stat: through Game 2 of the NBA Finals, Lamar Odom has the best plus/minus rating of any player in the 2009 Playoffs, including Kobe. The Lakers have outscored their opponents by 173 points in 20 games when Odom is on the floor; Kobe’s plus/minus is +158.

And Odom has done it in 164 fewer minutes than Bryant—the equivalent of three and a half fewer games.

He’s not the only reason Orlando is down 0-2, but no player has been more directly tied to the Lakers’ success this postseason than Lamar Odom. Reminds me a lot of Miami in 2004.

Maybe the Magic should have listened to me in 2006.

(I’m half-serious, of course. No, Orlando didn’t get Odom when they dumped Francis in ‘06, but they did get Anfernee Hardaway’s expiring contract, which helped them free up enough cap space to sign Rashard Lewis as a free agent in the summer of ‘07. And that’s turned out okay, too—lest we forget, Orlando *is* the other team in the 2009 NBA Finals.)

Cliche’ Alert: “It’s a make or miss league.”

This is a new one that’s cropped up during these Finals, usually coming from the mouth of ABC analyst Mark Jackson. Like all cliches, it’s rooted in truth: in today’s NBA, with lightning-fast video scouting capabilities, a 24/7 television and Internet news cycle, and the maddening tendency among all NBA coaches to do what every other NBA coach does, there are no secrets anymore. Everyone knows what everyone else is going to run. Sure, you can switch defenders or run a pet play a little less frequently, but there really are no curve balls. “It’s a make or miss league” is another way of saying “It’s all about execution,” which is true—if your stuff works, and you can stop the other guys from running their stuff, you win. Brilliant coaching moves have less and less to do with it, especially at this stage.

That said, I’m starting to hate that phrase. But I suppose it is what it is, right?

*Gack.*

Reminder: LIVE postgame coverage on Sun Sports after every NBA Finals contest, with live Twitter updates from yours truly at all of the Orlando games. Also, check out the network’s Facebook page for behind-the-scenes video as the Finals come to central Florida.

—First and foremost: LIVE postgame coverage after every game of the NBA Finals can be found on Sun Sports. David Steele and Matt Goukas, the TV voices of the Magic who have carried you through this entire season (and many seasons before this one), will be on hand in LA for the first two games, working side-by-side with Laker announcers from Fox Sports West. Once the games return to Orlando, Paul Kennedy joins the party, and I’ll be there providing what we jokingly refer to as “guerrilla video”—behind-the-scenes stuff that we’ll be posting on our Facebook page. Plus, I’ll be Tweeting during the home games at twitter.com/SunSportsFOXFL. Pithy bromides are free as part of the package.

—Second and secondmost: Sun Sports / Fox Sports Florida will get two people inside Amway for Game 3. Follow the network on Twitter (again: twitter.com/SunSportsFOXFL) and pay attention for details. Hint: you need to show up at the arena for Fan Fest next Tuesday night to have a shot.

I can’t say anything else—I hear the guards coming.

—Rodney “Sid” Powell was probably the most relaxed member of the Orlando Magic’s traveling party this week.

Sid has been the team’s Operations Manager (basketball manager + travel agent) since just short of forever. Not much gets him rattled. When I saw Sid at the Magic’s final Orlando practice on Tuesday, he told me that once the plane landed in LA, “my job is done.”

It required more than 60 hotel rooms and five different hotels, but Sid successfully found a place for everybody—players, coaches, basketball ops staff, wives, broadcasters, and members of the DeVos family, some of whom are staying in Beverly Hills for the first two games (shocker).

However, he did mention that if this series returns to Los Angeles in the 2-3-2 format, he’s in a spot of trouble. The Magic’s team hotel in Marina del Rey can only spare 40 rooms during the week of June 15-19—not enough to cover everyone.

I told him, “Guess you better win it in 5, then.”

But if it does go 6 or 7, Sid will figure it out. He always does.

—Speaking of travel, I’m told that Magic GM Otis Smith brought a larger contingent of his Basketball Operations staff than usual on this trip, which is understandable on several levels. ‘Basketball Ops,’ for the uninitiated, refers to the group that has direct daily contact with the players: coaches, trainers, managers, physical therapists, video scouts, and the like. There’s a handful of Ops guys who travel all season anyway, but apparently Otis wanted to move the entire office, as much as possible, to Los Angeles for the first two games. As a result, seats on the team charter were hard to come by. Put it this way—David and Matt flew commercial.

Again, I have no problem with this. It’s the NBA Finals. If Otis thinks that going all Pat Riley for two weeks gives his squad an edge, fine. And I guarantee you that David and Matt understand that.

—Predictably, Nick Anderson’s missed free throws from Game 1 of the 1995 Finals have been a hot topic over the last 24 hours, as media outlets search for content leading up to the Magic’s second-ever Finals appearance. Mike & Mike spent about five minutes on it this morning on ESPN Radio; my man Mike Bianchi wrote a largely sympathetic column on the topic as well.

One aspect of that game that has faded over the years, and received only a passing mention in Mike’s column: Nick never should have been in that position in the first place. The Magic blew a 20-point lead in Game 1 of the ‘95 Finals. Nick took the heat, and (as Mike correctly points out in his column) was never the same player or the same person after those four free throws, but it shouldn’t have come down to that. Again: Orlando was up by 20, and squandered the lead.

Remind you of anything from this year’s playoff run?

—As I Tweeted last night: To summarize every national media piece on the Magic in last four days: “Umm, they’re good, but we don’t know why. Lakers in 6.”

Best example: Ian Thomsen’s article in this week’s Sports Illustrated. Opening paragraph is a laundry list of what the national media perceives about the Magic; rest of the piece actually does a nice job of refuting each myth. Best line: “How did so many fail to notice the championship potential that now seems so obvious?”

However, in the print version of SI, the sidebar to the very same article predicts a Laker win. So there’s that.

I have no gut feeling about this series, which is a new one for me this postseason. I thought that Orlando could beat Boston (but was honestly surprised to see them do so after going down 3-2), and once that happened, I was actually confident about the Cleveland series, based on matchups and the team’s success against the Cavs this past season.

But now? I got nothin’. Maybe it’s some unconscious form of repression; perhaps I know in my heart of hearts that the Lakers are the better team, and I’m refusing to commit to a pick because I can’t face reality. Or, on the flip side, perhaps the mere thought of a championship parade down Orange Avenue—an NBA Freaking Championship Parade in my hometown—is enough to short-circuit the wiring.

Know what it feels like? It feels like I’m sitting on the bench while a teammate is in the 6th inning of a no-hitter. I’m sitting on my hands, warm-up jacket pulled up to my eyes, absolutely refusing to look at him or talk to him. And I’m ready to punch out the first rookie who walks over to the guy and says, “hey, man, you’re really pitching well out there!”

Anyone remember the 2004 Tampa Bay Lightning after they won the Eastern Conference Finals over Philadelphia? The NHL suits brought out the Prince of Wales Trophy, ready to hand it over to the jubilant Lightning—only the Lightning weren’t jubilant, and they sure as hell weren’t touching that trophy. In fact, Dave Andreychuk treated that thing like it was made of uranium. I think I know what they were feeling.

I know Otis Smith does. Otis told the Magic staff earlier this week that the NBA’s Eastern Conference trophy will remain in a box, untouched and unseen, until the end of the NBA Finals. His reasoning: “I don’t want the silver one.”

In other words, he wants this:

I get it.