How Dwight Howard and the Orlando Magic changed video game basketball

How Dwight Howard and the Orlando Magic changed video game basketball

this video is sponsored by Homefield late 2000’s basketball is a special time in the NBA you had Kobe and the Lakers you had the big four of the Boston Celtics and then of course you had LeBron James and the Cavaliers and those teams dominated the headlines and most of the attention but there was one team that me as a kid without cable would always be curious about this team from Orlando would always seem to show up out of nowhere in the playoffs and be a tough out but the more I learned about them over the years the more I learned just how fun and unique they were as a team they were somehow both of the times and ahead of their time in a sense today I’m going to talk about this team in the best way I know how through video games and stats together today we’ll go through the late 2000s Orlando Magic what made them fun awesome and innovative i’m Kofi Aboa and you’re watching Cheat Codes today I’m mostly going to focus on the NBA 2K9 Orlando Magic over the course of that off season the Orlando Magic made some very important acquisitions on June 26th 2008 they drafted Courtney Lee in the first round and on July 10th 2008 they signed Michael Petus as a free agent this in turn gave the Orlando Magic some great shooting on paper and made teams so fearful of them from the outside looking in usually in NBA 2K an 80 overall or higher is a sign of a good shooter in the game and in real life guess how many good shooters the Magic had in 2K9 nine shooters yeah that’s right dude the Orlando Magic had nine good shooters in a video game which on the surface sounds like it shouldn’t be allowed as a team their top 12 players sported an average three-point rating of 78.9 which was well over the league average of 72.4 keep in mind that they also have three players on the team with a three-point rating of 50 which is basically the lowest you can get and this makes sense when you compare them to their real life counterparts of 2007208 as they were first in the league in three-pointers made per game with 9.8 while being second in threes attempted and having the fourth highest three-point percentage as a team which is 38.6% oh and by the way that team also had five separate players who qualified for the three-point leaderboard shoot over 35% from three jir Nelson Maurice Evans Rashard Lewis Hedu Turkalu and Keith Bogens this stellar shooting helped the Orlando Magic to finish sixth in points per game only leaving them behind the likes of the Steve Nash Suns and the Don Nelson Warriors which were the elite of the elite offenses but I haven’t even talked about the true core of the team the player that held it all together yes you know who it is i’m talking about Dwight Howard dwight Howard is one of the best athletic centers I’ve ever seen he has one of the best peaks I’ve ever seen and he should have been in the NBA top 75 100 100% dude 100% he’s truly a unique player in terms of the fact that he had incredible strength but also possessed the uncanny ability to jump really high for his height which was on full display at his NBA dunk contest here’s Dwight Howard just casually dunking on a 12t rim with a cape on he was truly one of one his leaping and timing abilities really made him one of the best rebounders of all time he led the league in offensive rebounds per game in 2008 2009 and it wasn’t fairly close dwight Howard’s unique skills really put him in a league of his own video game-wise as well dwight Howard’s unique skills really put him in a league of his own video game-wise in NBA 2K9 he possessed a 99 dunk rating and a 94 offensive rebounding rating in video games rebounding often can feel like RNG but with Dwight Howard it often felt like if it was a magnet that just drew the ball to his hands what that means is that all of the shooters on the team can shoot as freely as possible because they just know that he’s going to be under the rim coring the misses dwight Howard’s dominance paired with an injury to big man Tony Pati who missed the entire 0708 season caused the Orlando Magic to get creative they played then small forward Rashard Lewis at the power forward position and they never looked back this wasn’t an era where playing a small forward at the power forward position was normal yet tony Bati was like many of the traditional power forwards in that era a symbol of old school thinking a power forward who didn’t put up that many numbers and clogged up the lane in an era where everyone else did you see previously with their old coach Brian Hill Orlando was running double big lineups with Tony Bati beforehand it wasn’t rare to see these lineups before but knowing that they were 27th in points per game in the ‘067 season makes perfect sense they were a top 10 defense but that really didn’t matter as they went 40 and 42 and got swept by the Pistons they just weren’t a good offensive team until Stan Van Gundy got there van Gundy was coming to the Orlando Magic after leaving the Miami Heat on what I like to call Pat Riley terms van Gundy had just got done coaching Shaq for a season and while Dwight Howard isn’t the same player as Shaq I like to believe that Van Gundy knew what to do when given the roster he was given here van Gundy was able to maximize Howard’s skills to where they turned into games like February 17th 2009 against the Bobcats where Dwight Howard was able to go off for 45 points 19 rebounds and eight blocks you can tell that Acha Okafor is in the shadow realm here for the whole game stan Van Gundy’s offensive philosophy was very straightforward you have Dwight Howard in the middle and you surround him with a lot of shooters stan Van Gundy once said in an ESPN article “When you have Dwight Howard he’s the centerpiece of your team.” What you always want to do is take your best players and figure out how to compliment them and the best way to help a big guy like that is to get him room on the floor and you do that by putting as much shooting out there as possible and remember when I said the Orlando Magic have basically nine shooters on their team yeah let’s talk about some of them for a little bit starting with Hedu Turkaloo hedu Turkaloo possessed a unique ability at his height of 6’10 to pass the ball not in like a Magic Johnson way but in more of a Lamar Odum way hedu averaged five assists per game in 2007208 which filled out for second on the team right behind Jir Nelson he did that while being second on the team in scoring with 19.5 points per game in today’s NBA a 6-10 player with passing chops is more common but in 2008 he was one of the few players in the league that possessed that ability it allowed Hedo to connect with one of the best lob threats in league history with ease while also making him a pick and roll option both as the ball handler and the screener if necessary for small forwards in NBA 2K9 Turkoo was a great weapon for that position sporting an 80 ball handling rating and a 70 passing ability which gets the job done but I still think this is pretty low in my opinion when you pair that with his 91 overall three-point rating it almost makes Dwight Howard feel like an afterthought in the video game almost and that’s the beauty of this Orlando Magic video game lineup this perimeter attack is so dangerous in a video game sense that you got to watch out for all the shooters and you can’t focus on Dwight Howard actually you have a choice to make you can pick shutting down Dwight Howard or shutting down the shooters and I wouldn’t blame you if you did 7 years ago I made a video on why NBA 2K7 Shack was unfair and I might redo that one later but a lot of the reasoning is similar and that’s because Dwight Howard is the most powerful dunker in the game when you compare him to other centers in NBA 2K there are already few players that can hang with his strength alone but he has a 99 overall dunk rating as well so he’s just going to be a tough cover and just for reference here that orange dot is Shaq i know it’s Shaq past his prime but I hope that that gives a good barometer on what I’m talking about here and only a few people can mess with him in the post either as the only players that have a better offensive post skill as a center is Yao Ming while the only people that are on Howard’s level defensively are Yao Ming and Marcus Cami so it’s not in your best interest to guard Dwight Howard straight up so you’ll likely have to double team him in the grand scheme of things which leads to the shooting situation that I talked about and yeah time out 60 seconds this video is sponsored by Homefield homefield has premium vintage apparel for over 180 colleges including your favorite teams they have t-shirts and hoodies bomber jackets softball pullovers and so much more homefield takes the vintage logos from all of these schools and makes masterpieces with each collection each piece really peers into the school’s history through the unique logos and mascots and iconic moments as I make this video right now Homefield is 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sponsors it really helps out the channel short-term and long-term on the defensive end people fear Dwight Howard like no other in the paint in terms of protecting the paint and getting rebounds on the Orlando Magic in real life Howard was carrying the inside stronghold of the Magic which allowed for players like Rashard Lewis to match up at the four and not lose anything front court-wise in fact remember when I mentioned earlier that Rashard Lewis played the four let’s talk about it lewis wasn’t the passer or dribbler that Turkoo was but that’s okay because he could score the lights out of the ball lewis was a matchup nightmare and a very helpful blueprint in the evolution of basketball as we know it today his ability to shoot over smaller defenders with ease as well as dribble right past most traditional power forwards made guarding him and Orlando a true nightmare even though the team was on the bottom half of the assist ladder often they were brilliant at finding the multiple mismatches each game and there were often multiple mismatches each game without a doubt close your eyes and try to think of an NBA basketball team that starts two 610 players that both shoot over 40% from three well Turkaloo’s percentage went down in the 089 season but the threat to shoot was still there and let’s talk about the 089 season a little bit because now I can talk about Jir Nelson from 0708 to 089 Nelson made a serious points per game jump in that time and became an all-star and you couldn’t tell this by just looking at his 2K9 video game stats as he’s listed as an 80 overall in that category near early career Derrick Rose Derek Fiser Lou Williams Jared Bis and Nelson became an all-star this season while averaging 45% from three on four attempts per game he was truly unstoppable so now that we’ve talked about the Orlando Magic’s main players let’s talk strategy well with the Orlando Magic what you could do is you could put so many shooters around Dwight Howard as you could see the starting lineup is 86 Jir Nelson 89 Keith Bogens 91 Hedu Turkloo and 96 for Shard Lewis you could also just sub out Petrius for Bogens you could sub out Johnson for Jir Nelson you even have Courtney Lee and JJ Reick down here at your disposal with 86 overall three-point shooting and 87 overall three-point shooting and for good measure if you want to play a true five out style offense you could do Brian Cook who even though he’s a 71 rating overall he still has an 89 overall three-point rating or if you want you could put Rashard Lewis at the five play a little bit even smaller honestly there are so many variations of this Magic offense that it’s really truly very scary to watch and witness they’re one of the few basketball teams in this game where almost everyone on their roster is viable so a key thing with the Orlando Magic that plays into their strategies especially on 2K is the ability to isolate the floor and then immediately call a pick and roll as you can see here it’s a pick and roll with Dwight Howard even though Jamir Nelson doesn’t use the screen it still gives enough space for Howard and you’re Brad Miller man you’re not going to be able to stop that respectfully and this is a pretty simple offense to run all you have to do is D-pad to B for quick isolation and then D-pad to A for quick pick and roll and then Dwight Howard in space it’s a pretty easy offense to run in this game and what makes this simple strategy wise is that you could run it with whoever you know you could run with Hedu Turko and then you could bring Dwight Howard up as well and it makes it very versatile in terms of who you could run with and you do that really until the the other team can stop it and from what it looks like here the kings can’t do that right now but if you don’t want to play methodical you could play as fast as you want too if no one picks up Hedu Turkoo in transition then it’s an easy three then after a while you see here they’re tired of Dwight Howard one-on-one so they decide to double team easy pass out to Courtney Lee easy bucket works every time you just spam Dwight Howard pick and rolls until the other team is tired of it and then that’s when you unlock the shooting this team is so unfair in a video game and honestly I know there have been many different archetypes of this kind of offense since but you do it as well as the Orlando Magic do in fact the only lineup that I wouldn’t recommend on this Magic team is when the team auto subs in Tony Bati he’s a 66 overall rating you have way better options at your disposal in terms of Turkaloo or Shard Lewis even a Donald Foil who’s a 71 and Brian Cook so I would definitely play Brian Cook at the four over Tony Bati because he at least still spaces the floor while Tony Bati does not provide that in any capacity one of the downsides to NBA 2K9 is that there’s no pick and pop option as you see here so when I play Hedu Turklu at the five spot he has to pick and roll and I feel like the magic team would be way better if Hedu Turko was allowed to pick and pop in this game but that’s just a minor nitpick honestly and if you play Hedo at the five you could just put him in isolation against a bigger bigger defender and he’s just quicker just quicker it’s too easy for him another option you had was the quick screen option so you could just call for a quick screen and just any of the magic shooters can go off of a screen action and it’s really sick if you want to have an open shooter just off of some simple stuff all of the quick actions in this game benefit the Orlando Magic really well and then last but not least you have the quick post up obviously for Dwight Howard if you want to go that route but they’re one of the few teams in the game where there’s like the quick action just works so well for everyone involved so while they weren’t the most popular team of their era and they never won a championship please don’t forget this Orlando Magic squad they’re very special video gamewise they’re very special basketball gamewise and I hope we remember them forever thank you for watching to the end of the video i appreciate you guys love y’all have a good one peace

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