With Howard on board, it's championship or bust for Magic

Nothing like a little cold-water getting splashed on the Orlando Magic’s feel-good moment on Thursday afternoon. But that’s pretty much what general manager Otis Smith did when he pointed out—during the announcement that center Dwight Howard would sign a waiver of his early-termination option, keeping him under contract in Orlando for one more year—that we’ll get to do all this again starting in about six months.

“We’ll let you all talk about Dwight’s free-agency next year,” Smith said.

Howard deflected every question he was asked on Thursday in regards to his longer-term future, about whether he would be amenable to signing a long-term extension next year or at least verbally commit to staying once his current contract is up. That will be relevant soon enough, if not next autumn then certainly by February 2013, when the next trading deadline lurks.

In the meantime, though, the Magic have created a small bit of opportunity, out of which they’re hoping to squeeze a minor miracle here in 2012. Howard has said it more and more frequently lately, but he is approaching these final two months of the season as a chance to bring a championship to Orlando, a pretty far-out notion for a team that failed to advance past the first round of the playoffs last year, losing to the lower-seeded Hawks.

And, this year, with the Bulls and the Heat having seemingly put a stranglehold on the Eastern Conference—Orlando would likely have to beat both en route to the Finals—the Magic’s path looks far too treacherous for their title hopes to be taken seriously.

But Howard has some hope. For one thing, the Magic have the fourth-best record in the league, and since a dismal stretch in late January in which Orlando lifelessly lost five of six games, the team has rallied. The atmosphere inside the locker room has improved dramatically from the beginning of the year when Howard’s teammates were plagued with uncertainty, and one—point guard Jameer Nelson—felt particularly slighted after persistent talk of Howard wanting to play with an elite point guard. The air has been cleared, however, and Thursday’s resolution of Howard’s situation figures to help team chemistry further.

“My teammates have been nothing but brothers to me throughout this whole process,” Howard said during Thursday’s press conference. “I really appreciate (those) guys. I know a lot of people have said, ‘The locker room is bad,’ and this and that about our locker room. But this has been the best time for our team in the locker room, despite what’s been going on around us. We have been able to bond and grow as a family. We developed something that will last forever. We’ve always had each other’s back. I commend those guys in the locker room for just playing basketball and sticking together. Because it’s been tough.”

Goodwill alone, of course, is not going to push the Magic into the Finals. But they can hold out hope that some of their struggling teammates—Nelson and small forward Hedo Turkoglu, both of whom have played better recently—will get their acts together and have Orlando peaking at the right time. When the Magic are at their best, there’s no doubt they’re one of the top five teams in the league, despite that disappointing end to last postseason. Just this past week, the Magic topped Miami, Chicago and Indiana, three of their four biggest rivals in the East.

And if there is some additional silver lining for the revitalized Magic. Chicago star point guard Derrick Rose has been struggling with a variety of injuries all year (toe, back, groin), while fellow All-Star Luol Deng is out with a bad wrist, and shooting guard Richard Hamilton is out again, this time with a shoulder injury. The Magic also have to like their chances against Miami, a team they’ve beaten two out of the three times they’ve played this year.

Still, it is a stretch to consider this group championship-caliber.

But they have Howard on board, and with that situation settled, Orlando is at least in position for a strong spring push.

“Now we can get back to just playing some basketball, having some peace and just go for a championship,” Howard said.