Howard likely done, Orlando must scrap to survive

BOSTON — This is Jason Richardson’s 11th year in the NBA. He has been traded three times in his career, including twice in the midst of the season, and has played for 10 different coaches. He was a two-time

slam-dunk champ. He has played for a Golden State team that won 21 games, played for a Suns team that went to the Western Conference finals and was a key part of the Warriors’ thrilling upset of the top-seeded Mavericks in the ’07 playoffs. He’s seen a lot.

But when it comes to odd twists and turns, Richardson said, this year is the tops. Start with the lockout, roll right into the drama around the Magic’s will-they-or-won’t-they decision on trading Dwight Howard

and go into the now, as the Magic close the season with Howard and Turkoglu both out. Strangest year of his career?

“By far,” Richardson said. “By far. Not just the lockout, coming in on short training camp, three games in a row, all of that stuff—but all the adversity we have faced with the Dwight stuff and everything going on here. It’s been the strangest season I have been part of.”

It is coming to a fittingly strange end for Orlando. All year, Howard’s impending free agency and the trade demand he lodged with the team before the season loomed over the franchise, forcing anyone associated with the Magic to contemplate a future without Howard. Now, though, because of a persistent back injury, the Magic are facing a present without Howard. As the Magic were here at TD Garden losing to the Celtics, 102-98, on Wednesday, Howard was in Orlando, where he is doing rehab on his back.

Magic coach Stan Van Gundy is approaching the final week of the year as if Howard were not a member of the team. “I would be surprised,” coach Stan Van Gundy said when asked if Howard might return. “Very

surprised. What we’re saying right now, what our approach is, that this is our team, not only in the regular season but in the playoffs. If we get him back, it is a huge bonus, but we’re not expecting it at this point.”

So what we’re seeing from the Magic now is probably what we’re going to get next week when the postseason gets underway. That means Glen Davis (who had 27 points on 12-for-16 shooting against Boston) manning the center spot and being a fulcrum of the offense. It means Richardson, a shooting guard, masquerading as a small forward. Replacing Howard (6-11) and Turkoglu (6-10) with Davis (6-9) and

Richardson (6-6) costs the Magic a half-foot right off the bat. It also means more minutes for second-year center Daniel Orton and third-year forward Earl Clark.

And that means the Magic will have to become a team that scraps and hustles, that wins on effort rather than on Howard’s interior dominance.

“It’s the fact that you don’t have him,” Van Gundy said. “It’s not anything else. It requires everybody else. I don’t think it’s our guys playing at a lower level defensively than they were before, it’s just, you take out our best defensive player, and our biggest, plus we are missing our biggest perimeter defender. We’re playing two-guards at the three and we are playing small inside. It’s going to trickle down, but what it requires is that everybody has got to be better.”

In the Magic locker room, at least, hopes remain high that they can be better, that they can maybe hang around long enough in the playoffs for Howard to return. They’re certainly not new to adversity. The team managed to stay afloat despite the deluge of Howard trade rumors, despite Van Gundy’s admission that Howard asked to have him fired.

“It’s been tough,” Davis said. “We’ve been doing an OK job of trying to stay focused. It’s tough. You’ve got one of your main guys in trades and everybody can be shipped and everything is going on. At the end of the day, we have done as best as we could to make sure we stay focused on what we need to stay focused on. I am proud of my team by the way we have received everything and how we have played in spite of it.”

It had been the hope of the Magic that, somehow, they could put together a strong close to the season and make a run in the playoffs, a long enough run to convince Howard that the team had a good direction and that he should commit to sticking around long-term—his contract will run up in the summer of 2013. Howard’s back trouble seems to have torpedoed that scenario. Maybe, at least. Heck, things have been so bizarre in Orlando this year that there’s no telling what might happen next.

“I mean, why not, right?” Richardson said. “It is rewarding to be in this spot with all that we’ve gone through. We are still a playoff team. We are still trying to battle, we still have goals we want to accomplish. We are pleased with the effort, but we are not pleased with the results. We still want to win a championship. We have stayed together this long. If we stay together from here on in, who knows?”