This is not the same Orlando Magic as last year

This is not the same Orlando Magic as last year by Philip Rossman-Reich

Following the NBA from the United Kingdom can be hard. Orlando Magic Daily’s Sean Guest describes what it is like to follow his team from across the pond.

God bless the internet.

Without it, the NBA would not be the global institution it is today. Thanks to NBA League Pass, millions of people worldwide are able to tune in to all the action, regardless of which time zone they are in: America, Europe, Asia or Africa. All 30 NBA teams are just a click away.

It has not always been this easy though.

Back when I was growing up things were completely different. The best the United Kingdom had to offer was an hour-long highlights show every Saturday lunchtime. It was comparable to the modern day Gametime. The only major difference being that it tried to squeeze an entire week’s worth of NBA action into a single hour of airtime.

Still, thanks to it, I inadvertently fell in love with the Orlando Magic.

I say inadvertently because I actually tuned in to that show initially to watch the Detroit Pistons. As a distant relative had given me a blue baseball cap that featured his beloved team’s logo on the front for Christmas I wanted to see what all the fuss was about.

However, long before the Pistons’ highlights were shown I found myself watching in awe, as the likes of Anfernee Hardaway, Shaquille O’Neal, Dennis Scott and Nick Anderson went to town on some hapless opponent. It truly was a thing of beauty, and as a result I was smitten.

From that point on, I tuned in on a regular basis to watch those highlights as if they were live games. It took a while, but eventually I convinced my parents to buy me a Magic jersey — black and white pinstripes, emblazoned with the number 32, imported from the U.S., no doubt. I even got a friend of mine (who was, incidentally, a Chicago Bulls fan) to record any Magic games that were featured on satellite TV, so that I could watch them over and over.

VHS aside, things have hardly changed.

Twenty or so years later, and the UK is still limited to a mere handful of NBA games every week. Back then SkySports, Britain’s pre-eminent satellite network, carried the sport, while nowadays it is available via a lesser subscription-only service.

Still, the popularity of the movie Space Jam and the global attention Michael Jordan received during the period helped make basketball something of a mainstream sport in the U.K. for the first time.

Soccer, rugby and cricket still reigned supreme, but all of a sudden, school children everywhere were playing NBA Jam, reading SLAM magazine and giving one another “leg-ups” when the gym teacher’s back was turned, in the unrealistic hope of somehow dunking like Jordan.

Much like the Magic’s success, this period was short lived and before long basketball became something of an afterthought in the U.K. once again.

Perhaps part of the problem came down to the fact there were very few places to play the sport, either in an organized fashion or otherwise. Well, that and the overwhelming popularity of soccer, which still dictates the nation’s sporting interests today.

Still, I continued to follow the Magic and soon found myself enjoying the antics of one Tracy McGrady. Of course, this period of the team’s history was somewhat hit and miss. McGrady generated as many highlight plays as anyone during the period, but the team he represented was always slightly off the pace, leaving Kobe Bryant and LeBron James to capture the imaginations of fans nationwide and globally.

That said, my own personal alliegance never swayed.

And I am glad it did not, as before long I was watching the Dwight Howard-led Orlando Magic scrapping its way to the NBA Finals on ESPN, streaming the subsequent demise via League Pass and reading about the “Dwightmare” on Orlando Magic Daily.

Having a superstar on the books helped though, as along with Bryant and James jerseys, sports shops also stocked Dwight Howard replicas. Love him or hate him, he helped put the Magic in the spotlight, and, as an overseas fan, I do wonder if it will take another star of a similar caliber to put the team back there.

Nowadays, they are a long way off.

The Magic have been trapped in the NBA’s basement ever since Howard walked away and they have certainly taken a backseat in the U.K. too [eds. note: despite a very healthy contingent of remaining Magic fans from those days and like Sean from the mid-1990s].

Hopefully the London game will go some way toward changing all that. As always, the U.K.’s NBA fanbase will be out in force, even if most of us cannot afford to sit in the lower bowl due to the extortionate ticket prices.

Given their recent success, the number of matinee games they play and the fact they have played in the U.K. before, the Raptors will undoubtedly be the favorites.

That said, the arena will be flooded with the jerseys of all thirty NBA teams, and, if previous years are anything to go by, there will be twice as much yellow and gold as any other color.

But with any luck the young, the exciting Magic roster Rob Hennigan has pieced together will capture the imagination of a whole new generation of NBA fans, in much the same way the burgeoning Milwaukee Bucks did in last year’s London encounter with the New York Knicks.

In some ways that might even be more important than getting a win.