Monday, March 13 Rivers uses practical Magic By David Aldridge Special to ESPN.com

The visitors' locker room was filled with sullen players. They had been run ragged by Doc Rivers' Orlando Magic, and they weren't happy at being embarrassed.

	Darrell Armstrong and the Magic like to run opponents off the court.

"Man, no way should we be losing like that to that team," one veteran said.

After four-plus months, it's still a stigma to be run off the floor by the Magic. It's still not acceptable to let Darrell Armstrong and Chucky Atkins press you into madness. It's still earns a scarlet letter when Ben Wallace and Bo Outlaw board you to death. It's still horrifying when Pat Garrity and Michael Doleac drop 3s on your bean, or when Corey Maggette jumps over you, or when John Amaechi posts you up.

People better recognize.

The Magic are no joke.

The players aren't. And, most certainly, Doc Rivers isn't.

"I don't think teams realize how well we can run until we play them," Armstrong said. "A lot of teams look at our roster, especially early in the year when we were on the road. We were really winning games on the road. Teams were looking at us like, 'We're going to take them tonight; it's going to be easy.' And then all of a sudden, you look up-- bam, bam, bam -- we're up at the half. And the first thing I say to the refs in the second half is, 'you ready to run now?' And they're like 'ready to run? We ran the whole first half.' "

This is an amazing thing, what coach Rivers is doing. He's setting conventional NBA wisdom on its ear. You're not supposed to win when most of your players are in their contract years; too much emphasis on putting up the numbers needed to get the big bucks. You're not supposed to win without a big man. You're not supposed to win when your roster is comprised, mainly, of kids. You're not supposed to win when you've never been a coach before on any level. You're not supposed to win when you make 33 separate transactions in one season. You're not supposed to be able to get your players to run after made baskets and press 94 feet after the All-Star break.

And the Magic are doing it, night after night. Well, at least enough in the sodden Eastern Conference to compete for the eighth playoff spot. Enough that when Armstrong pulled up for a 3-pointer on a fast break against the Nets, Stephon Marbury whispered to him in awe back up the floor, "Doc lets y'all do that?"

Enough that Anthony Mason, trying to get back on defense, had enough breath to say, "Man, I like the way y'all play."

"I don't think you gain any credibility by losing," Rivers said this week. "I don't care who you are. Especially a first-year coach. And that was my whole thought. We're gonna go for wins. We're not going for anything in the future. Because right now is the future."

The irony is Rivers had to coach this way because he had no choice.

He took the job thinking he'd have Penny Hardaway and Nick Anderson and Horace Grant, but ultimately agreed with GM John Gabriel that the best thing to do was strip the roster of its high-salaried guys. Take every one-year contract he could, maxing out the available room the Magic would have to go after Tim Duncan and Grant Hill next summer.

The cost for having that room was supposed to be a season of nightly butt-kickings, while Rivers identified the two or three guys he really wanted to keep for next season. Instead, his young guys have been a revelation. Armstrong has set the tone, throwing his 170 pounds in front of anybody who comes down the lane.

Rivers has done the rest. He wouldn't let them use the obvious excuse the night after Orlando traded Chris Gatling and Tariq Abdul-Wahad to Denver for Ron Mercer. The Magic played in New York, and Mercer hadn't yet arrived. Orlando had just nine players.

	Aldridge's Rankings
	THE TOP 10 1. L.A. Lakers 2. Portland 3. Indiana 4. Utah 5. San Antonio 6. Phoenix 7. Miami 8. Minnesota 9. Toronto 10. Philadelphia THE BOTTOM FIVE 25. Vancouver 26. Washington 27. Golden State 28. Chicago 29. L.A. Clippers

And won by 20.

"Some teams talk about running, and then they revert back to their old ways," Rivers said. "One advantage I had is we didn't have an old way. Because everything I did is new. So I never introduced the walking game. I don't want to introduce it. For this team, when we're in the halfcourt set, we're not that great."

With Milwaukee and Detroit sputtering, the postseason is a distinct possibility in the Land of the Mouse. That is the springboard to wooing Duncan and Hill and Tracy McGrady. When Lon Babby, Duncan and Hill's agent, was in town last week, the local media went into full tampering alert. Both the Magic and Babby swear he was in town to talk about Garrity, another one of his clients.

Whatever. As long as owner Rich DeVos is willing to spend the money next summer, Rivers doesn't care.

"Every day, I look at the stocks and see how Amway is doing," Rivers said.

Worm turned away
The not-so-good ship Rodman went down quickly this week, taking on water and taking shots at the one team that was stupid enough to put up with his antics in the first place. And yet, Mavs owner Mark Cuban remains steadfast in his belief that he did the right thing.

"If I had the chance," Cuban e-mailed me this week, "I would do it all over again. I like Dennis as a player, as a person. I enjoy being around him. I love to watch him play. But we told him we wanted him to help give us a shot at the playoffs. He gave it all he had to help get us there. It just didn't work out. If we were three or four games out of a playoff spot, we would not be making this move ... that is the only reason we brought in Dennis.

"Risky, in some respects, yes, but I would have been incredibly upset with myself if we had finished three games out of a playoff spot, and I had punished myself all offseason by asking, 'What if.' "

I told Cuban not to take it personally, but that I was a cynic as a child and couldn't quite believe that Rodman's post-game shots at everyone in the Dallas organization, starting with Cuban, had nothing to do with him being excised.

"Cynicism is cool," Cuban responded. "I'm a born cynic ... (but) if I had thin skin, I wouldn't have signed him in the first place. If his comments were the reason for releasing him, I would say so. Why wouldn't I? ... Dennis vents. Only when he vents there are usually cameras in his face, and he has a hard, if not impossible, time knowing when not to talk. But with Dennis' passion and emotion, that's what you have to expect."

Cuban claims Dallas' braintrust started thinking about letting Rodman go on Monday, after the Kings immolated the Mavs 130-109 in Sacramento. That was, conveniently, the day before Rodman's scorched-earth comments after the Mavs were beaten by Seattle.

"We basically discussed what we would do with Dennis if we didn't turn at Seattle," Cuban said. "It's not like we can just put Dennis on the end of the bench and give him 10 minutes a game. That would be waiting for the powder keg to explode. ... So this was the only logical step."

Whether he's spinning or not, whether he's the real cynic and just used Rodman to bring suckers into the tent, Cuban makes one valid point. The Mavericks were, for a second at least, being viewed as more than a joke. One veteran GM thought that Dallas had a real chance at sneaking in to the eighth spot in the West until this past week.

Strange, that's just what Nellie said. Two years ago.

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