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In what has quickly become a media-fueled gong show, filled with cheap insults and unbacked claims, two familiar members of the Orlando Magic have spoken up once again in regards to their second-round match up with the Detroit Pistons.

“We’re going to make some adjustments and we’re going to go [back to Detroit] and win this game,” said point guard Jameer Nelson after a painful Game 4 loss at home, but he didn’t stop there.

“I’m not being arrogant or cocky or anything like that,” he adds, “but [in Game 4] we let it slip out of our hands, [and we] let Game 2 slip out of our hands. We’re going to win this game in Detroit.”

Despite the questionable logic behind the claim, Nelson’s intentions appear to be pretty straight-forward: motivate an emotionally-volatile club to a point where they have at least a snowball’s chance in Orlando of squeezing out one more series victory before golfing season rears its boring head.

What he seems to have forgotten though, is his and his team’s relative lack of qualification to even dare propose they ought to have the upper hand in the first place. Never mind the fact that the Magic haven’t made it past the first round of the playoffs since Dwight Howard was 10 years old or the fact that the Pistons boast the second most respectable tradition in recent NBA history, Nelson and company still speak as if their impressive regular season alone is enough to have established themselves as legit title contenders.

The hubristic parallel of this particular Orlando series and that of the Tracy McGrady-led series in 2003 screams of immaturity and prompts a big fat lack of sympathy from anyone tuning in outside the state of Florida. In fact, while we’re on The Curse of the McGradino, the Game 3 win on Wednesday was the first such victory the Magic would claim over a Detroit team since those infamously premature comments made by McGrady after a Game 4 win five years ago.

This year, Nelson and the rest of the Magic, particularly teammate Rashard Lewis, have refused to pay their dues to the more qualified Pistons who, up three games to one in the series, control their fate. Instead of bowing to their adversaries, Nelson and Lewis have done everything they can to convince themselves and anybody willing to listen that this is an even playing field.

“For some reason, I feel we’re still the better team,” said Lewis to the Orlando Sentinel on Sunday. “It was our mistakes [that led to the loss], nothing they did. They’ve still go to beat us one more time.”

Perhaps this passionate display of a frustrated Orlando team is a reflection of just how much the Magic have been ignored leading into these dog days of the NBA playoffs, or maybe it’s just an excruciatingly naïve group of unaccomplished young athletes trying to fight for anything they can get.

Are the Orlando Magic out of their element trying to use the media as a means of bestowing their confidence on each other and their growing fan base, or is it simply just an unconventional way of overthrowing an established authority to which the status quo has convinced us they should respectfully yield?

Either way, a revolution is afoot I tells ya, as Nelson and Lewis hope to accomplish the damn near impossible, fighting for an opportunity they feel is rightfully theirs.

Who knows, it worked in the War of Independence.

Photo Credit: Icon Sports Media