Excuse me if I'm not overcome with excitement just yet

I've talked about the Rashard Lewis signing as much as Im going to at this point. It's the summer and I want to enjoy it. I'll start getting bitter about this again when the Magic trot out a starting frontline of Dwight, Lewis and Hedo Turkoglu come November. Well, that's not true. I'm bitter about it right now. But, I'm going to keep it to myself for the time being. We all know it was knee jerk reaction to having loads of cap space by the perenially overmatched slags in the Magic front office. Those who've followed the organizational history of this franchise expected as much.

So, for now, I'll leave Mr. Lewis alone and wish him luck in finding a nice new home in the Orlando area (which shouldn't be tough as I hear there are a few athletes who live in the area). The subject I'm most interested in today is the inspired summer league play of former collegiate player of the year JJ Redick. There's been much discussion about JJ's play of late and some experts seem to think that his statistics so far in summer league play indicate that he's due for a breakout season with the Magic. I am not one of these people. Would I love to see JJ Redick become a valuble and offensively potent member of this team? You bet your ass I would? The Magic haven't had a decent shooting guard since the last days of Penny "there's sand in my vagine" Hardaway. It's no secret that I was never in favor of the Magic selecting Redick. He was an extremely one dimensional player in college whose size and relative lack of athleticism didn't bode well for futher diversification of his game at the NBA level. Of course, Redick's back injury last summer made the transition to the pros even more taxing than expected and he struggled to even crack the rotation in his first year in Orlando.

With those struggles firmly embedded in Redick's psyche, he needed to play well in Summer League in order to restore some of his swagger and overall confidence in his game. With that in mind, its very encouraging to see Redick play so well up to this point. That's where the significance of his play ends as far as I'm concerned. Why? Well, here's a couple of reasons:

1. This isn't the Vegas Summer League. This is the Orlando Summer League. It's much smaller (6 teams as opposed to 22) and Redick's essentially playing home games as these games are being held in the Magic practice facility. As anybody who's ever played basketball will tell you, its a lot easier to shoot in environments you're comfortable in than in a foreign gym. I'd also venture to guess that it helps to sleep in your own bed each night as well.

2. It's the Summer League. The level of athleticism is a notch or two below that which Redick will be facing during the regular season. Getting you shot off against Robert Hite will be substantially easier than getting looks against Joe Johnson. Most of the guys who Redick is playing against right now are the same types of players he was able to light up at Duke. We already know waht he's capable of against this level of competition, its the high caliber NBA level defender whom I'm interested in seeing Redick score on.

3. Travis Diener. The Magic's third PG was the talk of this very same league last summer when he torched defenders to the tune of 20+ ppg. Of course, this breakout performance led to Diener being shackled to the bench for most of the year and logging more DNPs than guys like Mardy Collins and Sergio Rodriguez.

So, good job JJ. We're all very proud of you. Just don't go popping your collar just yet. You've got a long way to before you even come close to establishing yourself as a viable NBA scorer and erasing the memories of Trajan Langdon. A very long way.