Hedo Turkoglu got traded again, this time from Phoenix to Orlando where he had the best time in his 11 year NBA career 2 seasons ago, that he helped the team to reach NBA finals against Lakers. Since then, it was a down-fall which was correctly predicted by some of the basketball newscasters. He never was an all-star caliber player and we cant really blame him for what he is not capable of, however, his effort was also questionable in many games at Raptors and Suns. His ghostly appearance on the court, lethargic posture and unwillingness in rebounding, driving in, etc., created somewhat justifiable angst among many fans in both cities. To this date, the only coach who could unleash his potentials in the most useful manner to the collective team success was Stan Van Gundy (SVG).
After the defeat at the finals two years ago, Magic did not want to pay $10+ Million to a skilled player that Hedo is for all the known reasons, however, they ended up re-signing him in less than two years for more of the same money that they did not want to pay earlier. Even though this seems to be a mistake on both sides, the coming months would be an ultimate decider on both sides, whether Hedo was a bust if he cant lift Magic and Magic gambled on a declining small forward or Hedo makes Magic a conference contender and Magic gets his money's worth. I guess we'll all wait and see how it will fold out.
I have been following up on him since he set foot at the New Land. I also was a fan of him and often found myself writing blogs at various sites to defend him against vicious fans, and some of their hatred spewing comments. However, my Hedo-liking diminished particularly after what I witnessed at the world basketball championship held in Turkey past summer of 2010 where he seemed to have been in closer contact with islamist-prime-minister of Turkey, Erdogan much more than he was required to be as the captain of the team. At the press conference after the tournament was over, he seemed and sounded like happy-to-get-money from the ministry for the silver they got in the competition. This was somewhat not expected and clearly not well prepared speech from his perspective. Many people in Turkey also did not like the fact that Erdogan used this occasion to his political favor to impress public that Turkish team was capable of playing the final against mighty Americans as if this had anything to do with his leadership. He acted like a monarch and promised to give each player $1 million if they get to the finals and more if they would have won. Believe it or not, Turkey that has many poor unemployed people, and certainly not among the richest nations, gave one million dollars to each team player, played or benched, plus a villa for each and US team who won the gold were only rewarded by $25K for each team player who really played.
I only wish him success in Magic uniform for the remainder of this season, but I am half-heartedly supporting him after his stint at the world championship and his uncaring attitude and performance at Phoenix. I never liked snobby Raptor's fans, anyways, so I disregard his poor showing in Raptor's uniform for whatever reason.
