Over the next few weeks Orlando Magic Daily will be taking a look at the things that went right and wrong this season as Orlando ended its season with a disappointing first-round loss to Indiana.

It was late March when we began to realize that something was seriously wrong with Dwight Howard. All the reports of the origins of Dwight Howard's back issues suggested that he was feeling discomfort with his back before March 30, but the flashpoint came in that defeat to the Mavericks. There, for all careful Magic fans to see, was Brendan Haywood giving a forearm shiver to Howard's lower back.

Orlando sent video of the play to NBA offices and received no penalty or comment whatsoever from the NBA office.

Howard played only two more games after that, looking clearly uncomfortable and unable to play at his best. For most of the remainder of that time in the regular season, the Magic were unsure of how long their superstar center would be out. It turned out to be indefinitely and it left a gaping hole in the Magic's lineup -- both offensively and defensively.

The team went 5-9 after that game. The Magic were hardly the same team. The defense was much worse and unable to gain any consistency. The offense was statistically better, but as we saw in the Playoffs it bogged down and became too predictable.

Still, the 5-9 record does not fully encapsulate what that team accomplished.

Throughout the entire season, it seemed Dwight Howard (or those anonymous sources, or reporters, or bloggers, or me) was suggesting throughout the season that his biggest disappointment with Otis Smith and the organization in his supporting cast. Howard seemed to want more.

Then on the other hand, he was telling the media that we all just need to believe in the group Orlando had and that it just needed to play with consistent energy. And certainly, Orlando had moments this season when it looked like the great team Howard and J.J. Redick sometimes talked about.

We did not really see that team come out though until Howard was gone and the team was forced to band together and become a truly fun team to watch.

It appears this is decision week for the Magic and the beginning of determining where the franchise is going to go. The process of deconstructing the 2012 season on this blog will begin later this week. The questions surrounding the Magic after they were bounced out of the Playoffs unceremoniously.

The Dwight Howard questions that will embroil the Magic this summer begin with the question of who will be the head coach.

As I reported earlier, management and ownership is going to meet this week and a decision regarding Stan Van Gundy's future could be made by the end of the week. There are no guarantees which direction the franchise will be moving or that the public will know that direction.

What is assumed is that there will be some very deep discussions about Stan Van Gundy's future and that what happens to the team's head coach may come down first. What is even further assumed, judging by some of the awkwardness that transpired throughout the season and the surreal moment in early April when Van Gundy revealed Howard had gone to Magic management and asked that Van Gundy be fired, is that it has become an either/or proposition when it comes to Dwight Howard.

Considering that the Magic and Alex Martins worked so hard to convince Howard to come off his trade demand and decline his early termination option, it is also pretty safe to assume that the Magic are still going to do everything they can to retain Dwight Howard. The assumption among many is that this means Van Gundy will be gone.

This may not be a foregone conclusion.

A source told Orlando Magic Daily that the firing of Otis Smith is expected this week, perhaps as soon as Tuesday. This same source said that Van Gundy's fate may not be so simple. It appears that the franchise will try and talk to Dwight Howard first and then make a decision on whether they will keep Howard and fire Van Gundy or trade Howard and keep Van Gundy or, perhaps unthinkably, retaining both.

The Magic are in a full holding pattern.

This week management will meet and begin making decisions and evaluations of everyone on the Magic staff and roster. Ultimately though, the Magic's future lies in the decisions of one Dwight David Howard Jr.

This past season was all about Howard decision or indecision. It dominated headlines throughout the season and it is something that the Magic do not want to go through again. So at the end of the season as Orlando sorts through what is looking to be a mess of an offseason it all boils down to one decision once again:

Will Dwight Howard sign a long-term extension with the Magic? Does he want to be in Orlando for the short or long term?

It seems every decision the Magic are going to make this offseason will depend on that answer. Alex Martins has all but said that if Howard will not sign a long-term extension this offseason, the team will go forward with what is best for the team. That likely means getting what value the team can for Howard in a trade. And it seems that will get done before the season begins.

The one voice that has been uncharacteristically quiet though is Dwight Howard himself.

The public has not heard from Howard since TMZ cornered him coming out of rehab a little more than a week ago. There, Howard said he had been in contact with coach Stan Van Gundy and his teammates. Van Gundy confirmed that he had chatted with Howard via text before Game Two but said at exit interviews that he had not spoken to him since. Several players, including Jameer Nelson, said they had been in touch with Howard via the phone.

"He is bored to death because he can't really do anything," Stan Van Gundy said before Game Four of his conversations with Howard. "He is sitting in a motel and doing his rehab. and the rehab is not like he is running three miles or anything. You are starting out slow. He is bored more than anything."

Howard said in that interview with TMZ that he feels like he is in jail because he cannot go anywhere and could not be with his teammates. Howard grew visibly frustrated in the interview when the interviewer brought up the subject of whether he was faking any part of his injury. That is how the interview abruptly ends if you watch it again.

Fans I have talked to have been very critical of Howard's absence from the team during the Playoffs and at the end of the season. It is tough to say exactly what Howard is thinking. I will not pretend to know -- otherwise, reporting would be easy at this stage of the offseason.

The Magic's season is not a week over, and uncertainty regins at Amway Center an in the Magic offices. Really uncertainty has reigned in the Magic offices since early December when Dwight Howard formally requested a trade and perhaps even before that when the franchise had no idea what Howard wanted or his position on his future with the team.

With the team facing and dealing with a second straight first round exit, the Magic have questions to answer as they try to figure out what lies in their future.

Alex Martins said earlier this week at the team's exit interviews that the team will take some time to decompress before beginning postseason evaluations. He would not put a time table on when that process would begin or would result in a decision to retain or release the team's head coach and the team's general manager.

Orlando Magic Daily has learned that this process is expected to begin this week when Magic ownership meets to evaluate the season. The source tells Orlando Magic Daily that the feeling is this meeting may result in a final decision concerning Stan Van Gundy's future with the team by the end of the week.

There is no guarantee that there will be action coming out of these initial meetings between Magic CEO Alex Martins, Magic chairman Dan DeVos, owner Rich DeVos and the others involved in this meeting of the Magic's ownership and management group. But the postseason evaluations have begun in earnest. And certainly the Magic would like to have some things resolved with the coach and general manager before the team enters full NBA Draft preparations ahead of the June 28 NBA Draft.

"We're going to start a full evaluation process of our entire organization. That's what we do at the end of each season," Martins said at the Magic's exit interviews last week. "We base everything that we do on trying to win a championship. So we're going to do that this offseason like we do every offseason. Everything will be evaluated so that we get to next season and we will be in a better position than we are today to have won a title.

"Everything we have done over the years is about getting to win a championship. Unfortunately getting to the Playoffs is just not good enough. We have to find a way to get back to the Eastern Conference Finals and back to the Finals and have an opportunity to win a championship. Everything has to be evaluated."

J.J. Redick was on Pro Sports Talk on NBC Sports Network and does a pretty good job recapping the Magic season and giving insight into the circus that was the 2012 season. h/t Kurt Helin of Pro Basketball Talk

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The Magic season is over... Kelly Dwyer of Ball Don't Lie takes a look at how we got here and the depression and struggles that might be coming our way:

The Orlando Magic would fascinate me endlessly, even if it weren't for the ongoing Dwight Howard saga or the fact that they might soon fire one of the best coaches in the NBA just to appease a player who took 80 percent of the season to decide that he wanted to play for the Magic for one more season, while still refusing to sign a contract extension along the way.

See, the Magic make no sense. The two best players in the franchise's regular-season run in 2008-09, the one that led to the team making the Finals, were drafted by former GM John Weisbrod. Now, Weisbrod was smart to draft Dwight Howard ahead of NCAA superstar Emeka Okafor, and good to go after fellow NCAA superstar Jameer Nelson later in that draft, but just about every other move he made as Magic GM was terrible. Young traded for old. Good traded for worse. Big traded for small. Everything you're not supposed to do, save for picking Howard and Nelson. Weird résumé, that.

So then current GM Otis Smith takes over, and because the team starts to win behind Howard and Nelson, you tend to ignore his missteps along the way. Like attempting to hire Florida's Billy Donovan, before settling on Stan Van Gundy once Donovan went back on his agreement with the Magic to coach the team. Or the drafting of Fran Vazquez. Or the Rashard Lewis contract. All of this stuff was swept under the rug because the Magic — through Howard, Nelson and SVG — were winning.

The issue was forgotten for most of the season in the hoopla that was Dwight Howard. Nelson quietly has been playing out his own option year.

Jameer Nelson though did not let his uncertain future play out for everyone to see. It was always assumed that Nelson would decline his early termination option and play the final year of his contract next season. It was not until last week that Nelson revealed that he had not made a decision about his future and that he may, in fact, opt out of his contract.

This realization seems to be growing more and more likely now that the season has ended.

Nelson has to inform the Magic of his intentions to terminate his contract or decline it within a week of their final game or by June 15 (whichever is later, not within three days as the Magic Preisdent of Basketball Operations Otis Smith originally reported by told Josh Robbins of the Orlando Sentinel on Wednesday). The Magic corrected their statements to reporters Wednesday and clarified that Nelson would have until June 15 to make a decision.

By the NBA Draft then, the Magic will know whether they have to plan contingencies regarding their starting point guard for much of the past eight years or whether that position will be decently solidified.

"I'm a Jameer Nelson fan. I have always been a Jameer Nelson fan since probably his sophomore year in college," Magic president of basketball operations Otis Smith said. "What he's able to do on the floor probably puts him in the top tier of point guards in this league. We would like to keep him around the franchise as long as we can keep him around the franchise. We also understand the way the league works."

Nelson had an up-and-down season this year. His play in the postseason called back his dominating days in 2009 and 2010, but his overall season 11.9 points per game and 5.7 assists per game, shooting a career-roworst 42.7 percent from the floor. Nelson has become a better 3-point shooter and a better distributor, but he still struggles against bigger point guards and picking his spots to attack and distribute.

Nelson increased his production in the postseason with 15.6 points per game and 6.6 assists per game as he took on a bigger role.

He certainly benefited and would continue to benefit from having a guy like Hedo Turkoglu or Vince Carter (circa 2009 and 2010) handling part of the ballhandling duties and taking pressure off of him in that regard.

There is no questioning Nelson's resolve and leadership in the locker room. Nelson may not be the perfect point guard, but he certainly ist still a quality guard in the league.

"Hectic is a good word. The schedule was hectic," J.J. Redick said. "It seemed like there was some sort of national scandal with this team every other week. At one point in March, I decided to set the over/under at 2.5 for national scandals for the rest of the year. Fortunately, we only had two more. So we hit the under."

That might about sum up the way the 2012 season went for the Magic.

After ups and downs, the "longest short season" as Otis Smith described it, a five-game Playoff exit and all the Dwight Howard mess, the Magic slowly filed out of Amway Center for the final time this season. A few players -- Justin Harper and Ish Smith -- were getting one last workout in when the media entered the practice facility before cleaning their lockers and entering an offseason with as much uncertainty as any other for this franchise.

Questions surround the futures of the superstar player, the team's head coach and the team's general manager. That is a triple threat of questions that will hover over the franchise in the wake of the 2012 season.

Those are questions the franchise will begin to evaluate when the team begins its postseason evaluations. There is no set timetable for those, according to Magic CEO Alex Martins. They will take place after a "cooling down" period. No decisions about the Magic's future -- whether it be Dwight's future or Stan Van Gundy's future or Otis Smith's future -- has been made. Likely they will not be made for a little while.

Redick said he has been told that there would be clarity on the issue of Van Gundy and Smith's future in the next few weeks. Beyond that though, nobody really elaborated on the team's timetable for the future.

Jameer Nelson darted in and out of the lane, finishing at the rim, pulling up for jumpers and stepping into 3-pointers with the ease that made it look like 2009. The Magic had the lead heading into the fourth quarter and had erased a 15-point deficit early in the game and never quit.

There was no quit in the 2012 team. That might be how we ultimately remember them.

The last month of the season, this team took on a different identity. This was not a team that had inconsistent energy levels and an enormously huge distraction all season. This was a team playing with its back against the wall, in unfamiliar roles and playing in a way that this team was not built for. This was a team relying heavily on certain key players and often getting the exact production it needed from them.

This was a team that was fatally flawed, but willing to work past those weaknesses and refusing to have them exploited, not without a fight, at least.

Orlando had one last game to fight and keep the season going another game. And the Magic were determined to keep its season going.

It was not to be.

Jameer Nelson turned back the clock and scored 27 points on 11-for-21 shooting, dominating in the pick and roll and shooting with a confidence we have not seen since February of 2009. It gave the Magic their first third quarter win and a two-point lead entering the final two minutes of the game.

Nelson's counterpart for the Pacers took over the fourth quarter. And the Magic could not reach into the tank for one more miracle.

Darren Collison scored 19 points, hitting nine of his 10 shots, breaking down and ripping apart the Magic defense. The offense began to unravel as Glen Davis could not muster the energy to pull out one more miracle.

Nelson's shot was no longer falling at the alarming rate. Glen Davis could not get the energy to roll hard down the lane or make the quick rotations that made him so valuable throughout this series. Hedo Turkoglu missed a 3-pointer wide off the backboard. Jason Richardson was short on a long-range shot.

Orlando had given everything it had. Indiana was slowly ripping it apart before the deluge finally came on a Paul George and Danny Granger 3-pointers. The 2012 season ended with a 105-87 Pacers victory at Bankers Life Fieldhouse. All the adjustments and all the above-average play from so many players on the roster was not enough. Utlimately, Indiana's size and depth won out.

The 2012 season was as bizarre as it got. The ending would not be short of that bizarreness.

Orlando is in a deep 3-1 hole in the series. The Magic have looked overmatched by the Pacers' size and length at many times and they have struggled struggled to get their offense free and into a rhythm.

Except for a 14-0 run and 26-7 spurt to force overtime in Game Four, the Magic have struggled to establish themselves. Every game has really followed much of the same script.

Indiana's starting lineup has consistently outworked Orlando and taken hold of the early lead in games. More importantly, they have used that starting lineup and energy at the beginning of the second half. The third quarter has been Indiana's and Indiana's alone.

It was where the Pacers erased a seven-point halftime deficit in Game One. Where the Pacers took control of Games Two and devasted the Magic in Game Three. 

Game Four was the only time the Magic broke that script. Orlando was the one that ran out to an early lead, going up 16-10 midway through the first quarter. Of course, Orlando would not score a field goal for another nine minutes and Indiana put Orlando on ice, except for free throws that came from constant fouling from Lou Amundson and and 16 free throw attempts.

"There's tough matchups both ways for both of those guys," Stan Van Gundy said of defending Hibbert and West with Glen Davis and Ryan Anderson. "Hibbert is 7-2 and bigger than our guys. West is certainly stronger than Ryan on top of that. Those are tough matchups and we said at the beginning, their size and their inside presence and even their size on the wings is going to be a factor. We've done a decent job against their post up game andwe have to continue to find ways to do a better job."

The third quarter, the Pacers starting lineup did seem to put the Magic on ice. Indiana scored the first six points of the quarter fairly quickly and opened up a 12-point lead with a 27-17 win in the quarter. It helped getting 12 points from David West and having no one who could defend him or double him fast enough.

The Pacers continued to put the Magic in a hole with their starting five of George Hill, Paul George, Danny Granger, David West and Roy Hibbert.

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Glen Davis went probably to the one place he and the Orlando Magic wanted to go after his fadeaway jumper at the buzzer fell off the front of the rim. Davis was falling and flailing back, caught by Ish Smith and the seats of the Magic bench.

After 53 minutes for the Magic, 41 minutes from Davis, 43 from Jason Richardson and Jameer Nelson and 40 from Hedo Turkoglu, an exhausted Magic team had erased a 19-point deficit, tied the game, forced it to overtime, tied it again and had one last chance to extend the game one more time. Who knows if the Magic would be able to survive another five minutes.

This team has heart. It finally played a second half and most of the first half with the energy it will need to make this series a little longer and <gasp> pull off the upset. Orlando just could not sustain it long enough.

One play can be enough to defeat you.

That one play was a critical possession that saw George Hill drive toward the hoop and Jameer Nelson be just a hair late to recover. He was whistled for a foul, although you could barely hear it with the noise level in Amway Center at the time. Hill calmly sank both free throws. And when the Magic got the ball back with 2.2 seconds left, the play they drew up got Davis open on the left side of the floor and gave him the time (and space) to get off a final heave. It fell short and Indiana will head back to the Hoosier State with a 3-1 series lead after a 101-99 overtime victory at Amway Center on Saturday.

You could never fault the fight in the Magic after a crazed comeback. But another opportunity was lost and time is running out on the season.

"Almost doesn't count," Glen Davis said. "If we played like that the whole series, we might be up right now. Every loose ball we were on. Every box out. Every defensive possession. I haven't felt that way since the first game. There was a sense of urgency. It was our backs against the wall and we fought really really extremely hard. That's playoff basketball. That's it."

The Magic played with the desperation that a team on the ropes needs to play with.