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At the nadir, at the bottom, at the short end of 1-19, the Orlando Magic were still just seven games out of first place in the Atlantic Division.

Now?

"If we were on the West Coast, our season would be over," Juwan Howard said. "But on the East Coast, we're still in the hunt."

As of Friday morning, 3-19 Orlando, proud owner of a two-game win streak, remained seven games out of the last playoff spot in the East. Hey, crazier things have happened.

The Magic will probably not rally to make the postseason. But there is a more immediate task -- salvaging some pride after an embarrassing five-week period in which the Magic lost in every conceivable way. From in front, from behind, in routs and at the buzzer. To New Orleans, Detroit, New York, Chicago, Minnesota, Houston, Memphis, Denver, the Clippers, Utah, Phoenix, Sacramento, Indiana, Boston, Toronto, New Orleans again, New Orleans a third time, San Antonio and then Dallas. Doc Rivers lost his job, and almost three weeks later, the Magic still hadn't won. Tyronn Lue called his old teammate -- fellow by the name of Jordan -- for some advice on how to cope. And Tracy McGrady was pilloried for allowing such a streak to happen on his watch.

"Nobody in the history of this league has won a game by himself," Orlando coach Johnny Davis said. "It's a team thing."

Indeed, the Magic stunk. Together.

"There were times when I could not sleep," Howard said. "There were times when I would wake up in the morning, like a lot of other people in this locker room, and you get upset. You get sad, depressed. We know we're a better team than how we were playing. We were losing close games. We couldn't find out how to turn it around. We always said the right things. We knew what we had to do but we never did it. It was frustrating."

But now, the clouds are breaking. A little. The Magic are still squeezably soft inside -- Kwame Brown abused Orlando in the paint on Wednesday. But Gordan Giricek is back after missing the first three weeks of the season. Lue's jumper is back after being AWOL for November. Shammond Williams still has some pop in his game off the bench. It's only two wins in a week, but since that's twice as many wins as they had for a month, that's cause for optimism.

And McGrady looks like he's having fun on the court again.

"I think he put a little too much pressure on himself," Howard said of McGrady. "There were times I heard him talking about that he wanted to retire. Man, you're too damn young to retire. You're 24 years old. Don't let frustration take you to that level. Keep enjoying this game. It could be a lot worse than it really is. It's going to turn."

The jury is still out on whether Davis will keep his job (the buyout on his contract for 2004-05 is in the low six figures, and the Magic still have that list of potential coaches like George Karl and Rudy Tomjanovich in hand), whether this group will be kept together or ripped apart and whether McGrady will stick around after next season, when he can opt out. But my friend Fred Carter is probably safe. He will likely remain the best player on the worst team in NBA history -- the 9-73 Sixers.

"I've told the guys, 'You've got the train out of the station,' " Davis said. "Now you have to keep it going down the track."

Bryan Colangelo was not at a loss for words, but was at the end of his rope.

"You tell me," the Suns' general manager asked Wednesday evening. "How can we be down 29 points to Boston in the first half and come back and win? How can we be ahead 41-22 in the second quarter and lose -- to a team that hasn't won all year, by the way? How can we be down 20 points to Miami -- a team that, I would argue, we're better than?"

It wasn't so much the losing that got Frank Johnson fired as the roller coaster. From the beginning of the preseason, the Suns meandered from night to night, sometimes quarter to quarter. Johnson noticed it early, but couldn't do much about it ("Just look at him sometime on the sidelines during a game," a pro scout said a couple of weeks ago.) A team with the young legs that Phoenix has shouldn't be so "absolutely lifeless," as Colangelo put it. And with the season slipping away -- and with more teams than ever in the West fighting for respect and playoff spots -- the Suns thought they had to act quickly.

The cynic in me says that Jerry and Bryan Colangelo had made the decision to cashier Johnson a week or so ago, their denials to the contrary. Otherwise, why would Bryan Colangelo have gone on the team's eastern trip this week?

"I felt I needed to see firsthand what the impact of the (coaching) staff was on this team," Colangelo said. "I wanted to get away from the normal routine you have when you watch practice at home -- you're watching and the phone rings and you have to work on something else. This was a chance to be closer to the team."

And what did he see?

"A very inconsistent club," Colangelo said. "At times in tune and aggressive and interested. At times, listless and not interested."

Colangelo swears he didn't make up his mind until after Tuesday's loss in Miami. When he powwowed with his father and Cotton Fitzsimmons on Wednesday morning, he says, they shared his contention that a change was in order. But why wouldn't Johnson get a little slack, considering the Suns were without rookie Zarko Cabarkapa (broken wrist) and Amare Stoudemire, whose sprained ankle will keep him out a month?

"It was definitely a factor," Colangelo said. "But even with those guys, we played great basketball at times. Sustaining that effort was the issue."

So the Colangelos turned the ship over to Mike D'Antoni, a guy considered by many to have a bright future as a head coach. Tellingly, Bryan Colangelo called him "a well-spoken guy in the locker room who's respected." I like D'Antoni; he got screwed in his previous stint, with the Nuggets in the lockout-shortened '99 season. (Speaking of the Nuggets, it wouldn't surprise me if the Suns quickly developed an interest in Denver's Nikoloz Tskitishvili, who's struggled to break into the Nuggets' rotation. D'Antoni was Skita's coach at Benetton Treviso before he opted for the 2002 draft and thinks Skita can be better than Pau Gasol.) But the Suns have to look inward, too. They've gone through a raft of coaches in the last few seasons -- Fitzsimmons, Danny Ainge, Scott Skiles, Johnson -- and been as aggressive on trades and in free agency as anyone. They've drafted pretty well of late (Marion, Stoudemire, Casey Jacobsen and the promising Cabarkapa) and are as well-regarded as an organization as any team in the league. But they have very little to show for it.

ALDRIDGE'S NBA RANKINGS

Note: Last week's rankings are listed in parentheses THE TOP 10 1. (1) Los Angeles Lakers 2. (2) Sacramento Kings 3. (3) Indiana Pacers 4. (4) Dallas Mavericks 5. (7) Houston Rockets 6. (8) Minnesota Timberwolves 7. (9) San Antonio Spurs 8. (5) Detroit Pistons 9. (6) New Orleans Hornets 10. (13) Philadelphia 76ers THE BOTTOM FIVE 25. (25) Atlanta Hawks 26. (27) Cleveland Cavaliers 27. (28) Miami Heat 28. (26) Chicago Bulls 29. (29) Orlando Magic THE MIDDLE FOURTEEN 11. (22) Toronto Raptors 12. (14) New Jersey Nets 13. (10) Denver Nuggets 14. (23) Memphis Grizzlies 15. (12) Seattle SuperSonics 16. (18) Boston Celtics 17. (16) Golden State Warriors 18. (15) Milwaukee Bucks 19. (17) Portland Trail Blazers 20. (11) Utah Jazz 21. (20) Phoenix Suns 22. (24) Washington Wizards 23. (21) New York Knicks 24. (19) Los Angeles Clippers

If you think Rasheed Wallace's incendiary interview in the Oregonian newspaper is going to deter anyone from trying to get him before the deadline, you're from the naïve wing of FantasyLand. Count Dallas, San Antonio, Minnesota, Detroit, Indiana and New Jersey among the more interested suitors, each deathly afraid that the other will get him -- which will only drive up his value.

We hear Jeff Van Gundy has fallen out of love with Moochie Norris after singing his praises during training camp. Even though Norris lost 30 pounds in the offseason, he still isn't the kind of point guard JVG is looking for. It surprises me that the Rockets weren't more interested in Rod Strickland, who's wasting away on Orlando's bench.

After getting shut out on the bidding for Bonzi Wells, the Celtics are still looking to move either Eric Williams or Tony Battie. The Cs are not going to re-sign Williams after this season and general manager Danny Ainge apparently doesn't want to let Williams play himself into a good deal elsewhere next year.

The Clippers may be looking to shake things up. They're still looking for a point guard, so don't be surprised if they take a run at Travis Best, offering Melvin Ely to Dallas in return.

The Cavaliers continue to rebuff all suitors for Zydrunas Ilgauskas, Carlos Boozer and, of course, LeBron James. They'll talk about everybody else, although Chris Mihm is harder to get now than at the start of the season.

The Warriors still don't really know when Troy Murphy will be back from the torn tendon in his right foot. He just began jogging last week, and they'd hoped he and Adonal Foyle (left knee surgery) would be back by the middle of the month. But at the moment, there's no timetable.

Larry Brown may have left Philadelphia under rough circumstances of his own making, but he should take pride in the toughness with which the 76ers still play. He was a big part of creating it. There's not a group in the league that has more heart than the trio of Allen Iverson, Eric Snow and Aaron McKie. Without Iverson, the Sixers went into Detroit and beat Brown's Pistons, and with the usual rash of injuries, Philly is still in first place in the Atlantic under first-year coach Randy Ayres.

"They were the constant," Brown said. "We had so many injuries, and a lot of different guys moved in and out. But those three guys were the core ... just their mental toughness, and the way they play off of each other. I always say play the right way, and the nicest thing about being the coach in Philly -- and people still think I'm the coach there, by the way, wherever I go -- but I always remarked that in the summertime, people would tell me that they loved our team because of the way we play. And that was those three guys."

David Aldridge, who covers the NBA for ESPN, is a regular contributor to ESPN.com. Also, click here to send a question for possible use on ESPNEWS.