"The Orlando Magic will be adding a new piece to their team for a championship chase.

It's one that effectively has been missing since a 2007-2008 playoff run.

Remember Jameer Nelson?

You have to go back almost two years to find Nelson's last fruitful contribution to bonus basketball.

He missed the last half of last season and the first three rounds of the playoffs after undergoing shoulder surgery. Then came his ill-fated comeback to play in the NBA Finals.

Nelson fully agrees with the premise: We haven't seen him at his best, physically, in the playoffs since the Magic were ousted by the Detroit Pistons in five games on May 13, 2008.

No, the Jameer Nelson who appeared in the finals last June was not the Jameer Nelson who had earned his first all-star berth only four months before. Not even close.

He averaged career highs in scoring (16.7 points per game) and shooting percentage (50.3, plus 45.3 in 3-point shooting) as well as 5.5 assists last season. In the Finals against the Los Angeles Lakers — a team he tortured during two regular-season wins — Nelson managed just 3.8 points and shot 34.8 percent coming off the bench behind trade-deadline pick-up Rafer Alston.

Nelson has yet to review video tape from the Magic's title-series loss against the Lakers.

"Why would I go back and look when it wasn't me?" Nelson said."