It is easy to believe that the Boston Celtics, L.A. Lakers and Cleveland Cavaliers are legitimate championship contenders; the Celtics and Lakers competed in last year's NBA Finals, while the Cavaliers made it to the Finals in 2007 and battled the Celtics for seven games in the 2008 Eastern Conference semifinals.

This season, those three teams have been in a tight race to finish with the league's best record but they have some unexpected company: the Orlando Magic. Why are the Magic doing so well this season and are they truly a championship contending team?

Last season, the Magic won their first division title since the lockout shortened 1999 season and had their first 50-plus win campaign (52-30) since the brief-lived Shaq-Penny era was in full effect (60-22 in 1995-96). The Magic ranked sixth in scoring (104.5 ppg) in 2007-08 and fifth in point differential (5.5 ppg); the Magic not only could score but they also did a reasonable job defensively, anchored by Dwight Howard's menacing presence in the paint. Their weakness was rebounding: even though Howard led the league in that category with a 14.2 rpg average, the Magic ranked just 17th in rebounding differential.

The Magic do not pair Howard with a true power forward; instead, the rest of their starting frontcourt consists of Hedo Turkoglu and Rashard Lewis, two versatile but slender 6-10 forwards who can shoot, pass and drive but are not dominant inside players.

This season, the Magic again rank among the league leaders in scoring (101.8 ppg, eighth) and point differential (8.1 ppg, fourth). Their rebounding differential has actually regressed slightly. So why is their record so much better? One big difference is that they are shooting three pointers even more prolifically than they did last season while also doing a better job of defending against the long ball.

TNT's Doug Collins often makes note of the differential between how many points a team scores on three point shots and how many points it gives up from behind the arc; this year, the Magic have made nearly twice as many three pointers as their opponents and that extra point per shot covers up a multitude of sins. A second big difference is that point guard Jameer Nelson has emerged as an All-Star caliber player, posting career-high numbers in scoring, field goal percentage, three point field goal percentage and free throw percentage.

This Magic team is constructed similarly to the Magic team that made it to the NBA Finals in 1995 and to the Houston teams that won championships in 1994 and 1995; all of those teams had a center who was dominant at both ends of the court flanked by several excellent three point shooters. If the center was single covered, he scored; if he was double covered, one of his teammates shot a wide open three pointer.

However, the 1994 Rockets and the 1995 Magic each had a power forward who did the dirty work in the paint (Otis Thorpe and Horace Grant, respectively); the 1995 Rockets used the versatile Robert Horry as the de facto power forward, trading away Thorpe's size/muscle for All-NBA swingman Clyde Drexler. The 1995 Magic also had an All-NBA swingman: Penny Hardaway, who made the All-NBA First Team that year, while O'Neal settled for a Second Team selection (people seem to forget that little detail when they act as if O'Neal simply carried Hardaway and the rest of the team-Hardaway's later injuries should not be used to obscure the fact that he was a top five player at one time).

The Magic do not currently have a power forward like Thorpe or Grant, nor do they have an All-NBA level swingman like Drexler or Hardaway. Therefore, it is reasonable to wonder how well they will perform in playoff games against elite teams when their three point shots are not falling and it becomes increasingly important to be able to control the boards.

Also, although Howard certainly provides a dominant presence in the paint, he is averaging 19.9 ppg on .559 field goal shooting-good numbers but not on par with O'Neal's 1995 production (29.3 ppg on .583 shooting) or Olajuwon's 1994 and 1995 outputs (27.3 ppg on .528 shooting and 27.8 ppg on .517 shooting respectively). During the postseason, O'Neal and Olajuwon would become almost unguardable for extended periods of time, O'Neal because of his great power and Olajuwon because of his amazing repertoire of low post moves. Howard has yet to show that he can carry a team offensively in that manner.

Orlando recently went out West and beat the three division leaders-Lakers, Spurs and Nuggets -- on their home courts. That is a most impressive accomplishment-but in order to face one of those teams (or someone else) in the NBA Finals the Magic will first have to make it out of the East. So far this season, the Celtics routed the Magic 107-88 in Boston on Dec. 1 and then beat them 90-80 in Orlando on Jan. 22.

In both of those games the Celtics outrebounded the Magic, contained their three point shooters and held Howard to fewer than 15 points. The Detroit Pistons beat the Magic 4-1 in last year's playoffs and are 1-0 against them this year; the Pistons have changed their head coach and point guard since last season but still seem to match up very well with Orlando. The Magic have yet to play the Cavaliers, but because of Cleveland's inside strength and good defense versus the three point shot the Magic do no match up well with the Cavs.

The Magic are playing very well overall but until they prove that they can beat Boston, Cleveland and Detroit it would not be accurate to label them a championship contending team; in order to make it to the NBA Finals they will have to beat at least one -- and possibly two -- of those teams in a seven game series.

David Friedman's work has appeared in Hoop, Basketball Digest, Sports Collectors Digest, HoopsHype.com and Tar Heel Monthly. He wrote the chapter on the NBA in the 1970s for the anthology Basketball in America: From the Playgrounds to Jordan's Game and Beyond (Haworth Press, 2005). Check out his basketball blog: 20 Second Timeout.