Pat Garrity at center?

Mike Miller at power forward?

Oh, what deranged fun experimentation can be.

This is the NBA preseason, which means Magic Coach Doc Rivers has too much time on his hands. So in the pursuit of concealing their size shortcomings by using versatility, the Magic are trying all the tricks once again.

Take Thursday's game against Atlanta. Rivers put out a lineup of Garrity, Miller, Grant Hill, Tracy McGrady and Darrell Armstrong -- that's just one player as tall as 6 feet 9. To start the game, he had Obinna Ekezie at center, a player who does not have a guaranteed spot on the team.

Rivers keeps talking about how second-year guard Jeryl Sasser is carving out a role on this team, the same Sasser who played in only seven games last season. Rivers started Olumide Oyedeji and Andrew DeClercq in the preseason opener and then played them only eight and five minutes, respectively, Thursday. Shawn Kemp got seven minutes Thursday; Pat Burke 15.

"You'll see some strange substitutions early on," Rivers said.

Let's face one fact: The Magic's collection of big men will not turn this team into a rugged group that can go elbow-for-elbow with the New Orleans Hornets. The Magic do expect their big men to be improved this season, but they also know they must be crafty and play to their strengths.

And since the Magic have such a penchant for adding small forwards to the roster, they might as well use them.

"When we can't match them with the bigs, throw out all the smalls and make them take their bigs off the floor," Rivers said.

Rivers had such undermanned teams in his previous three seasons that he had to learn trickery. Though he strikes you as a coach who'd rather have a bunch of players line up and physically dominate the opponent, he hasn't had that type of personnel.

So he has done things such as start sharpshooter Garrity, who is 6-9 and 238 pounds, at power forward for the majority of a season. He has started rookies and benched veterans. Rivers can start a player for five straight games and then have him average five minutes a game for the next month.

It appears that this year's team will experience that kind of dramatic change unless more players begin to distinguish themselves.

"I would love to have a set starting lineup for 82 games," Rivers said. "That would be nice."

But that's no fun.

Put Sasser in during the first quarter?

Play mini-guards Armstrong and Jacque Vaughn together?

Oh, what deranged fun.

"We're just throwing stuff out there and seeing how it works," Hill said.

At some point, the games must end, and the Magic will have to beat teams straight up. It usually happens in the playoffs when tendencies are studied more in-depth and weaknesses are tougher to hide. Whether they have enough in the frontcourt to grind out a playoff series is an issue for April.

"It's not going to work every night," Rivers said.

In the meantime, catch them if you can. Or else the Magic might steal some games with cunning.

"Doc's seeing different lineups he can play," Armstrong said. "We may wind up having three, maybe four lineups totally different from each other, and we can win games that way."