Magic collapse in final 5 minutes in loss to MEM
Leading 80-73 with 5:33 remaining in the game, it looked like the Magic were on their way to their 5th victory in a row. Inexplicably, the Magic suffered a serious meltdown as MEM scored 21 of the next 23 pts and won going away 95-86 to break their 7 game losing streak.
All 5 starters scored in double figures for the Magic. DHoward was superb with 24 pts 23 rebs. GHill added 16 pts 7 rebs 6 assists, HTurkoglu (4 of 16 FG) and JNelson 12 pts each, and TBattie added 10. PF Hakim Warrick led MEM with 26 pts 10 rebs. G Kyle Lowry had a terrific game off the bench with 16 pts, 6 assists, 5 rebs, and 5 steals with 0 TOs. Jake Tsakalidis and Mike Miller added 11 pts each. The Magic reserves had by far their worst game of the season, as KBogans led with only 4 pts.
MEM (37 of 82, 45.1%) outscored ORL (34 of 78. 43.6%) from the floor 79-71. MEM shot 5 of 10 from 3 pt range, while the Magic were just 3 of 14. MEM (16 of 21, 76.2%) had the edge at the FT line (ORL 15 of 18, 83.3%). The Magic dominated the boards 50-37. MEM had a very good assist/turnover ratio at 19-9, while the Magic had a 23-18 ratio. The MEM bench dominated the Magic bench, outscoring them 43-12, as the Magic reserves combined to shoot just 5 of 21. Darko was shut out on 0 of 5 shooting.
BHill elected to give the starters heavy minutes, as only Battie played under 33 minutes among the starters. The Magic had won several close games this year. The fact they were unable to put away a 1-win team is rather disturbing. The Magic, now at 7-4, need to get their act together WED vs IND.
All 5 starters scored in double figures for the Magic. DHoward was superb with 24 pts 23 rebs. GHill added 16 pts 7 rebs 6 assists, HTurkoglu (4 of 16 FG) and JNelson 12 pts each, and TBattie added 10. PF Hakim Warrick led MEM with 26 pts 10 rebs. G Kyle Lowry had a terrific game off the bench with 16 pts, 6 assists, 5 rebs, and 5 steals with 0 TOs. Jake Tsakalidis and Mike Miller added 11 pts each. The Magic reserves had by far their worst game of the season, as KBogans led with only 4 pts.
MEM (37 of 82, 45.1%) outscored ORL (34 of 78. 43.6%) from the floor 79-71. MEM shot 5 of 10 from 3 pt range, while the Magic were just 3 of 14. MEM (16 of 21, 76.2%) had the edge at the FT line (ORL 15 of 18, 83.3%). The Magic dominated the boards 50-37. MEM had a very good assist/turnover ratio at 19-9, while the Magic had a 23-18 ratio. The MEM bench dominated the Magic bench, outscoring them 43-12, as the Magic reserves combined to shoot just 5 of 21. Darko was shut out on 0 of 5 shooting.
BHill elected to give the starters heavy minutes, as only Battie played under 33 minutes among the starters. The Magic had won several close games this year. The fact they were unable to put away a 1-win team is rather disturbing. The Magic, now at 7-4, need to get their act together WED vs IND.
posted by Mike from Illinois @ 12:55 AM
6 Comments:
At 1:22 AM,
Mike from Illinois said…
Turkoglu, Arroyo, Darko, and Dooling combined to shoot just 6 of 31. I'm surprised BHill let Hedo play 34 minutes, considering he was so off-target. Why not let Dooling play more than 12 minutes? And why did Ariza get only 5 minutes of playing time? He has been such a key for us off the bench.
I would have liked for Arroyo to get more than 14 minutes, as he had 3 assists and 0 TOs. Hill had been doing a good job in previous games almost splitting the playing time between Carlos and Jameer.
I don't know what happened to Darko not scoring in 17 minutes, but hopefully he can shake it off and forget about it.
Great job by Dwight and Grant. They could have used more help though.
It's only one loss though... Magic need to come back strong vs the Pacers WED.
At 3:46 AM,
OVERWADED said…
I vanished for a little while due to a big weekend in the video game world. Haha... That doesn't mean I missed any games though. As Arnold once said, I'm back.
Yeah, I wasn't crazy about the player rotations tonight. You mentioned all the right names with valid reason to question why they didn't play more.
As for Darko, he didn't play a bad game. He had a few defensive lapses. Then again, he had some big blocks. As for his shots, they were all right there at the basket, what he wanted, and all of them just came off the back of the iron. It just wasn't going in for him.
Ariza should have played more as he could have helped stop some of their scrubs that were on fire.
Dooling could have helped out in the same way Ariza could've.
Why Arroyo only played 14 minutes is beyond me. I guess he wasn't scoring on a regular basis, so Hill decided to use him less.
It was nice to see Grant show some passing ability. I felt like I was back in the 90's.
I don't know what to say about Dwight. He had another 20/20 game, and again he made it look easy. If he keeps doing this I'm going to get carried away in regards to what the Magic are capable of doing this year!
Next up, Pacers at HOME...payback's a bitch.
At 7:49 AM,
Matt said…
Once again, we made an all-star out of Hakim Warrick and Kyle Lowry. Two rotation mistakes by Hill made these average players to hurt us. With Warrick he went big by Battie, then small by Ariza, then again big by Darko and Battie. He should have gone small to Ariza again. He also tried to stop Lowry with Bogans that didn't work good. Dooling would have been a better choice. We again had the dribble penetration of guards problem because the defense in the middle was so poor. After the dominant first quarter we should have put this game away early on, but we didn't, and we paid dearly for it.
At 1:23 PM,
Big Figure said…
BSH had a horrible night,and its become apparent that small-ball is a good strategy on how to beat the magic with BSH as coach,ATL,IN & MEM,all used small line-ups to get wins over the magic,in two of those victory's,battie finished the game getting abused by small forwards playing the power forward (al harrington,hakim warrick),in some of our wins,battie has found himself on the bench and hedo/darko or ariza has finished the game at power forward,thats not consistent,we're not gonna be very good if BSH is gonna change his rotation's when someone isnt scoring,ariza should've had more minutes being used for defense,and darko still should have been used for defensive purposes because his length would have given warrick problems,we all see whats going on and its hard to get excited about this team no matter how good the record is because we know nights like last night are bound to happen with this coach,watching hedo stink it up all night and BSH not screaming at him to go to the basket,is just a sign of how unknowledgeable our coach is. If the guys want a win over the pacers,"They better attack the basket",way to many jumpshots last night.
At 8:27 PM,
Mike from Illinois said…
Hey Introvert316, welcome back into the mix. At least you didn't miss any of the Magic games.
On PTI on ESPN on Tuesday, Bob Ryan and Mike Wilbon were debating over who the better center is... Dwight Howard or Emeka Okafor. Both had tons of praise for Dwight, saying what a monster he is at such a young age. Ryan said he would take Dwight, while Wilbon said he would take both.
Let's face it, games like the Magic had against MEM are going to happen again over the course of the season. Hopefully, it won't be as often as happened last season. We have a young team, and our coach sometimes has trouble making adjustments during the course of a game.
Having said that, I still am very optimistic that this team can win 48-50+ games and make a deep playoff run. The season's only 11 games old, and we're 7-4. The players and coaching staff can learn from their mistakes.
In Steve Kerr's weekly rankings on Yahoo Sports, he has the Magic rated 6th in the NBA, up from 11 the previous week... pretty good!
At 9:49 AM,
Matt said…
Hey Introvert316. I am glad that you are back. We missed your insights. Don't you ever go on a long sabbatical without proper warning!
As for Mike, the ultimate optimist, I would agree with you about the prospect of the Magic despite the shortcomings of the coach, and I have to add GM's since he shows no signs of correcting the coach, provided every thing in real life go in a linear manner. That, however, is not the case. Teams cannot lag along and hope that the current pace may hold. Unexpected events can cause bad shortfalls and ruin a team's prospect in a heart beat. Hill has this amazingly stupid idea of dividing games into sets of 5 shooting to win 3 out of 5. Even a high school coach can group games better than that!
To me, as it stands right now, Bulls have a higher chance of turning their season around than Magic winning 48-50 games.
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