Orlando Magic Blog

Group Blog talking about the NBA 2009 Eastern Conference Champions. Due to the amazing success of the 2009 playoff run comments are now frequently deleted to kill offensive comments, incoherence, or asininity. Comments can no longer be anonymous and require either a Blogger or OpenID account.

Wednesday, November 15, 2006

Reserves carry Magic over DEN for 3rd win in a row

The Magic were able to overcome 26 TOs, 34 pts from DEN SF Carmelo Anthony, and below average games from DHoward and JNelson, thanks to strong bench play and hot long-range shooting in a 108-99 win over DEN. The Magic are now 6-3 and have won 5 out of their last 6.

KDooling led the way off the bench with 25 pts on 8 of 14 shooting, including 5 of 5 from 3 pt range. CArroyo had another nice performance off the bench with 14 pts, 5 assists, and just 1 TO. HTurkoglu added 18 pts and GHill 15. Dwight scored 9 pts on 2 of 5 shooting with 8 rebounds, while Jameer scored just 7 pts on 3 of 10 shooting and 4 TOs. TAriza added 9 pts, while Darko struggled with 4 pts, 4 TOs and 5 fouls in just 13 minutes. For DEN, J.R. Smith scored 17 pts in addition to Anthony's 34.

The Magic (34 of 68, 50%) outscored DEN (32 of 75, 42.7%) from the field 78-68. The Magic shot a sizzling 10 of 16 from 3 pt range, compared to just 4 of 16 for DEN. DEN (31 of 43, 72.1%) had the slight edge at the FT line (ORL 30 of 40, 75%). ORL won the rebounding battle 43-36. The Magic had a very poor assist/turnover ratio at 16-26, while DEN had a ratio of 17-19. The Magic bench was huge, outscoring the DEN bench 57-18.

The strong Magic depth continues to be such an asset. Outstanding shooting and pretty good defense by the Magic in holding DEN to 7 pts under their season average were enough to overcome all the TOs. Magic now lead ATL by 1 game in the SE and have 3 days before hosting CHA.

posted by Mike from Illinois @ 10:56 PM  

6 Comments:

  • At 11:18 AM, Blogger Matt said…

    The high turnover rate is an indication of two things:

    1 - the lack of proper offensive sets that have been practiced over and over. That has been expected since it is not Hill's strong suit.

    2 - Players having the freedom to improvise in the absence of proper offensive sets.

    Of the two, the former is considered a negative while the latter is a positive derived from the talent and depth. Hill will eventually attempt to clean up the turnovers by establishing simple offensive sets, but that is not necessarily a good thing since it restricts the players' freedom. There should be a happy medium rather than the stark trade-off between the two extremes.

     

  • At 12:14 PM, Blogger Big Figure said…

    Turnovers are a case of players not valueing the ball,darko had four turovers,and they we're aggressive tactics by the nuggets swipeing at the ball anytime he got it in the post,same thing for dwight a night earlier with 8 turnovers,also all of the turnovers seem to happen when jameer is on the court,carlos comes in and somehow everything looks fine,he finds poeple and runs the pick and role with perfection,also "WITH" hill's offensive gameplan carlos still finishes games with low turnovers,i think he had one last night which is a great example of nothing being wrong with the offense,i blame the players,last night dwight got on jameer at half court which you never see,jameer threw a pass to dwight down low that got stolen,and dwight was very upset that jameer threw the pass so late when he had his man sealed of for so long,lack of focus causes turnovers,and jameer didnt seem to have a great deal of focus last night,carlos & keyon come in and it looks like the best show on parkay. Just my opinion of what i'm seeing,but except for the turnovers great win for the magic,i think they learned a good lesson from the nuggets last night,even when you play a lackluster first half,it doesnt have to carry over to the second half.

     

  • At 2:48 PM, Blogger WeRDevos said…

    I was convinced last year that the basic nine man rotation the last 22 games was a great team.

    Now with Ariza back the Magic are running the same basic nine guys with Hill replacing Stevenson and Bogans. They don't show Magic games in Ohio hotel rooms, but the box scores look nicely balanced and encouraging.

     

  • At 3:39 PM, Blogger Mike from Illinois said…

    In the three games prior to the DEN game last night, Nelson had improved his ball-handling and play-making with an assist/turnover ratio of 16-8. Last night, he kind of struggled with a 4-4 ratio. Arroyo came in off the bench with a superb 5-1 assist/TO ratio.

    Chris Paul, the talented pt guard for the Hornets, last night had an incredible assist/TO ratio of 13-0 in a Hornet upset win at DET.

    For the season, Nelson's assist/TO ratio is 34-34, while Arroyo's is 28-12 (about 2.3-1).

    Jameer is shooting the ball well and scoring, averaging 15.3 ppg on 58.2% shooting, while Carlos is doing outstanding off the bench averaging 11.8 ppg on 54.1% shooting.

    I'm confident that Jameer will improve the assist/TO ratio, but it will probably never be as good as Arroyo's, with Arroyo being a more "true" pt guard.

     

  • At 7:39 PM, Blogger Mike from Illinois said…

    Hey Matt... nice job at predicting the final score for the Magic/Denver game; you came pretty close.

    Another positive trend these last two games is that BHill has not used PGarrity at all. Garrity's shooting touch has deserted him this season, shooting just 25% from the field and 11% from 3 pt range... and long-range shooting is supposed to be his specialty.

    Since we have so many other players doing well off the bench, and with two other good long-range shooters in Travis Diener and J.J. Redick yet to see hardly any action, I wouldn't be surprised to see the Magic unload Garrity's expiring contract on some team.

    At least Bo Outlaw can play halfway decent defense, which Garrity can't. As we all know, if Pat's shots aren't falling, he's a liability on the court. BHill might just be starting to realize that.

     

  • At 1:03 PM, Blogger WeRDevos said…

    I feel like I'm beating a dead horse talking about Garrity. He is by far the worst player on the roster.

    Go to 82games.com and look for yourself. Defense goes to hell when he is on the court.

    The interesting piece of data there is Garrity has zero minutes of clutch time so far this year. (4th quarter or overtime, less than 5 minutes left, neither team ahead by more than 5 points) so the organization at least knows he sucks. Maybe they really are trying to showcase him for a trade.

    But they don't have to do that. He'll never be more valuable than his expiring contract.

    Give those minutes to Ariza, he's fun to watch.

     

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