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.

Sunday, December 10, 2006

Magic barely hang on to edge 76ers

The 76ers (5-14, 2-10 road) playing without star G Allen Iverson, had several chances late in the game to tie or even take the lead, but failed. The Magic (15-7, 8-2 home), thanks to DHoward's 28 pts 12 rebs, survived 86-84.

GHill added 23 pts 7 rebs. TAriza off the bench was the only other Magic player in double figures with 13 pts. JNelson added 8 pts 7 assists. KBogans started in place of the injured HTurkoglu and played 6 scoreless minutes. PHI was led by Chris Webber and Andre Iguodala with 19 pts apiece. Kyle Korver scored 16 pts off the bench and Sam Dalembert added 12 pts. Howard, Hill, and Ariza combined to shoot 27 of 42 for ORL. The rest of the team, a mere 10 of 41.

The Magic (37 of 83, 44.6%) outscored PHI (34 of 65, 52.3%) from the field 74-70. PHI was 2 of 8 on 3 pters, while the Magic shot a horrible 0-9 on 3's. PHI (14 of 21) outshot the Magic (12 of 20) from the FT line, but Steven Hunter's 4 misses were killers for the 76ers. The Magic dominated the boards 45-31, including 23-8 on the offensive end. The Magic did have a good assist/turnover ratio of 20-11, compared to 21-14 for PHI. The Sixers bench outscored the Magic bench 28-25.

The Magic are now 7-1 this season in games decided by 3 pts or less. Give Philly credit for giving the Magic a hard, tough game and hanging around until the very end despite the rough times they are undergoing as a team. Things will get much tougher for the Magic, as the red-hot Phoenix Suns visit MON night.

posted by Mike from Illinois @ 12:28 AM  

3 Comments:

  • At 1:02 AM, Blogger Mike from Illinois said…

    Well, on the positive side, at least the Magic won a game that Garrity played in.

    Another terrible night for the Magic shooting long-distance. If BHill is going to be stubborn and let NCAA player of the year J.J. Redick rot on the end of the bench, at least put Travis Diener in for several minutes instead of Garrity. Diener is more than capable of hitting several 3 pters (as is Redick). With the Magic's outside shooting really struggling now, other teams are going to pack their defense in and make things tougher for Dwight and Darko. As Big Figure has pointed out, Jameer needs to start driving to the basket more.

    Speaking of Darko, even though he is in a mini-funk now, it's not going to do him any good to play just 16 minutes like he did against PHI. He's got to play 25-30 minutes a game every night to continue to learn and improve. Fortunately, from the article I read in the Sentinel online, he seems very receptive to want to return to the Magic after this season.

    Why start Keith Bogans and have him play only 6 minutes? He did contribute 3 assists and a steal in that time. In the meantime, Dooling plays 34 minutes, and really struggles, shooting 3 of 11 with 4 rebs. Why didn't Bogans see any more playing time? It seems like BHill did a poor job with player rotation this game, or is there something I'm not aware of that made him use these rotations?

    The Magic were fortunate that PHI failed late in the game with the missed FTs and other opportunities.

    So many issues here, and yet we're still in first place in the East... thank goodness for Dwight... and Grant! I know it's early, but so far, Dwight is establishing himself as a legit MVP candidate.

     

  • At 8:53 AM, Blogger Matt said…

    Mike, you probably did not watch the game; Keith sprained his ankle and could not play afterwards.

    I don't worry much about Magic's shooting since they were a high-percentage shooting team prior to the long road trip. I expect the current slump to change when they get their legs back. I, however, am for getting Redick in at the expense of Garrity (I hope somebody would explain to me why Darko was taken out a short while after being put in and replaced by Garrity). I also agree that putting Trevor in place of Hedo, even for good, is not a bad idea. However, I understand the choice of putting Keith in SG position since Hill did not want to deplete SF position.

    Although PHI played well, despite the internal turmoil, Magic's struggle is alarming. They had many chances to put some distance between themselves and a struggling team and failed to capitalize on. I have three suggestions for Hill:

    1 - START DARKO.
    2 - Even when Hedo comes back, if his shooting slump continues, start Trevor.
    3 - Take J.J. out of the nice suit, and dress him up for action. That would allow for improving the SG position allowing for Grant to help SF position until Hedo comes back.

    These suggestions are in line with my conviction that starting and finishing groups are meant for totally different purposes. You start your best group to push the game out of reach when playing against inferior teams, early on. The same applies that you would not fall far behind when playing against superior or equal teams. The idea that it does not matter who starts but rather who finishes has some merits, provided appropriate minutes are given to players of certain values to the team, as well as proper combination of players being observed. In our case, the example would be playing Dwight and Darko together.

     

  • At 8:25 PM, Blogger Mike from Illinois said…

    Matt, thanks for the clarification on Bogans as to why he only played 6 minutes. As you pointed out, there were other problems with Hill's player rotation against the 76ers.

     

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