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.

Thursday, December 21, 2006

Magic hold on to beat Hornets

For the eighth game in a row, the Magic (17-10, 10-4 home) were held to under 90 pts, but hung on to beat another injury-plagued team, NO/OKC (10-13, 5-8 road) 86-83. JNelson, HTurkoglu, and KBogans all sat out for the Magic, while Peja Stojakovic, David West, and Bobby Jackson sat out for NO.

GHill had another good game, leading the Magic with 21 pts, 7 rebs. DHoward added a double-double with 16 pts, 13 rebs. TAriza, starting at SF, added 14 pts, and TDiener led the reserves with 13 pts (3 of 7 3 pt FG) including 10 4th quarter pts. CArroyo had a solid 6/1 AST/TO ratio. Chris Paul led NO with 19 pts 10 asts, Jannero Pargo led their reserves with 16 pts, Rasual Butler 15 pts, and Desmond Mason 14 pts.

The Magic (33 of 73, 45.2%) outscored NO (24 of 65, 36.9%) from the floor 69-54. NO shot 6 of 9 from 3 pt range, while the Magic shot 3 of 10 from long range. NO (29 of 38) had the edge from the FT line (ORL 17 of 25). The Magic had a slight edge rebounding 39-38. Both teams had 19 TOs, while the Magic had the better AST/TO ratio of 16/19, compared to 12/19 for NO. The NO bench outscored the Magic bench 31-21.

Again, not a pretty statistical game for the Magic, but a win is a win. Nice job by Diener sparking the team in the 4th quarter with a couple threes. GHill looks solid after sitting out a couple games. Golden St. visits ORL on FRI night.

posted by Mike from Illinois @ 2:03 AM  

5 Comments:

  • At 2:20 AM, Blogger Mike from Illinois said…

    The Chris Paul dunk over Dwight was the SportsCenter Number 2 play of the night. But the Magic got the most important thing, the win.

     

  • At 10:19 AM, Blogger Big Figure said…

    To me,chris paul's dunk was sick,but he didnt really dunk on dwight,it wasnt like dwight was standing under the basket and paul went up over him like vince did mourning or some of the other dunks we've seen,dwight was chasing him off of a pick and roll and really had no chance at the shot because paul had already picked up his dribble,dwight trying to block the shot from behind made it look like he got dunked on,just my opinion. The game itself was poorly coached by both sides,i thought bsh got lucky and ran into a coach that actually did a worse job than he did.

     

  • At 1:59 PM, Blogger OVERWADED said…

    I thought it was kind of obvious that Dwight was chasing him and never had a chance to block the shot. From a certain angle it'll still make a nice poster; but the Magic still won the game.

    I guess I don't watch the Hornets enough. I mean, I know Chris Paul has been anointed as an up and coming "superstar" already, but I didn’t realize he was going to get D-Wade treatment from the officials.

    How many times did the officials call fouls on obvious flops?

    Diener continues to impress and finish games.

    No Redick; already?

    Still, it was a win, and that's what matters.

     

  • At 7:35 PM, Blogger Matt said…

    This was pathetic. Playing at home against a team with a short bench comprised of two rookie starters and journeymen like Pargo and likes, we barely won. I don't buy that two of our starters were out, since we had quality replacements. Garrity steals minutes from J.J. and Darko. The last 37 seconds basically showed how clueless Hill is; he is thinking that NO is going to foul (that is what Matt Goukas said too) and brought in his best free throw shooters, including guess who, Garrity. But who fouls with 37 seconds left, down by 3 points? NO didn't foul and stole the ball from Carlos. Byron Scott is no fool, and he decided to run the play with no time-out while Magic had a weaker defensive line-up on the floor. Luckily for us, they took a bad shot and lost.

    What bug me is that this team has a lot of talents, but no clear direction of what needs to be done on the court. We could have simply lost this game if it was not for Travis's timely 3-pointers.

     

  • At 7:43 PM, Blogger Matt said…

    To finish my points, NO thought they could run with the Magic, and they got their behind kicked in the first quarter. Then they reverted to what all teams do; packed in the paint and stopped slashers and dared the Magic to beat them from the perimeter. That is when you bring in J.J. and Hill didn't. The first player off the bench was Keyon. Then in the third quarter you start with Carlos, Grant, Trevor, Dwight and Tony. You must be in trouble because your best shooter out of the bunch is Grant. It does not take rocket science to figure that out. Does it?

     

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