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.

Monday, January 08, 2007

Magic move back in first with win over BOS

Despite scoring just 33 second half pts, the Magic (21-14, 14-6 home) relied on their tough defense to outlast BOS (12-21, 8-10 away) 87-79, in a foul-filled game. Both teams combined for 57 fouls and 79 FT attempts. Thanks to TOR's victory over WAS earlier on SUN, the Magic are now a game ahead of WAS.

The Magic were led by GHill, in his first game action in over a week, with 21 pts (13 of 14 FTs) and 8 rebs; DHoward with 18 pts, 12 rebs; TBattie 11 pts, 10 rebs; DMilicic led the bench with 12 pts 4 rebs. HTurkoglu added 9 pts. Tony Allen led BOS with 21 pts, 9 rebs; Wally Szczerbiak added 13 pts.

The stats for both teams were not pretty. The Magic (27 of 72, 37.5%) outscored BOS (23 of 73, 31.5%) from the field 55-50. ORL was just 1 of 5 from 3 pt range, while BOS was 4 of 18. The Magic (32 of 45, 71.1%) had the edge at the FT line (29 of 34, 85.3%). The Magic crushed BOS on the boards 51-31. The Magic were plagued by TOs with 21, and had a poor AST/TO ratio of 15/21, while the Celtics were even worse at 9/17. The Magic bench outscored the BOS bench 22-18.

Very important win for the Magic, as they have now won 4 in a row before heading out West for 4 games; overall, 6 of their next 7 will be on the road. The first game will be WED night at GS.

posted by Mike from Illinois @ 2:01 AM  

7 Comments:

  • At 2:27 AM, Blogger Mike from Illinois said…

    More comments and observations from taking in the game at Amway Arena:
    - The Magic victory now makes 8 games in a row that the Magic have won with me in attendance. Too bad I have to go back to IL on TUE.
    - Jameer just didn't have it shooting-wise, but at least he only turned the ball over twice.
    - Carlos struggled with 5 TOs in just 17 minutes. He looks like he's really trying hard, but it's like every time he makes a mistake he starts pressing trying to make up for it, and proceeds to commit more mistakes. He needs to play ball and stop worrying. As you guys have pointed out, Travis will deserve some minutes over Carlos unless Carlos can get more consistent.
    - The crowd really got charged up in the forth quarter, when a couple bad calls were made against the Magic, and when the flagrant foul was called on Darko. The guy sitting next to me thought the refs were trying to hand the Celtics the game; but when you look at the stats, BOS was called for 31 fouls, the Magic 26 fouls. The Magic also had 45 FT attempts, to 34 attempts for BOS. If the Magic had made more of their FTs, the game would have been put away a lot sooner than it was.
    - All the careless TOs by the Magic didn't help any either.
    - Trevor wasn't his usual explosive, energetic self, but Darko was very aggressive and had a good all-around game.
    - Nice job by Battie. He was active on both ends of the floor, and he wasn't hesitant in shooting.
    - I thought Redick deserved to see some playing time this game, especially in the second half with the team shooting so poorly.
    - Of course, very good game for Grant; nice to see him making FT after FT.

     

  • At 4:51 AM, Blogger OVERWADED said…

    BULLET TIME

    Mike, I think you beat me to the punch. Let's see, what can I add...

    There were some horrible calls throughout the 4th quarter. Two of which that come to mind were basically 4 point plays. You mentioned one, the so called flagrant foul on Darko, where his elbow didn't get anywhere near the other players face. Second, the 3 point shot where the little troll tried to jump into Carlos, and I guess he succeeded. Then Carlos was called for a TECH, because you're not aloud to be human anymore in the NBA. The Magic should have run away with this game by over 20, but every time they started to, some crazy call was made.

    As for the FTA's, that could be valid point if Paul Pierce was playing. But without Pierce, they have nobody who should be getting to the FT line on a regular basis.

    I hate Brian Scalabrine as much as I hate Pat Garrity. How is this guy in the NBA? It's embarrassing...

    Speaking of embarrassing; you have to go no further than Michael Olowokandi.

    Tonight Battie plays the same 20 minutes he always plays, with the flu, and pretty much doubles all his normal game stats? Go figure...

    Now that G Hill is back we should expect to see Redick a lot less. Once Dooling is back, we can expect to see Redick never again.

    I’ll continue to say the Magic are back. This road trip should give us a little more indication where the team is at. Mike, maybe you should fly out west with the team before you head back to Chi-Town!

     

  • At 2:39 PM, Blogger Mike from Illinois said…

    I was looking at the archives of our blog the other night, and JAN 6th was the one year anniversary of our blog!

    We still have 6 of the original 9 contributors. We haven't heard from Tragic Fan, the other Mike, or Pete in quite a long time.

    It's always nice to see comments posted from other people who read our blog.

    Great job everyone! Hopefully the blog will continue to gain more of an audience.

     

  • At 4:20 PM, Blogger Matt said…

    Nice dig, Mike. This blog has turned into a very informative forum with a nice combination of objective and subjective views. The subjective part comes into play when one puts his heart and passion into it, without which the blog could turn into a boring sports writing of the type that Orlando Sentinel stands for. Special gratitude goes to Mike with his clockwork pregame postings.

    Congratulations to all contributors. I wish that all the original contributors come on sometimes to say hello, if nothing else. I went back and glanced over some of the postings, and out of the three who have been silent for a while, Pete had the most meaningful contribution.

     

  • At 4:32 PM, Blogger Big Figure said…

    Another good victory,and you guys did a good job and pretty much pointed out everything,i'll add two things.(1)Its great to see grant get out on the break,taking his two steps without a dribble,without traveling and dunking the basketball like a youngster,we all pray he can make it 40 more games and have a healthy playoff appearance.(2)This was a good game to win seeing that boston used all kinds of small line-ups,they didnt double much but their lack of size gave them a speed advantage which caused us to always have shooters in our faces which lead to bad shooting performances from jameer and hedo,being able to win when your perimeter offense is being challenged so well and the team finding other ways to score is a great sign,we're gonna need some more defensive performances and finding other ways to score on this west coast trip because we'll see small ball again the first night,in golden state.

     

  • At 5:55 PM, Blogger Matt said…

    My apologies to mike for overlooking his post-game postings.

     

  • At 9:39 PM, Blogger Mike from Illinois said…

    Thanks Matt!

    I almost forgot... thanks to WeRDevos for starting up the blog last JAN, and thanks to him and Matt for inviting me to be a contributor. It's really cool exchanging our views, opinions, and ideas about the Magic here.

     

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