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, February 21, 2007

Grant Hill's return fails to spark Magic in loss to NY

The Magic (27-27, 9-17 away), beginning a very difficult stretch of games, were unable to overcome the host Knicks (24-30, 14-13 home) and lost 100-94, despite the return of GHill after missing 3 weeks.

The Magic were led by DHoward, who continued his impressive string of games with 27 pts on 9 of 13 FG and 14 rebs; JNelson 16 pts on 7 of 21 FGs; HTurkoglu 14 pts, 6 rebs; DMilicic 12 pts, 7 rebs; and KDooling off the bench with 11 pts. NY was led by Eddy Curry with 20 pts on 8 of 9 FGs; Jamal Crawford also with 20 pts; Quentin Richardson 15 pts; Stephon Marbury 14 pts; and David Lee off the bench with 14 pts, 16 rebs. Former Magic G Steve Francis scored 7 pts with 3 asts, and 4 TOs in reserve.

The Magic (36 of 85, 42.4%) outscored NY (31 of 63, 49.2%) from the field 77-70. The Magic made 5 of 13 3 pt FGs, while NY hit on 8 of 21. NY (30 of 37) had a solid edge at the FT line over the Magic (17 of 25). NY edged the Magic on the boards 42-40. NY had 21 TOs to the Magic's 16 TOs. NY had a 14/21 AST/TO ratio, while the Magic had a ratio of 14/16. The Knicks reserves outscored the Magic reserves 31-20.

Magic now fall back to .500 and a 7th place tie with MIA. NY is now just 3 games behind the Magic for the 8th seed. The Magic need to bounce back quickly, as they play the Eastern Conference leading Pistons in DET WED night.

posted by Mike from Illinois @ 12:14 AM  

13 Comments:

  • At 12:43 AM, Blogger Mike from Illinois said…

    As long as BHill continues to play Grant out of position at the shooting guard (only 4 FGA in 24 minutes for Grant) the team is going to struggle with consistency. As we've discussed here, Grant should be moved to small forward, either KBogans or KDooling as shooting guard, and HTurkoglu coming off the bench.

    Once again, JNelson takes way too many shots (21), makes too few (7), and is credited with just 2 asts in 30 minutes. CArroyo had 3 asts in just 17 minutes off the bench.

    As we feared, Redick's minutes were cut severely, as he played just 3 minutes.

    The top efficiency ratings for the Magic against NY: DHoward 85.4; KDooling 60.9; BOutlaw 50.0; and DMilicic 45.2. The worst: JNelson 23.3; HTurkoglu 21.1; GHill 12.5; PGarrity 11.1, and KBogans -0.4.

     

  • At 2:09 AM, Anonymous Anonymous said…

    excellent summary and stats, mike. howard's resurgence and milicic's progress are encouraging (the latter snipped only by foul trouble tonight), but we need a scorer. i'm not saying we must have a scorer before the trade deadline, but we must have one by the start of next season. jameer, grant, and hedo just can't shoulder the scoring load on their own.

    i agree that making hedo the backup SF is probably the right thing to do.

     

  • At 2:33 AM, Blogger OVERWADED said…

    This comment has been removed by the author.

     

  • At 2:41 AM, Blogger OVERWADED said…

    I didn't even know if I wanted to comment on this game. I'm still pissed about it. I saw so many bad things tonight it wasn't even funny; just frustrating.

    First, the Knicks suck; but they beat us.

    Second, the officiating was horrible.

    Third, Brian Hill was awful; what else is new?

    He had a classic substation in the 4th quarter. The Magic were down 7. Dwight was our biggest bright spot of the night, full of energy, and showing no signs of fatigue. With 6 minutes to go in the game, B Hill took Dwight out and put Pat Garrity in the game. The lead quickly jumped to 10, the highest of the night. There is no way to justify this move. Either Dwight should have gotten some rest earlier, or he was going to play out the game. JUST AWFUL.

    We had to love Redick checking in for the 1st time with 50 seconds to go in the 3rd quarter. Even better, still cold off the bench Redick jacks a 3 at the end of the 3rd, and walks off the court with a stone cold face. He didn't even try to fake a smile. I've made that look many times playing basketball, I'm pretty sure he was telling everyone to kiss his ass. You can tell he's frustrated, and he has a right to be.

    Fourth, G Hill, Turk, and Nelson all looked pretty bad. It doesn't help that G Hill is still playing out of position. And of course it doesn't help that Brian Hill insists on closing the game with the guys he wants to "just because" even when they are all off.

    Five, Dooling, Outlaw, and Arroyo didn't play bad; but they didn't impact the game either. However, this was one of Dooling better games. Still, he doesn't spread the floor. More than one time the ball was kicked out tonight, and there was nobody outside to shoot. We ended the game with only 5 made 3's.

    Six, Garrity was a waste of 10 minutes. I'm pretty sure all of them were in the 2nd half. He has no business being on the court in the 4th quarter. Anybody but him; he is USELESS.

    Seven, our two true shooting guards didn't play enough to comment about their play. Bogans played 5 minutes, and Redick played 3. Can we please make a trade? I just want to see guys playing the position they should be in. This out of position stuff has got to stop.

    Eight, Dwight and Darko (who was in foul trouble) where the only 2 guys that played well. There is no excuse for our offense to look so bad when we have 2 bigs playing so well.

    That's all I got, I feel a little better now. I just needed to rant. Now onto Detroit; I'll be very surprised if we're still above .500 after tomorrow night's game.

     

  • At 7:48 AM, Blogger Matt said…

    Awful; NY was trying hard to handover the game to the Magic, and they refused to take it. This comes down to Hill's lack of communication skills to inspire the team for the games, besides his other shortcomings that are well documented. How is it possible that your high energy guy is the one with the busiest weekend?

     

  • At 9:26 AM, Blogger WeRDevos said…

    Trade Hill. Dump Garrity. Win games.

     

  • At 11:03 AM, Blogger OVERWADED said…

    I know we've talked about this before and I know only one other guy agrees with me; but something has to change with Grant Hill.

    I felt like I've watched his miss a few games-have an off game routine comeback way to many times. I know he's a "class-act", but it seems like everyone does nothing but make excuses for him because he's a great guy. I don't have to explain why, look at his numbers last night. Sure, he's playing out of position, but he has been all year; at least Jameer and Turk were attempting to make something happen, where it was hard to tell what Grant was doing for 24 minutes out there. But as normal, it was just a shaking off the rust type of game for him. He'll score 15-20 in one of these next games, probably sit out one after, and all will still be forgiven. A move needs to be made. At the very least, he needs to move to small forward, even though I'd rather it be to the bench, or another team if the price was right.

     

  • At 12:08 PM, Blogger Showtime said…

    It's sad to see such a good team brought down by bad decisions.

     

  • At 12:24 PM, Blogger Ken said…

    I'm fed up!!

    I'm fed up with Turkglues inconsistent playing. He's killing the team. Sure every player has their share of off nights, but he has enough for the whole team. He has one, maybe two decent games, then sucks for the next 10. He needs to go! Or at the very least start bringing him off the bench in a limited reserve role.

    I'm fed up with Nelsons erratic play and his refusal to pass the ball to anyone. He dribbles into the paint, gets in trouble, leaves his feet, and generally turns the ball over. His shot selection is terrible.

    I'm fed up with BHS's empty promises to get more out of this team and his bullshit excuses. He was handed 2 talented big men that he has no clue how to play. It still worries me that Dwight and Darko and are going to waste on this team. His lousy substitutions and his love for Garrity are sickening.

    I'm fed up with, after waiting over 3 years to finally get Grant Hill back, that is is pretty much, ineffective. Yes he is a class act and an up-standing guy and a respected member of the community. But, I was hoping for a little more veteran leadership from him on the floor. At one time, even when the rest of the team was stinking up the arena, you could always count on GHill to drive to the basket and make something happen. Now we don't even see that.

    There are other things i'm fed up with about this team and management, but all i'm going to write for now...

     

  • At 12:50 PM, Blogger Big Figure said…

    This is what i said in my pregame analysis,when you move darko into the starting line-up,you have to rely more on pat and bo with battie out,they combined for 2pts.Take away keyon's 11pts and the rest of the bench combined for 9pts,carlos(4),keith(0),Bo(2),JJ(3),Pat(0),what this magnifies really is how bad our drafts have been.Our bench maybe the worst in the east,if our two best shooters arent going to play,then what we have is,carlos,keyon,pat and bo getting major minutes while battie is out,Pathetic.Our second unit behind dwight and darko could field good middle first round talent at the big positions over the last three drafts,but were stuck with battie,pat,and bo's old asses.

     

  • At 1:02 PM, Blogger Big Figure said…

    The only thing that will help this team is a new vision,someone that is willing to make the players on this team earn their spots in the rotation,and that means in a pre-season training camp where there wont be any favoritism,only a new coach can do that.Sad to say but we're stuck with this team for the rest of this season,and i said a while back they may miss the play-offs because its a reality.

     

  • At 2:18 PM, Blogger OVERWADED said…

    I don't think our bench is weak BIG. If you add Ariza and Battie to our bench, all the sudden we're not weak at all.

    Our drafts have been pretty solid too. Howard and Nelson was a great draft for us. Fran was a bust because the loser never showed. But Diener and Redick were also good pickups. However, the coach doesn't play either of these guys. Whose fault is that?

    We do need one other big man, that's for sure.

    We have 4 PG's, two of them play their natural position, one plays out of position when he shouldn’t be, and the other rarely plays when he should be.

    We have 2 shooting guards, both of which rarely play when they have both proven; when given time they can be productive and consistent.

    Hedo is playing some of the streakiest basketball I've ever seen in my life. Check his last 6 games of stats; they range from 2 to 24 PPG with a bunch of numbers in between.

    Grant Hill is now back, but he isn't playing small forward, where he should be. He should be sharing the time with Hedo, especially while Ariza is out. This would also let us play Bogans in Redick as they should be.

    Redick and Bogans were both putting up numbers before Dooling and Hill came back. I might add that even though Dooling had a "good game" last night with 11 points, Redick has averaged 11 points a game over the last 7, until last night when he only played 3 minutes.

    Our problems...

    Three of our "starters" are inconsistent. We never know what we're going to get out of Nelson, Hill, or Turk.

    Brian Hill; he has no clue what so ever how to play these guys. He continues to prove this more every game. The fact that Bogans and Redick are back to not playing; after they played consistent basketball boggles my mind. Oh wait, we got our PG Dooling and SF Hill back to play their SG position?!?!?!?!?!

    The fact of the matter is, our coach SUCKS...PERIOD.

     

  • At 2:27 PM, Blogger tdawg said…

    I don't see the Magic being a contender with Nelson as the point. Think of what Howard or Milic could do if their point guard was taking 20 or so shots.

     

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