The Magic look to bounce back after losing their first game of the season when they host the Phoenix Suns Wednesday night. Both teams will be on the second night of back-to-backs. Phoenix and Orlando both looked to start the season 4-0 on Tuesday night but only the Suns were successful, defeating the Heat 104-96. The Magic lost in Detroit, 85-80.
Grant Hill spent six seasons with the Magic while Matt Barnes played for the Suns last season.
The game starts at 7:00 pm EST and can be seen on Sun Sports. As always, if you can’t see the game, you can hear it locally on WDBO 580 AM and in Spanish on WONQ AM 1030.
Mickael Pietrus is listed as doubtful with flu-like symptons and Vince Carter’s status is currently up in the air.
Leandro Barbosa did not play in last night’s game against Miami and is listed as day to day with a wrist injury.
The Line: Orlando -8
Starters
Phoenix
Channing Frye
Amare Stoudemire
Grant Hill
Jason Richardson
Steve Nash
Orlando
Dwight Howard
Ryan Anderson
Vince Carter
J.J. Redick
Jameer Nelson
Last Meeting: The Magic defeated the Suns 111-99 on March 3, 2009 at Amway Arena. Rashard Lewis led the Magic with 29 points and 12 rebounds and Dwight Howard had 21 points and 8 rebounds, but the real story of the game was Shaq’s flop. O’Neal flopped on a play when he was guarded by Dwight Howard and was called out by his former Coach, Stan Van Gundy for it. Jason Richardson led the Suns with 27 points.
Season Series: The Magic and Suns split last season’s series. In their first meeting, back on December 12, 2008 in Phoenix, The Suns won 113-112 when Grant Hill hit a reverse layup with 2.7 seconds to go after Hedo Turkoglu hit a jumper with 7.2 seconds left to put the Magic on top. Rashard Lewis missed the game-winning 3-pointer at the buzzer. Dwight Howard left the game with a sore knee after scoring 19 points in 22 minutes. The Suns had a 10-point lead going into the fourth quarter.
Jason Richardson averaged 24 points per game in the series last year.
About the Magic: The Magic are coming off their first loss of the season and it was an ugly loss at that. The Magic had 15 turnovers, shot 36.7% from the field and 28.6% from downtown. Stan Van Gundy thought that no one outside of Jason Williams and Matt Barnes had a good game. Dwight Howard injured his shoulder but returned to the game. Vince Carter could not finish the game due to his ankle injury so his status is up in the air. Mickael Pietrus is still day-to-day after missing the last two games with flu-like symptoms.
About the Suns: The Suns couldn’t have asked for a better start. They are one of three remaining unbeaten teams in the NBA at 4-0. T he Suns are fresh off of a win against the Heat in Miami on Tuesday night and will complete their sunshine state tour tonight. Phoenix trailed by 6 heading into the fourth quarter, but the Suns dominated the Heat and gave them their first loss. Steve Nash is leading the way, averaging 12.5 assists per game. Grant Hill has been fantastic, leading the team in rebounding at 10.3 per game to go along with 17.5 points per game. The Suns have six players averaging at least 15.7 ppg (Nash, Richardson, Amare Stoudemire, Hill, Channing Frye and Leandro Barbosa). The Suns are shooting an astonishing 51.4% from the field and 48.8% from downtown.
With Shaq out of the picture, the Suns are back to their old ways of running up and don’t the court and scoring in bunches. They are averaging 114 points per game. If the Magic don’t shoot the ball decidedly better, they could be in for a long night, because without a lot of improvement on the defensive end, I don’t see the Magic doing much to slow the Suns down. Fortunately for the Magic, the Suns do give up 104 points per game, so if Orlando is focused and their shooting woes don’t continue, they could beat the Suns in a shootout.
(Andrew Melnick is Howard the Dunk’s lead blogger and a contributor at NFL Mocks Subscribe to his RSS feed and add him on Twitter to follow him daily.)