Finally.
The Orlando Magic defeated the Detroit Pistons 110-103 on Friday night at Amway Arena. Detroit had won 29 of the previous 35 games against the Magic, eliminating them from the playoffs in 2003, 2007 and 2008 and entered the game with six straight victories over the Magic including a series sweep last season.
With that being said, it’s always good to get a win, but the Magic did not play well at all.
Orlando came out on fire. They scored 18 of the first 21 points in the game and had a 40-23 lead at the end of the first quarter. The Magic scored just 80 total points against the Pistons on Tuesday. Orlando shot 73.7% in the quarter (14-of-19) and were 5-of-7 from downtown. The Pistons shot just 45.5% (10-of22) and committed seven fouls.
The Magic made just 22 field goals the rest of the way and shot 38.5% from the field in the final three quarters, finishing at 47.4% for the game. It was even worse from behind the three-point line. After going 5-of-7 in the first quarter (71.4%), the Magic shot 14% the rest of the way (3-of-21) to finish just 8-of-28 for the game (28.6%). After committing just three fouls in the first quarter, the Magic finished with 27 fouls with 19 of them coming in the second half.
The Magic scored just 18 points in the second quarter and took a 58-43 lead into the half. Magic Head Coach Stan Van Gundy was not pleased, walking into the locker room before time ran out.
After a fairly even and frustrating third quarter, the Magic still led by 14 entering the final period of play.
That’s when Charlie Villanueva took over.
Villanueva was 9-of-12 and scored 22 of his 28 points in the fourth quarter. Villanueva hit a jumper with 3:04 left to cut Orlando’s lead to six, their smallest lead since the opening minute of the game. Detroit, usually an offensively-challenged team playing without Richard Hamilton and Tayshaun Prince, scored 35 points in the final quarter. The Magic answered with two Matt Barnes’ free throws and were able to win a free throw contest down the stretch to win the game.
To make matters worse, the Magic lost Ryan Anderson to a sprained ankle. Anderson had an excellent first quarter, starting the game 4-of-4 from the field. He finished the game with 11 points, but left in the game with a sprained ankle. His did not return. He is due for an MRI on Saturday and we should know more about his status after that.
The Magic were already without Vince Carter (injured ankle), Rashard Lewis (suspension) and Anthony Johnson (death of his father in law), leaving them with just eight players. Combine that with Orlando’s late game foul trouble (Howard fouled out, J.J. Redick had 5 and Matt Barnes and Jameer Nelson each had 4) and you’ve got a recipe for disaster. As bad as the Magic played, they did still come out with a win against a team that his owned them over the last several years when you’re short-handed.
Still, Magic Head Coach Stan Van Gundy was not pleased with the team’s effort and performance and thinks they have a lot of work to do to catch up to a team like Boston and become a truly great team.
It looked like the Magic coasted after getting an early lead. Van Gundy agreed.
"“I thought we were just trying to win a regular-season game. We weren’t really making a push to be great.”"
Van Gundy said that great teams play like the Boston Celtics.
"“You do what Boston does. You know, you’re up 15, 18, 20 at the end of the third and then you play your best quarter of the night in the fourth. You don’t cruise on it. To me, Boston is head and shoulders above everybody in the league and it’s not close. Now, that doesn’t mean it can’t be at the end of the year, but right now, it’s not close. They basically try to play every minute of every game. That’s not what we’re doing.”"
Before I get into Dwight Howard’s play, I’d like to congratulate the big man on breaking the team record for blocks when he swatted a Ben Gordon shot in the first quarter, the 825th of his career.
As upset as Van Gundy was with the game, he sounded pleased with Howard’s play.
"“What saved us is, I thought is that Dwight made great plays against the double team and got us some good shots.”"
Howard was double and triple teamed throughout the game and did a very good of passing out of the double and triple teams, which is something that was considered to be a weakness coming into the season. Out of Howard’s other two glaring weaknesses – foul trouble and free throw shooting – only one was a negative today. Howard did not pick up a foul in the first half but still wound up fouling out on a call that was iffy at best. Howard did play over 38 minutes Friday night, so it was still an improvement over the last two games. Howard’s free throw shooting has been fantastic lately. He had another good night at the line, going 8-of-9. Howard opened the season with three consecutive double-doubles, but due to his foul trouble leading to a lack of minutes, he went two games without one. That changed Friday night. Howard finished with 22 points on 7-of-8 shooting and had 12 rebounds. Howard also had 3 assists and 2 blocks.
Matt Barnes had another outstanding game. He made a few key plays to keep the Magic afloat when they were struggling and the Pistons got hot. Barnes is always diving for loose balls ad doing whatever it takes to win. Friday, he got a huge offensive rebound with the Magic nursing a 7-point lead late in the game and dished out an assist to widen Orlando’s lead. He finished with a season-high 18 points and added 9 rebounds, 3 assists and a steal. Barnes made some very good passes in the game and could have had an even better stat-line if Anderson and Howard didn’t have butter fingers on a few plays.
Stan Van Gundy still considers defense from the Power Forward a weakness, but he loves what he’s been getting offensively. Brandon Bass scored 13 points on 5-of-9 shooting off of the bench and Van Gundy was very happy to see Bass crash the boards a little more, grabbing six rebounds. Bass hit a big baseline jumper to extend Orlando’s lead to 100-91 after Matt Barnes grabbed an offensive rebound and dished him the rock. The play of the night came when Bass had a thunderous put-back dunk after a Jameer Nelson miss.
Jameer Nelson had another solid offensive game. He’s doing a much better job of setting up his teammates. He finished with 18 points on 8-of-15 shooting, but had 8 assists (and 3 turnovers).
Mickael Pietrus had a nightmare game shooting-wise off of the bench. He was just 1-of-8 from the field and scored 3 points.
Marcin Gortat looked good in the first half, but still saw just under 13 minutes, scoring 2 points, grabbing 2 rebounds and blocking 2 shots.
J.J. Redick couldn’t get into a good rhythm tonight but he continues to show that he’s a player in this league and just in time too (He’ll be a restricted free agent at season’s end). Redick hit a few shots (3-of-6 from downtown, 3-of-7 overall) and even had an early fading 3-pointer that was reminiscent of his days at Duke.
Game Notes:
- The Pistons scored over 100 points for the first time this season. They average just 91.8 points per game.
- Detroit took just 4 free throw attempts in the first half but finished 23-of-37 for the game.
- There were way too many whistles in this game. The officials were calling everything.
- Orlando finished 30-of-35 from the line. Orlando attempted just 16 free throws in their loss to Detroit on Tuesday night.
- The Magic average over 117 points per game at home and just 100 points per game on the road and just under 109 points per game overall.
- Dwight Howard is now 33-of-41 from the line over his last 4 games.
- Orlando and Detroit both committed just 11 turnovers but combined to commit 71 fouls.
- Magic Head Coach Stan Van Gundy credits Pistons Guard Will Bynum’s defense as a reason Orlando has had so much trouble with the Pistons this season.
- Detroit’s three guards combined to score 63 of Detroit’s 85 points on Tuesday, but had just 46 of the Pistons’ 103 points on Friday night.
- Rodney Stuckey torched Orlando again, going for 20 points, but their other two guards had poor offensive days. Ben Gordon shot just 5-of-17 from the field, finishing with 19 points while Will Bynum hit just 2 field goals, scoring 7 points.
Final Thought: The Magic were very short-handed and played poorly, but still got a win over a team that had won six straight games against them.
Final Thought II: It would be nice to see this deep and talented Magic team to play at full strength for once.
(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.)