The Orlando Magic will try to bounce back from their loss to the Cleveland Cavaliers when they take on the New Jersey Nets on Friday night at Amway arena. This will be Orlando’s second meeting with the Nets in the season’s first 10 games.
The Magic enter the game at 6-3 while the Nets are yet to win a game in eight tries.
The Nets are coming off a 3-point home loss to the Philadelphia 76ers on Wednesday night.
Both teams are reeling – the Nets had just eight players available on Wednesday night. They could be without Chris Douglas-Roberts (swine flu). Devin Harris (groin), Courtney Lee (groin), Yi Jianlian (knee), Jarvis Hayes (hamstring), Keyon Dooling (hip), and Tony Battie (knee) will not play.
Update: Courtney Lee will miss the game while Chris Douglas-Roberts is expected to be in uniform but it is unknown if he will play. Click here to read about each player’s status.
The Magic, who are already missing Power Forwards Rashard Lewis, who is serving the final game of his 10-game suspension and Ryan Anderson, who remains unavailable with his sprained ankle, will not have Brandon Bass tonight due to the flu. Matt Barnes, Orlando’s starting Small Forward, is going to start at Power Forward.
The Magic will have just nine players available.
The Orlando Sentinel has the story here.
The Line: Magic – 15.5
Starters
Orlando
Dwight Howard
Matt Barnes
Mickael Pietrus
Vince Carter
Jameer Nelson
New Jersey
Brook Lopez
Josh Boone
Trenton Hassell
Terrance Williams
Rafer Alston
Last Meeting: These two teams met back on October 30. The Magic won the game 95-85 behind Dwight Howard’s 20 points and 22 rebounds. Vince Carter scored 16 points before leaving the game in the second quarter with a sprained ankle.
Courtney Lee and Devin Harris combined for 34 points but shot just 12-of-35 from the field. Former Magic Guard Rafer Alston, who will start tonight, had 10 points in the loss.
Season Series: The Magic lead the season series 1-0. They defeated the Nets 95-85 on October 30.
About the Magic: It’s all about defense for the Magic. They are not playing any. Jameer Nelson was lit up on defense for the third consecutive game. You know that former Magic Guard Rafer Alston, will have something to prove and would love to have a big game against Nelson, who’s return in last season’s NBA finals, took crunch-time minutes away from Alston.
Magic Center Dwight Howard had his game of the season against the Nets back on October 30, scoring 20 points and grabbing 22 rebounds. Magic Head Coach Stan Van Gundy is quite upset about Howard’s defense and lack of rebounding.
"“Dwight’s having trouble having double-figure rebound games. I mean, a guy that averaged 14 a game last year, go check the numbers. He’s rebounding. He’s blocked one shot in the last three games.”"
Howard is averaging just 10.6 rebounds per game after averaging 13.9 per game last season and 14.2 in 2007-08. Howard has had four single-digit rebounding efforts in nine games this season. He’s also averaging just 1.4 blocks per game.
About the Nets: Howard the Dunk talked to Mark Ginocchio of Nets R Scorching. You can find that here.
Brook Lopez has been excellent. He’s averaging 22.7 points per game over his last three games and is averaging 18.6 ppg and 8.5 rpg on the season. The Magic held Lopez to a season-low 11 points and 5 rebounds on October 30. Lopez was in foul trouble most of the night and had trouble getting anything going against Dwight Howard.
Rafer Alston, Orlando’s starting Point Guard for every game in the2009 postseason, has taken over the starting role because of Devin Harris’ groin injury. He has done a decent job of filling in for Harris. He’s averaging 10.5 ppg and 5.1 assists per game but is averaging over 12.3 ppg and over 5.8 apg since taking over as the starting Point Guard.
The Nets are desperate for a win but without three of their starters (Jianlian, Lee, Harris), they are even more depleted than the Magic.
After the game on Wednesday night, the Magic sounded like they know what they have to do to get better and were going to start doing it. It may be difficult for the Magic to play a complete defensive game without any of their Power Forwards available for the game, but they need to give a better effort tonight. The Magic should be able to defeat the Nets even without their Power Forwards, but I’d like to see the Magic play a complete game and go all out for 48 minutes.
(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.)