Melissa Majchrzak/NBAE/Getty Images
After losing three of their past four games, the Magic bounced back with a hard fought win over the Portland Trail Blazers on Saturday night. Utah will play their fourth straight game on the east coast. They are 2-1 on their road trip so far and defeated the Charlotte Bobcats on Saturday night.
Orlando is 20-7 while Utah enters the game at 16-11. Orlando is 10-2 at home. Utah is 5-7 on the road.
Tip off from Amway Arena is set for 7:00 pm EST. The game will air on Fox Sports Florida. As always, if you can’t watch the game, you can hear it locally on WDBO 580 AM and in Spanish on WONQ AM 1030.
The Line: Orlando -7.5
Starters:
Orlando
Dwight Howard
Rashard Lewis
Mickael Pietrus
Vince Carter
Jason Williams
Utah
Mehmet Okur
Carlos Boozer
Ronnie Brewer
C.J. Miles
Deron Williams
Jameer Nelson is going to play tonight but he will be coming off of the bench and will see limited minutes.
Matt Barnes will be playing despite his sore left hand.
The last time these two teams met, just 11 days ago, Utah ended Orlando’s eight-game road winning streak.
Deron Williams absolutely lit up the Magic in their last meeting. Williams scored 32 points, had 15 assists and grabbed 8 rebounds. Williams is having another excellent season for the Jazz, scoring 19.8 points per game and dishing out 10.2 assists per game. This is bad news for the Magic, who have had a rough time defending opposing Point Guards.
Utah averages 101.3 points per game and ranks ninth in offensive efficiency.
Utah’s defense ranks just 18th in efficiency and the Magic can exploit that. In fact, Orlando scored 111 points on December 10th in Utah, which is nine points higher than their season average. Unfortunately, their defense was awful and Utah won the game.
The Magic must slow Deron Williams down. That may mean giving the bigger Anthony Johnson more minutes at Point Guard. Johnson played just 12 minutes in the first meeting between these two teams but has played much better as of late.
Orlando needs to play with the energy and enthusiasm they played with on Saturday night in Portland. If Orlando gets out to a quick lead, they can’t let up. The Magic built an 18-point second quarter lead in Utah but blew the lead and lost the game.
Utah is a good rebounding team but there is no excuse for the Magic to be outrebounded by six like they were in their last meeting with the Jazz. The Jazz have the ninth best rebounding rate in the NBA at 51.0%. The Magic are a slightly better rebounding team with a rebound rate of 51.9%,
Orlando is coming off a dominating rebounding performance against the Trail Blazers. They grabbed 54 rebounds (13 offensive). Orlando had an impressive offensive rebounding rate of 32.5% while limiting the Blazers to 16.3%.
The Magic allowed the Jazz to shoot 46 free throws December 10th. You can’t give up that many easy points.
Orlando has had turnover issues and had a turnover percentage of 20% on Saturday. That must improve.
Dwight Howard needs to lock down the paint and not let the Jazz get easy baskets.
The Magic shut down Portland Power Forward LaMarcus Aldridge. It will be interesting to see if they can have any success shutting down the much more polished Carlos Boozer (19.9 points per game, 10.9 rebounds per game).
For more on the Jazz, check out SLC Dunk.
(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.)