Magic squeak by Raptors with forty point win

The Orlando Magic escaped with a 40-point win on Friday night at home against the pride of Canada, the Toronto Raptors, by a score of 112-72.

After only being up 8 at the half, the Magic upped their intensity and shut down the Raps in the second half behind a beastly 17 point 3rd quarter from Dwight Howard. Dwight finished the night with 31 points and 19 rebounds and would have likely dropped 40 if he wouldn’t have been pulled for the night at the end of the third. A 39 point 4th quarter from the Magic sealed the blowout.

When the Raptors defeated the Magic back in November, they were unable to stop the former number one overall pick Andrea Bargnani. Bargs dropped 27 on the Magic that night to help Toronto pull the early season upset. It was an entire different story tonight as Brandon Bass smothered Andrea all night and held him to only 11 points on 3-14 shooting.

"Stan Van Gundy after the game, “I thought Brandon Bass played tremendous defense on Andrea Bargnani, I thought that it was as good as it could be.” Further adding, “Brandon was always right there with good pressure. I just thought he did a real good job, and I think our team did a good job with those main three players (Bargnani, DeRozan and Calderon), and being where they were supposed to be."

While the Magic defense played well tonight, let’s all keep this in perspective. It’s the Toronto Raptors. A team battling for a position at the top of the lottery.

To further put it into perspective, Dwight Howard had the same amount of points as the entire Raptors starting lineup and out-rebounded those starters 19-18. Raptors head coach, Jay Triano summed it up perfectly:

"“He’s good. We’re not. It’s a conscious effort to go get it and we don’t have a lot of guys that have a nose to go get the ball.”"

News, notes and tidbits from tonight’s game:

Ryan Anderson scored in double figures for the ~~eighty~~ eighth straight game and tied his career high in scoring with 21 points. Ryan struggled through the first 3 quarters shooting only 2-9, but gained confidence against the non-existant Raptors defense in the 4th by scoring 17 of his 21 points. Stat padding at it’s finest.
After being on a “personal leave” hiatus (or as others would call it, a “pout fest”) for the last Magic road trip, Jason Williams was back with the team and even got 5 minutes of action at the end of the 4th. The crowd cheered him wildly when he came into the game and their is no doubt that despite quietly quitting on the team, the fans still love J-Will. Also, he did a solid job of not getting ejected from the game tonight.
Former Florida State “star”, and Andrew Melnick’s man-crush, Solomon Alabi got some action tonight as well. He performed about as you might have expected. 2 points, 2 rebounds and 3 fouls in 9:35.
The Magic tied a season low in points allowed and had a season high in rebounds.
The loss for the Raptors was their worst loss since losing by 44 to Seattle in 1997.
Anthony Anderson, Carlton Banks and the guy from the Old Spice commercials were sitting courtside tonight and apparently were under the impression that they were some sort of attraction. After the first time they were all shown on the jumbotron, Carlton literally did the Carlton dance. That was nothing short of amazing. After that though, it was all downhill as they were just pandering for camera time and sadly the gullible Orlando fans were eating it up. Oh well…

The Magic are back in action tomorrow night in Houston against the Yao Ming-less Rockets. Game time is set for 8:30 PM and will be televised locally on Sun Sports.

Brian Serra is the Sr. iPhone Note Taker for Howard the Dunk and the founder of Magic Basketball Online. You can follow/add him on Twitter and on Facebook! Compare pricing and find the cheapest tickets for all future Orlando Magic games using TiqIQ technology!