The Orlando Magic reaches victory once again with a packed house.
From the moment the doors opened and both teams took the floor for the pregame warm up, we could see the tension on the faces of the Atlanta Hawks. Anthony Johnson directed the show while Dwight, Vince, Rashard and company played around with the crowd. Is it time to get cocky or to take care of business?
It wasn’t anywhere near the 43-point blow out of Tuesday night but after a tight game, Orlando finally took a breath of relief and smiled.
Final score 112-98 Magic, taking a 2-0 lead in the Eastern Conference Semifinals.
“We didn’t play our best basketball in the first half but we were still within arm’s reach,” Magic’s guard Vince Carter said. “In the second half, we played like the Orlando Magic.”
After the humiliating defeat suffered by Atlanta in Game 1, the Hawks came back not licking their wounds but ready for revenge. It was now the Magic’s turn to show Game 1 was not a fluke and Atlanta decided that today they weren’t giving up without a fight.
In the first quarter, Atlanta came out strong with no struggles passing the ball and not scared to go against the human wall of Dwight Howard. Vince Carter took care of the first two points of the game while Joe Johnson and Al Hortford tried to fly past Howard’s tough defense even landing Dwight a bloody nose and a few chuckles from the dogpound.
Here are the stats for the first quarter:
*The Magic shot 12/17 for 70% of field goals compared to 10/21 for 47% for the Hawks
*The Magic shot 6/9 of their free throws at 66% while the Hawks 5/5 100% margin.
*Turnovers leave us with the Magic 3 for 2 points and the Hawks 1 for 2 points.
In the second and third quarters Mike Woodson seemed to adopt the Hack-a-Howard technique. It was foul or die for the Hawks. The point of the game was to not let Howard touch the ball but instead foul and put him on the line. However, Magic’s poorer FT shooter had an above average night hitting 13 of 18 and putting in the best overall performance of the night.
Dwight Howard’s performance put him on the list of fourth player in the last 40 years to shoot 25 points while shooting an 85-percent average in a playoff game.
Not only that, but Vince Carter put in a 24 point effort followed by Jameer and Rashard whom both added 20 points. The Hawk’s main men Al Horford and Joe Johnson shot 24 and 19 points respectively.
A group of tremendous talent on fire at the Amway Arena.
The shot of the night goes to Jameer Nelson that drilled a timely three-pointer at the buzzer of the third quarter and set the tone to what the fourth quarter would look like.
Atlanta seemed to have gotten tired, making things easier for the Magic. A sweet assist by Howard and Mickael Pietrus landed another three-points raising the scoreboard to 98-87.
It’s miss after miss and the Magic takes all rebounds it can get and puts them to use. At 7:55 the lead kept getting bigger and by the end it reached 19 points. So what changed?
“We were able to a better job defensively in the fourth quarter,” Magic Coach Stan Van Gundy said. “Our guys got into it a little more”.
Here are some interesting stats about tonight’s game….
*The Magic and the Hawks tied 5 times
* It was the first time the Magic ever had four players score at least 20 points in a playoff game
*The biggest lead for the Hawks was 8 points and the Magic a cozy 19.
*Rashard Lewis and Jamal Crawford tied for most three-pointers in the game
It’s easy to say the Hawks did not go home humiliated tonight, but they still need to find a way to stop the Magic’s 12- game winning streak while preventing a second sweep and that’s proving difficult.
Atlanta coach Mike Woodson had this to say, “Go home and win “he said. “We are going to see what we are made of”.
The third game in the series is this Saturday in Atlanta.
Fernanda Barros reporting for the West Orlando News Online.
