Denton: Magic-Heat Postgame Analysis
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By John Denton
October 29, 2010
MIAMI – Friday night’s much-anticipated first game between hated rivals Orlando and Miami went from being a night the Magic have looked forward to for months to one they will want to forget as quickly as possible.
If only forgetting were that easy. Following a string of Magic blowouts in the preseason and in the easy, breezy season-opener against the Washington Wizards, the Magic were on the receiving end of a beating Friday night they won’t soon be able to erase from their memory.
Orlando collapsed under a hail of Dwyane Wade third-quarter jump shots and its own wayward misses and in this first meeting the Magic were no match for the re-vamped Heat in a disappointing 96-70 loss at American Airlines Arena.
``I got onto the guys in the locker room after the game and told them that if we want to be champions that’s not a championship effort,’’ Magic superstar center Dwight Howard said. ``We’ve got 80 more games, but that wasn’t a championship effort. But Miami didn’t win a championship just because they won the third game of the season. We could have won this game and it wouldn’t have mattered. Nobody won a ring tonight.’’
A Magic offense that was efficient and prolific most of the preseason shot a dismal 30.4 percent, had a franchise-record low five assists and misfired on 20 of 24 3-point shots. Orlando (1-1) got 19 points from Howard – all of them in the first half – and little to nothing else from his fellow starters. Vince Carter (four points) had one field goal, one more than Rashard Lewis (zero of eight, two points) and Quentin Richardson (zero of five, two points). Throw in Jameer Nelson’s three of 11 outing (for 10 points) and it was easy to see why the Magic could never mount a true charge at the Heat.
``It’s definitely shocking because we didn’t play our game offensively or defensively,’’ Nelson muttered. ``We made mistakes all night and didn’t move the ball. They flat-out kicked out (butts). One of the things we haven’t dealt with yet is adversity. Well, we’re dealing with it now.’’
Wade scored 12 of his 26 points in the third period when the Heat (2-1) outscored Orlando 28-10 to blow the game wide open. The Magic actually hung tough in the first half, trailing by just six points, but they surrendered the first 14 points of the second half to turn the game into a laugher.
``The stat sheet just speaks for itself. I played terrible and overall our execution was bad,’’ Lewis said. ``They stopped us from shooting the wide-open threes and even when we moved the ball side to side our passing still wasn’t very good. And then they just killed us in that three quarter with the threes.’’
The Magic are off today and will return to the practice court Sunday and Monday before taking on the New York Knicks at Madison Square Garden on Tuesday. The Magic are back at the Amway Center of Wednesday to face Minnesota in the second of their 21 back-to-back sets of games this season.
The Magic won’t see Miami again until the day before Thanksgiving, hosting the Heat on Nov. 24 at the Amway Center. The game will be nationally televised, as are all four Magic-Heat showdowns this season.
``This is probably a good thing for our team. We’ve been rolling along and getting beat like this is better than a two-point loss,’’ Magic coach Stan Van Gundy said. ``This will show us that we have a long way to go and a lot of stuff to work out.’’
Here’s a look back at what went right, what went wrong and some final observations from Friday’s first look at the Magic against the Heat:
WHAT WENT RIGHT
Howard talked a night earlier about the Magic’s need to ``weather the storm’’ in Miami with the emotion in the air, and Orlando did just that in the first half.
The Heat twice jumped to eight-point leads in the first quarter, the second time on a dazzling alley-oop lob from James to Wade for a dunk. But each time early on they responded to the Heat’s attempts to run away with the game.
Howard was magnificent at the start of the game, attacking Miami’s glaring weakness at the center position. He drew two fouls on both Joel Anthony and Zydrunas Ilgauskas early on while scoring 13 first-quarter points. Howard’s highlight moment came late in the first quarter when he drilled a 19-foot jump shot as the shot clock expired.
However, Howard got off just one shot after halftime and didn’t score after the break.
``We felt pretty good at halftime, but they threw an uppercut and some of our guys went down and didn’t get back up,’’ Howard lamented. ``For a team talking about winning a championship, the effort was not where it needs to be. We’ve been cruising along in the preseason and we cruised in the first game. We’ve hit some adversity, but I have full trust in our guys that we are going to get better.’’
WHAT WENT WRONG
The Magic’s five assists were the fewest ever in the 21-year history of the franchise. It broke the previous record of seven set in 2009 on Christmas Day against the Boston Celtics.
Orlando had just three assists through the first three quarters. The final two came in the final period, both of them leading to Ryan Anderson 3-pointers. The all-time NBA record for fewest assists in a game is three, set by four teams.
``Passing is a major problem with our team,’’ Van Gundy said. ``Turnovers have been a problem and just being able to deliver the ball to people where we can get shots is a problem.’’
Carter went down in a heap midway through the second quarter when he had his shot blocked by Udonis Haslem and immediately started grabbing his head and lower back. Carter stayed down on the floor for almost 30 seconds and later hobbled to the bench where an icepack was strapped to his lower back.
``I went up for a shot, it got blocked and it felt like their entire team fell on the back of my head. My (chin) hit my chest and the pain went down my entire back.’’ At the time of his injury, Carter wasn’t having the best of games. He missed four of his first five shots, picked up two early fouls in the first quarter and his first three free throw attempts were because of illegal defense technical fouls.
Carter’s slow start was in direct contrast to how he had played in Thursday’s opener. Against Washington, he made six of his first seven shots and scored 14 of his 18 points in the first half.
The Magic had no answer for Wade, trying Carter, J.J. Redick and Chris Duhon on him to no avail. The superstar shooting guard, who regularly bedeviled the Magic in the past when he had little help, made nine of 20 shots and hit two 3-pointers and six free throws for the big night.
What has to be a little bit scary for the Magic was that LeBron James and Chris Bosh, Miami’s other two all-stars, didn’t contribute much offensively, and still Orlando had trouble staying close.
James looked more like Wade’s sidekick instead of the reigning two-time Most Valuable Player. He scored 15 points, but he missed seven of 13 shots and had another three turnovers. He did pick the Magic apart with seven assists.
And Bosh was a nonfactor for the most part, scoring just 11 points on two of nine shooting.
The Magic hung tough in the first half and defended Miami’s Big Three quite well for the most part, but 3-minute stretch to start the third period ruined the night for Orlando.
Miami started the third period with a 3-pointer from James and two more threes from Wade to boost the lead from six points to 15. The Heat would eventually get it to 20 points when they made five of their first six shots, while the Magic missed three straight shots and turned the ball over twice.
Any momentum that the Magic might have gained in the first half collapsed during the critical stretch. Carter twice backed off Wade, allowing him uncontested 3-point shots. Richardson got picked off twice, allowing James to get into the lane for short pull-up shots.
And Howard picked up three fouls in the first five minutes of the quarter – twice having to stop dunks because of defensive breakdowns and another time when he cleared out space on the low block offensively.
FINAL OBSERVATIONS
The Magic scored in the 70s just twice all of last season – 74 against Oklahoma City in November and 77 against Boston in December.
Howard has vowed to keep his emotions more in check this season, but he was whistled for his first technical foul of the season at the end of the first quarter Friday night. The call fell under the league’s new ``respect for the game’’ category and Howard was whistled because he was deemed to have protest overtly with hand gestures.
Magic guard J.J. Redick showed some guts in the second quarter, stepping in front of the hard-charging James to take a charge. Redick got hit below and above the right eye by a James elbow and immediately had blood trickling out of cut over his eyebrow.
Redick retreated to the locker room to get the cuts stitched up and he returned to the game in the second half. He needed five stitches below his eye and two more above the eye.
``Hopefully we’ll have more nights like (Thursday) and less like (Friday), but we have 80 more games to go,’’ Redick said. ``This just shows that we still have a ways to go.’’
John Denton writes for OrlandoMagic.com. E-mail John at jd41898@aol.com. Submit a question to John for his mailbag segment at AskJD@orlandomagic.com.
October 29, 2010
MIAMI – Friday night’s much-anticipated first game between hated rivals Orlando and Miami went from being a night the Magic have looked forward to for months to one they will want to forget as quickly as possible.
If only forgetting were that easy. Following a string of Magic blowouts in the preseason and in the easy, breezy season-opener against the Washington Wizards, the Magic were on the receiving end of a beating Friday night they won’t soon be able to erase from their memory.
Orlando collapsed under a hail of Dwyane Wade third-quarter jump shots and its own wayward misses and in this first meeting the Magic were no match for the re-vamped Heat in a disappointing 96-70 loss at American Airlines Arena.
``I got onto the guys in the locker room after the game and told them that if we want to be champions that’s not a championship effort,’’ Magic superstar center Dwight Howard said. ``We’ve got 80 more games, but that wasn’t a championship effort. But Miami didn’t win a championship just because they won the third game of the season. We could have won this game and it wouldn’t have mattered. Nobody won a ring tonight.’’
A Magic offense that was efficient and prolific most of the preseason shot a dismal 30.4 percent, had a franchise-record low five assists and misfired on 20 of 24 3-point shots. Orlando (1-1) got 19 points from Howard – all of them in the first half – and little to nothing else from his fellow starters. Vince Carter (four points) had one field goal, one more than Rashard Lewis (zero of eight, two points) and Quentin Richardson (zero of five, two points). Throw in Jameer Nelson’s three of 11 outing (for 10 points) and it was easy to see why the Magic could never mount a true charge at the Heat.
``It’s definitely shocking because we didn’t play our game offensively or defensively,’’ Nelson muttered. ``We made mistakes all night and didn’t move the ball. They flat-out kicked out (butts). One of the things we haven’t dealt with yet is adversity. Well, we’re dealing with it now.’’
Wade scored 12 of his 26 points in the third period when the Heat (2-1) outscored Orlando 28-10 to blow the game wide open. The Magic actually hung tough in the first half, trailing by just six points, but they surrendered the first 14 points of the second half to turn the game into a laugher.
``The stat sheet just speaks for itself. I played terrible and overall our execution was bad,’’ Lewis said. ``They stopped us from shooting the wide-open threes and even when we moved the ball side to side our passing still wasn’t very good. And then they just killed us in that three quarter with the threes.’’
The Magic are off today and will return to the practice court Sunday and Monday before taking on the New York Knicks at Madison Square Garden on Tuesday. The Magic are back at the Amway Center of Wednesday to face Minnesota in the second of their 21 back-to-back sets of games this season.
The Magic won’t see Miami again until the day before Thanksgiving, hosting the Heat on Nov. 24 at the Amway Center. The game will be nationally televised, as are all four Magic-Heat showdowns this season.
``This is probably a good thing for our team. We’ve been rolling along and getting beat like this is better than a two-point loss,’’ Magic coach Stan Van Gundy said. ``This will show us that we have a long way to go and a lot of stuff to work out.’’
Here’s a look back at what went right, what went wrong and some final observations from Friday’s first look at the Magic against the Heat:
WHAT WENT RIGHT
The Heat twice jumped to eight-point leads in the first quarter, the second time on a dazzling alley-oop lob from James to Wade for a dunk. But each time early on they responded to the Heat’s attempts to run away with the game.
Howard was magnificent at the start of the game, attacking Miami’s glaring weakness at the center position. He drew two fouls on both Joel Anthony and Zydrunas Ilgauskas early on while scoring 13 first-quarter points. Howard’s highlight moment came late in the first quarter when he drilled a 19-foot jump shot as the shot clock expired.
However, Howard got off just one shot after halftime and didn’t score after the break.
``We felt pretty good at halftime, but they threw an uppercut and some of our guys went down and didn’t get back up,’’ Howard lamented. ``For a team talking about winning a championship, the effort was not where it needs to be. We’ve been cruising along in the preseason and we cruised in the first game. We’ve hit some adversity, but I have full trust in our guys that we are going to get better.’’
Orlando had just three assists through the first three quarters. The final two came in the final period, both of them leading to Ryan Anderson 3-pointers. The all-time NBA record for fewest assists in a game is three, set by four teams.
``Passing is a major problem with our team,’’ Van Gundy said. ``Turnovers have been a problem and just being able to deliver the ball to people where we can get shots is a problem.’’
``I went up for a shot, it got blocked and it felt like their entire team fell on the back of my head. My (chin) hit my chest and the pain went down my entire back.’’ At the time of his injury, Carter wasn’t having the best of games. He missed four of his first five shots, picked up two early fouls in the first quarter and his first three free throw attempts were because of illegal defense technical fouls.
Carter’s slow start was in direct contrast to how he had played in Thursday’s opener. Against Washington, he made six of his first seven shots and scored 14 of his 18 points in the first half.
What has to be a little bit scary for the Magic was that LeBron James and Chris Bosh, Miami’s other two all-stars, didn’t contribute much offensively, and still Orlando had trouble staying close.
James looked more like Wade’s sidekick instead of the reigning two-time Most Valuable Player. He scored 15 points, but he missed seven of 13 shots and had another three turnovers. He did pick the Magic apart with seven assists.
And Bosh was a nonfactor for the most part, scoring just 11 points on two of nine shooting.
Miami started the third period with a 3-pointer from James and two more threes from Wade to boost the lead from six points to 15. The Heat would eventually get it to 20 points when they made five of their first six shots, while the Magic missed three straight shots and turned the ball over twice.
Any momentum that the Magic might have gained in the first half collapsed during the critical stretch. Carter twice backed off Wade, allowing him uncontested 3-point shots. Richardson got picked off twice, allowing James to get into the lane for short pull-up shots.
And Howard picked up three fouls in the first five minutes of the quarter – twice having to stop dunks because of defensive breakdowns and another time when he cleared out space on the low block offensively.
Redick retreated to the locker room to get the cuts stitched up and he returned to the game in the second half. He needed five stitches below his eye and two more above the eye.
``Hopefully we’ll have more nights like (Thursday) and less like (Friday), but we have 80 more games to go,’’ Redick said. ``This just shows that we still have a ways to go.’’
John Denton writes for OrlandoMagic.com. E-mail John at jd41898@aol.com. Submit a question to John for his mailbag segment at AskJD@orlandomagic.com.
