Magic offense falls flat against high-powered Heat

By SAM GARDNER
FOXSportsFlorida.com Magic Writer

After weeks of flexing their muscles and dropping the hammer on opponents, the Orlando Magic finally faced a team that fought back, and the results weren’t pretty.

In Friday night’s highly-anticipated game between Orlando and Miami, the Heat were the only team who really showed up to AmericanAirlines Arena. After a back-and-forth first half, Miami opened the second half on a 14-0 run, and the punchless Magic looked dazed for the rest of the evening.

“They threw an uppercut, and as a team went down, and we didn’t recover, so we’ve just got to do a better job,” Magic center Dwight Howard said.

Boxing analogies aside, the final result was a convincing 96-70 win in favor of the home team, and now it’s up to the Magic to regroup.

“It's a wakeup call for us,” shooting guard Vince Carter said. “It was something we needed. It was mentioned by a couple of us on the bench and in the locker room.”

One of those players who spoke up in the locker room was Howard.

“I got on the guys after the game; I told them we want to be a championship team, but tonight was not a championship effort,” Howard said. “For a team that is talking about a championship, the effort isn’t where it needed to be.”

Howard was one of the only players on the Magic roster who didn’t fall flat on Friday night. The Orlando captain led the team with 19 points on 8-of-15 shooting, and reserve power forward Ryan Anderson scored 12 points on 5-of-8 shooting in just 14 minutes of playing time, but the rest of the Magic lineup combined to shoot just 8-for-46 from the field.

“Our offense in general, other than Dwight in the post, wasn’t that good,” Magic head coach Stan Van Gundy said. “I’ve got to take some of the blame, because when we got behind quickly at the beginning of the second half, I quit going to the post, and I should have kept going because he was the only offense that we really had tonight.”

All of Howard’s points came in the first half, a stat that Van Gundy would have made a concerted effort to change if he could do it over. LeBron James and Dwyane Wade combined to hit three straight three pointers to open the third quarter, and when Van Gundy’s hand was played, he all but abandoned the strategy that kept his team in it in the first two quarters.

“I think that we got down so quickly, and from there it is almost like a football coach who gets down two touchdowns and he quits running the ball, because he is going to throw every time because he is behind,” Van Gundy said. “You get one dimensional, [and] I think I got that way too early in the game.”

But if we’re being honest, the Magic never had a chance. Van Gundy could have fed the ball to Howard in the post every possession of the second half, and the result would have still been the same. It just wasn’t Orlando’s night, and you’re not going to win many games when you’ve only got one guy putting the ball in the basket.

“We didn’t execute anything,” point guard Jameer Nelson (10 points on 3-of-11 shooting) said. “Nothing worked … we missed some shots, and I know we’ll make them next time.”

Said forward Rashard Lewis (two points on 0-for-9 shooting): “The stat sheet speaks for itself. We only had five assists as a team. It seemed like we didn’t pass the ball well at all. I know I played terrible. Overall, it was just terrible offensive execution.”

So now what?

“We’re going to bounce back,” Howard said. “It’s only game two. They didn’t win a championship tonight because they won, but I think it was good for us to go through what we went through tonight.”

One thing’s for sure – I wouldn’t want to be the Knicks on Tuesday.

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