The game started about an hour and a half ago and we are playing great right now. The score right now is 66-62, Celtics lead with 8:10 left in the third quarter. Dwight Howard is our leading scorer with 15 points but 11 of his points have come of free throws. The Celtics have double teamed him all game long and he just can't find his shot. Francis is playing terrible right now. He has 0 points, 2 assists and 1 rebound. He is shooting 0-5 and isn't playing aggresively at all. He is setteling for jump shots and three pointers which aren't exactly his strong points. I wonder if this game will have any influence on what the Magic do with Francis before the February 23 trade deadline. Our bench is the big reason we are still in this game. Dooling, Hill and Garrity have combined for 18 points while nobody on the Celtics bench has scored so far. Pierce is lighting us up right now with 23 points and if he continues to score at will, the Magic will have to work very hard to stay in this one.
The Magic are now in the lead they are being paced by Dwight and Hedo who have 19 and 16 points. Peirce is killing us he has 23 points.
I hate Hedo Turkoglu. He commited a horrible pass to Deshawn Stevenson with about one minute left to go and turned the ball over to the Celtics. Then, he had a chance to shorten the lead to one with about fifteen seconds left and he misses a wide open three. I'm so glad Grant Hill is back because I am sick of watching Turkoglu screw up over and over. The game is over. We just lost 102-94. Paul Pierce scored a game high 31 points (with Hedo guarding him). Dwight scored 24 points (off of 10 shots) and had 11 rebounds to secure yet another double double. Francis was horrible scoring only 9 points and dishing out a measly 4 assists. The Celtics shot 10-14 from behind the arc and it seemed like their entire roster had a hot hand tonight (or we just can't stop anyone defensively). The only positive note about this game was that Grant Hill came back from injury and scored 15 points in only 20 minutes. I really hope we make some moves before the trade deadline because we are so inconsistent right now and we can't seem to beat anyone these days.
Howard finished with his 37 double-double of the year, too badd we lost once we trade Francis this team will be good.
Dooling also had a few big turnovers early in the 4th that should have easily been Dwight Howard dunks Grant played great hopefully he will be back for a while this time. Grant and Hedo both got burned a couple of times by pierce he had a great game. I was most impressed with how Dwight was knocking down his free throw and how well Grant played. Hopefully he can play 25-30 mins next game.
<div class="quote_poster">Quoting TwinTowers:</div><div class="quote_post">Howard finished with his 37 double-double of the year, too badd we lost once we trade Francis this team will be good.</div> If we deal Francis this year, we will be guaranteeing ourselves lottery position. We won't get anything even close to his quality. We will basically be signalling that our season is done and we are looking forward to next year.
<div class="quote_poster">Quoting GatorsowntheSEC:</div><div class="quote_post">If we deal Francis this year, we will be guaranteeing ourselves lottery position. We won't get anything even close to his quality. We will basically be signalling that our season is done and we are looking forward to next year.</div> Wouldn't you agree that our season is done? On AIM you told me that we are a lottery team and that we won't make the playoffs. If that is the case, what's there to lose when dealing Francis? If we trade Francis right now, it will be handing the offense over to Howard and basically giving him some more experience for when he is our franchise player in a couple of years. I'd say at this point, we should just ship Francis out, get a good lottery pick, and then build from there around Dwight.
<div class="quote_poster">Quoting Swish15:</div><div class="quote_post">Wouldn't you agree that our season is done? On AIM you told me that we are a lottery team and that we won't make the playoffs. If that is the case, what's there to lose when dealing Francis? If we trade Francis right now, it will be handing the offense over to Howard and basically giving him some more experience for when he is our franchise player in a couple of years. I'd say at this point, we should just ship Francis out, get a good lottery pick, and then build from there around Dwight.</div> Oh yeah, I would love to deal Francis. I've been telling you the entire time that our season is over and we need to just give Dwight the offense now, so that he will be able to grow and get his growing pains out of the way this year, so that he will be more experienced and ready to dominate next year. The reason for my previous post that you quoted is TwinTowers said let's get rid of Francis so we'll be good. I was just explaining to him basically what you said that we'll be lottery bound and it will be signaling that the season is over.
<div class="quote_poster">Quoting GatorsowntheSEC:</div><div class="quote_post">Oh yeah, I would love to deal Francis. I've been telling you the entire time that our season is over and we need to just give Dwight the offense now, so that he will be able to grow and get his growing pains out of the way this year, so that he will be more experienced and ready to dominate next year. The reason for my previous post that you quoted is TwinTowers said let's get rid of Francis so we'll be good. I was just explaining to him basically what you said that we'll be lottery bound and it will be signaling that the season is over.</div> Oh ok, my bad. I misunderstood what you said. Like Gators said, if we trade Francis, our season is done. We will be pointing this franchise towards the future and we will be handing Dwight the reigns to this team.
