<div align="center"> Orlando Magic (14-9)(Road: 6-7) @ Miami Heat (18-7) (Home: 9-3) Date: Saturday December 19th TV: NBAT Coach Johnny Davis Davis is one of the most contriversal coaches in the league not for anything he says, but for the moves he makes. The plays he runs often over looking or not running enough plays for one player who is doing very well that ngiht. A lot of people think that the Magic right now are winning jsut on pure talent not on Davis' coaching skill. A big reason why this is believed by some is that his career coaching record coming into this season in two years of coaching experence was 55-120 in the regular season. He also makes moves like sitting a player at the wrong times of the game or not sitting him quickly enough when he is in foul trouble, but still right now he is the Magic head coach, they are winning, and I trust his choices as long as we continue to win. Probable Starters PG- Steve Francis ( 21.5 PPG, 6.9 APG, 6.0 RPG) SG- Cuttino Mobely ( 17.2 PPG, 2.1 APG, 3.4 RPG) SF- Grant Hill ( 19.9 PPG, 4.0 APG, 4.4 RPG) PF- Dwight Howard (10.4 PPG, 1.4 APG, 10.5 RPG) C- Tony Battie (4.5 PPG, .6 APG, 6.5 RPG) Steve Francis yesterday against the Denver Nuggets showed how great of a overall player he is. He although, not dominating in the scoring column of the game was able to use his court vision, and great passing abilities to dish out eleven dimes in the win over the Nuggets. He also managed to hold it down in the turn over column down from a average of four a game during the year to only two last night. Cuttino Mobely once again lead our team in scoring last night he shot very well from the filed, and lead the team in scoring for the second straight game i believe. We will need his good perimeter defense for tonights game against the Heat since we will be forced into a lot of double teams by the Heat on Shaquille Oneal we will need someone who can quickly rotate to the perimeter, and play good defense, at least getting a hand in the mans face. I think we need to put Mobely on Damon Jones to stop him from scoring at will tonight he is the heats best three point shooter so we need to have at least, at the very least, a hand in his face. Hill had 23 points on 9-of-21 shooting and five rebounds in 38 minutes Monday night. He looks to continue his great offensive out put tonight in Miami. Hill will be going up against Eddie Jones a player who normally has a good mid range jumper Hill is no slacker on defense though he will need to produce well on defense in al staying with Eddie Jones all game not allowing him to lose Hill on a screen. Dwight Howard and a great night yesterday as well as most of the Magic did he finished with 17 points and 9 rebounds. Well tonight will be the rookie power forward's biggest test as of this point in his career. He will be trying to get rebounds over the most dominate player of our time in Shaquille Oneal. I do not expect him to dominate the boards this game, but to at least be able to box out Shaq a few times if Shaq is on Dwight's side of the ball on that possesion. Tony Battie to me looks to be the player who will be tested the most this game. He will have to body up Shaq all game, and some how try to find a way to contain Shaq, and Shaq is a very physical player he will do every thing he can to get to the basket throw elbows, and just use his body weight to over power Battie. Battie puts up average number slike said in my last preview, but his numbers have improved big time since being placed in the starting lineup for the injured Cato. We will need him to due his best to body up Shaq in order for us even to have a chance. Sixth Man Hedo Turkoglu Hedo and the bench really responded our last game yesterday after scoring only 10 points in Wednesdays lose to the Spurs. Hedo and the rest of our bench scored 45 points in the win over the Nuggets. Hedo scored fourteen points and had six assists that game we will need him to do the same this game to beat the Heat. IMO the only area of the game that we have an advatage of this game is our depth the Heat have very little of that so we may be able to use that to our advantage even Shaq gets tired when he sits down we can use our bench players to speed up the game, and out score the Heats secondary team. The Heat have little to no depth at the cneter position after Shaq, and at every other position as a matter of fact. They have a couple good shooters the Jones' and Person, but besides that they are a two man team with Shaq and Wade. Haslam is very good, but I think we have an advantage with Jameer in that area of the game. X Factors Off the Bench Jameer nelson and Mario Kasun These two players really performed well yesterday, and they are my X factors for this game. Kasun made the most of his time last night producing six points and ten rebounds in thirteen minutes last night, and Jameer Nelson attempted a career high of field goal attmepts, and scored 10 points which made him gain a lot of confidence in himself. I do not know how many minutes these players will get since there minutes tend to go up and down with the flow of the game, but I expect Kasun to see action tonight just because he is a body that we will need to use to toss at Shaq. Jameer I also expect to see a bit of action this game considering the Franchise averages 5 fouls a game, and tends to get into foul trouble in the second quarter of games. Coach Stan Van Gundy Stan Van Gundy is the brother of legendary Knicks coach Jeff Van Gundy (now rockets coach). Van Gundy was a questionable new coach that rose to take the reigns of the Miami Heat two seasons ago after the abrupt retirement of Pat Riley from his coaching position. Van Gundy though after a 0-7 start to his heat coaching career managed to lead the Heat on a Cinderella story making the playoffs, and advancing past the first round of the playoffs with a rookie point goard, and a great group of surprise players. After the aquirement of Shaqille Oneal this off season Van Gundy has become the coach of what looks to be a upcoming championship contending Heat team. With the most dominate player of our time, and second year sensation Dwyane Wade. We will see how he does coaching tonight in his first game of the season against the Orlando Magic. Probable Starting Lineup PG- Damon Jones (PPG 11.5 RPG 2.80 APG 3.7) SG- Dwyane Wade (PPG 23.0 RPG 5.7 APG 7.2) SF- Eddie Jones (PPG 10.3 RPG 4.6 APG 2.6) PF Udonis Haslem (PPG 11.2 RPG 8.2 APG 1.6) C- Shaquille Oneal (PPG 20.6 RPG 11.2 APG 3.0) Damon Jones is one of the best three point shooter in the league which has earned him a starting spot in the Heats lineup. He is also one of the best in the league in tunrover to asssits ratio which is a often over looked stat. Unlike players lIke Kevin Ollie who are rated high, but do not really do anything Jones is one of the most active guards with a good turnover/asssits ratio. Dwyane Wade. Who is currently third in the eastern conference in all star voting is the east. Is argueable amoung the best second year players ever to paly in the NBA he is high in the league in asssits, and averages 23 points as well as 7 assists and 5 rebounds. He and Shaq are considered one of the msot deadly eastern conference duos. Eddie Jones at this point in his career is a shadow of his former self, but that does not mean he should be over looked. Like said before he has a very good perimeter shot as well as mid range jumper. Him against Hill should be a very good matchup cant wait to see who wins this one I am expecting Hill since he gets more touches, but we will see. Udonis Haslem is a very over looked player considering the talent he plays with. He averages very good rebounds and points total. he is going to be a good match for Howard, but I expect Howard to over power him with his sjkill level, but not by much. Haslem only is two rebounds per game away form averaging a double double so he is no scrub. Shaquille Oneal what do I need to say? He is Shaq nothing is needed to be said. He one on one will dominate any person we put on him. So the only hope we have is to double team him this game, and hope for the best. I think we will suffer big time in this matchup tonight. He is rnaked first in the NBA in field goal percentage so we will need to use the hack a Shaq stradegy. Sixth Man Rasual Butler (PPG 8.1 ,RPG 2.70 ,APG 1.4 ) Rasual Butler is one of the best players coming off a very shallow Heat bench the rest are mostly veterns or mediocore NBA players. Which is one of the reasons I believe the Magic will win this game. Game MVP's Steve Francis- 25 points, 8 assists, 6 rebounds Shaquille Oneal- 20 points, 10 rebounds, 3 blocks Injury Report Brandon Hunter PF Dec 10, 2004 Hyperextended right elbow Kelvin Cato C Dec 8, 2004 Subluxated left shoulder Andrew DeClercq C Nov 1, 2004 Right knee rehabilitation Prediction We will fall behind early by double digit points not like 15-20 points, but like 10 points in the first quarter. We will also have a very bad first quarter on the boards trying to box out Shaq. We lost the one guy we had that played against Shaq often last season when Cato went down until X-mas so we will ahve nop rela body. Second quarter we make our come back, and cut the lead to five points before half time. This quarter I expect to be more up tempo then the first. Third quarter I think we are able to get Shaq into foul trouble and continue to run up and down the floor for much of this quarter final score after the third 70-62 Magic. Fourth quarter we just start to open it up bit by bit. I think Shaq fouls out with 5 minutes left in the game, and we just do our thing. Wade tries his best to bring them back, but nouse final score will be I think 96-84 Magic win. Wade will light it up though and have a double double tonight.</div> NOTE: Sorry guys was gona add a bit more started writing this at 5:00 so I was racing to get it off before tip off so this is the best I can do.
Once again, great preview! This game will be a tough one, I don't see us winning it or at least not with a 12 point difference like you Pure Skillz. Shaq is likely to have a huge game. Battie can do some of the defense work against him but he needs help, so I think Shaq will be double teamed quite often which opens space for the others, hopefully we can defend this quite good. I also see Battie getting in foul trouble and since we only have Kasun coming off the bench on the C spot and he's not used to Shaq and is quite bad at defense anyway, I really think Shaq is the man tonight and with him Miami either wins or loses.
Nice preview, Pure. I'm rooting for the Magic. I'd like to see this division race very close by the end of the season, with the Wizards, Magic and Heat fighting it out.
Half time, Magic leads by 9 (63-54) What a game by Francise. Hedo, Nelson, Kasun and Pat come out and contribute for the team. Yeah, we need them in every games!!! At the moment we are shooting well. The Heat are out-turnovers us and I hope that Shaq will be in foul trouble right after the 3rd quarter starts, and we definately can win this one!
We are off to a great start. Shaq has two fouls. I think if we can force him into two quick fouls the start of the third he will be benched until the fourth. Steve Francis at half time has 19 points/ 1 rebound/ 3 assists. He has shot 9-11 from the field, 1/1 form the arc, and 0-2 from the line. He also has once again limited his turnovers to a grand total of zero in the first half. I am a little dissappointed in the way Howard started off the game he has six boards, but only three points. Though we are up I dont mind it much. We have done something I thought would be impossible before the game that is kept the rebounding close 21-20 in favor of the Heat, and limited Shaq to four rebounds. I think that Kasun has done well considering he has no offensive plays really set for him. He has four points three rebounds so far in limited playing time he is also 2-2 from the floor which is something we need. We have forced six turnovers this game, and we only have three a very good game in terms of handling the ball by both teams, and the point guards especially zero turnovers by both starters. Both teams have attempted 43 field goals with the Magic making four more then the heat 24-43 to 20-43. We have seperated our selves with our three point shot we are 5-5 from the arc while the Heat are 3-9. We also have three steals while the Heat only have one, and like said earlier have only force dus into a total of three. The hot at the half without question goes to francis for his performance. It seems to be the weeknd of the point guards with AI going for 54 against the Bucks, and now it looks like Francis is on pace to score 36 points this game if he scores another 19 this half.
<div class="quote_poster">Quoting Coranor:</div><div class="quote_post">^Just a sidenote: 19 + 19 = 38 </div> 36, 38 same thing.
Tied at 86 going into the 4th. I hope we have enough bullets to finish this up. If it all goes South, we got enough guys to attempt Hack-A-Shaq
you can't hack the shaq baby, you saw that wicked FT shot that hit the rim, jumped up, and still landed? Keep hacking... And to all the Haters, keep hating...
107-117, we loss by 10... What a DISSAPOINTING second half by the Magic...geez... all our team problems showed up in the second half, we really need to work out with our weekness, Davis need to do something about this, really... We have to be in the game all the time, from 1st quarter to the final sec of the 4th, it hurts to give up a 9 points half time lead and loss the game to ourselves. hope we can bounce back in next game.
We made 2 shots in the final 5 mins. Both were Francis layups with about a min left, when the game was already getting out of hand. We need to get shots off is the big thing, we had about 4 or 5 straight possessions where we didn't even shoot, it was turnover after turnover and of course good teams capitalize on these miscues and the Heat did. Disappointing game, but also promising that we hung in the whole game without Cato. Hopefully we can bounce back and pick up a win next time we play them.
SVG better give the gameball to Eddie Jones. And I was a little disappointed in Howard...but it looks as if someone did well holding Wade to 30% shooting. If Cato was healthy, this game might have turned out differently.
Tough loss by the Magic.. The Heat are just rolling and clearly are the best team in the east at the moment.
Blah, we just ran out of fuel. Nothing you can do about that. What's with the shaq free throw comment tho? Just because Shaq got lucky on one free throw we're supposed to respect his FT shooting ability? Give me a break You'll need plenty of luck on the 25th, btw
Sorry Magik fans... we're just the best at closing out games... noone does it better. 8 game winstreak, we're gonna keep rollin. Next up in line is the Kings, and they better get ready for the pain!!!
You can really tell what kind of difference Kelvin Cato makes to this team, especially on defense. Without him the Magic are very thin in the paint. The Magic need him back asap, he may not have been able to stop Shaq or much less contain but he at least would have made him work, and Shaq made things look easy on Sunday.
