<div align="center"> Denver Nuggets (13-10) (2-6 away )@Orlando Magic (13-9) (7-2 at home) Where : TD WaterHouse Centre Date: Saturday December 18th TV: NBALP, Sunshine 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 had a really bad shooting night last game we played against the Spurs, and no surprise we lost, because of it we need him to produce this game to win. Francis is ranked 18th in the league in point per game, 14th in steals, and a big down side to his game is he is ranked 4th overall in the league in turnovers with a total of 88. Cuttino Mobely is been hot for the team lately he has either led the team in scoring or been second. He has one of the best three poitn shot percentages in the NBA as he is ranked 6th in the NBA in three point field goal percentage. He will be a big factor for us this game. Grant Hill is second in the team in scoring, and will be a big factor for us this game as well him, Mobely, and Francis combine for roughly 58 of the teams average 100 points per game more than half the teams scoring come from these three so if they do not produce expect us to lose this game. Dwight Howad is the only guy on the team right now averaging a double double he has been huge for the team, and picked up his offensive game lately. He did not get that many rebounds agains tthe Spurs, but scored well for the team he had a big game on the offensive end last time we meet Denver hopefully he does it again and the result is different this time. Tony Battie is not the most impressive player in the league, but sinc ebeing tossed into the starting lineup due to the injury to Cato he has upped all his stats he can defintely be a big factor this game he did not play that many minutes against Denver last time since it was Cato's last game before leaving the team due to injury. Sixth Man F- Hidayet Turkoglu (13.1 PPG, 2.2 APG, 3.5 RPG) Hidayet Turkoglu SG/SF Hedo is on eof the leading canidates for sixth man of the year he is the teams 4th leading scorer, and the spark for us off the bench we need a big offensive game from him to win this. Not much to say about him he is a scorer and gets decent numbers in areas like assists and rebounds I think he needs to up his rebounds total a little tonight considering how good a rebounder Melo . Coach Jeff Bzdelik This is a coach that did not even have a guarenteed head coaching job coming into the season. Making the playoffs last season gave him a guarenteed contract with the team this year, but no where in his contract did it say he the job would be head coach, but the orginization had confidence in him and stuck with him even with coaches like Byron Scott, george Karl, and other avaliable. His career coaching record coming into this season was 73-114 and 1-4 in the post season. This is in 2 years of coaching experence as well. HThat does not say much about his coaching ability though the Nuggets where a orginization with a over payed Juwan Howard and no talent when he came. Probably Starters PG-Andre Miller ( 14.4 PPG, 5.4 APG, 4.3 RPG) SG- Greg Buckner ( 6.3 PPG, 1.9 APG, 2.8 RPG) SF- Carmelo Anthony ( 21.4 PPG, 6.0 RPG, 3.4 APG) PF- Kenyon Martin ( 14.7 PPG, 8.3 RPG, 3.4 APG) C- Marcus Camby ( 9.0 PPG, 9.0 RPG, 1.8 APG) Andre Miller onc elead the league in assists per game when he was with the Cavs though he is not the Miller of old. He is still a elite point guard imo. He can not be over looked he is a good ball handle. He is ranked 16th in the league in steals per game so he has quick hands. Though he is also ranked 19th in the leageu in turnovers with 62 total. Greg Buckner is anything, but a super star. He is a player aquired earlier this season by the Nuggets after havign his contract bought out by the Sixers. Buckner is a player who will not explode often for great games, but is decent with his shots and a decent defender. Nothing more. Nothing less. Carmelo Anthony got injured the Nuggets last game against the Heat he had a left ankle injury and is questionable this game. The X-rays where negative though so if he plays the Nuggets leading scorer will be a huge part of there offense. He is a good rebounding small forward, and has many moves to get to the basket he shots great there last game vs the Magic and will look to due the same again tonight. Kenyon Martin left the NJ Nets this summer in a trade to the Nuggets the Nuggets traded three future first round selections for the one time all star. Yet he has not produced as expected his scoring is down from last seaosn to a 14.7 points per game he is also averaging less rebounds, but he can explode any time so be careful with him. Marcus Camby is one of the most under rated players in the NBA he averages nearly a double double a point shy and a rebound shy of averaging a double double. He does the little things fo the team to win he does nto fill up the stat sheet all the times, but he hustles and hits shots when called on thats what the Nuggets need from him. Sixth Man PG-Earl Boykins (12.3 PPG, 2 RPG, 3.7 APG) Earl Boykins at 5'5" s the current shortest player in the NBA, but if you measure players by there game he would be one of the tallest players in the NBA. The good thing aout him is since he is so short a lot of players tend to want to block him all the time so they bit on pump fakes, and that gives him a open lane to the basket at times. He is also one of the strongest pound for pound players in the league he lifts so much that he can bench mroe than his own body weight.</div> <div align="center"> MVP'S Steve Francis: 27 points,8 assists, 6 rebounds Caremlo Anthony: 22 points, 7 rebounds, 4 assists</div> These two players are set to have big games. Melo will really need to play through a lot tonight considering his injury. His team needs him to step up for them to win without him scoring and shooting well for them I really do not see them winning this game tonight the Magic just have to many weapons, and are just to quick. Steve Francis needs to rebound from his last game though he scored over 20 points he still shot bad, and this is a good shooter right here he performed well from the line which he usually does that was the reason for his high point total last game he needs to get to the line and shoot well to night or we will lose this game. Injury Report Kelvin Cato Andrew Declerq Michael Bradely Leo's Pre game Prediction First quarter will be high scoring. We will set the speed for this game by getting off to the break early. I think one of the big three will have a off ngiht Im leaning to Grant Hill if Melo plays, becuase he is the one who will be facing a higher level guard then Francis and Mobely. Score after the first quarter will be 28-25 Nuggets ahead. Speeding up the tempo will allow us to take advantage of Melo's ankle. Second quarter the tempo will be slow. We will get into to much of a half court game which the Nuggets will domiante with there big men. Camby will score a lot this quarter I think and the combo of Martin and Nene will overwelm Howard tonight in this quarter. Score at the half 59-48 Nuggets. Third quarter will be a quarter owned by us. I think that in this quarter we will shoot very well 60% well I think, and will be able to amke our usual come back. We will take the lead this quarter by a few, but let the Nuggets come back and tie it 80-80 at the end of the third. Fourth quarter we pull away with some clutch threes from Hedo, Mobely, and Francis. We force the Nuggets to make a lot of mistakes like turnovers, and we take advatange of it. Though I think the Nuggets will make a semi run in the last three minutes get it under double digits, but we still pull out a win 105-98.
Great preview Pure Skillz! With Carmelo likely to be out, I think we can easily pull this one off, especially after they come off a tough game yesterday against the Heat and I don't expect them to bounce back. We have an advantage or are at least even at every position except maybe the PF, where Dwight has to play against another above average PF of the league. Even with Carmelo playing, I think our bench will be crucial and will give us the edge over Denver. The only constantly productive player coming off the bench for Denver is Boykins but I don't see him producing much in this game. I'll say we win this by 15 (without Carmelo) and by 5 in case Carmelo plays.
You did a good job with the preview, Pure Skillz. Regarding the game, these teams are pretty evenly matched and have decent factors coming off the bench. If Steve Francis has a good game and Hill scores about 20 points, the Magic should be able to pull away. Good post defense on Nene and Martin will also be key, and Howard and Battie look to be the right men for the job with their strength and quickness.
Thanks for the complements Trip and Coranor. Well its half time right now Magic 64 Nuggets 50. So here is my half time analysis. Steve Francis has not been producing excellently in terms of offensive out put, but he is having a great overall game 8 points 4 rebounds 6 assists at the half. He is also 4-5 from the field. Three of our leading scorers Hill, Howard, and Mobely have a combined 13-15 from the field our team is a total of 26-38 from the field we have attempted 13 less shots then Denver yet still lead they have only converted on 20-51 less than 50% from the field we have also shot over 50% from the three point arc 3-5 in that area. We are getting to the line this game we have 5 more free throw attempts than Denver, and have made three more free throws. Mobely, Hill, and Francis have combined for 7 of the Magics 9 turnovers to night the team in general has cut down on its turnovers, but those three players need to work harder to hold on to the ball the second half. The big reason outside our field goal percentage that we are up right now is the way we have been moving the ball we have 7 more assists than the Nuggets 17-10 we also have 4 more rebounds 24-20. So in the three major catogories we have beat the Nuggets these three being points, boards, and assists. We have not done a good enough job in forcing turnovers the Nuggets only have 7 first half turnovers. No one on there team has more than 2 turnovers only one guy has 2 and the rest all have one. Howard is on his way to a double double 13 points 9 rebounds so far this game. Hill is also on his way to a 20 points plus night 14 points at half time and also 4 assists which is very good for a forward. So my hot at the half goes to Howard despite Hill leading the team in scoring Howard has had a better overall performance so far, and only one less point than Hill. Camby has taken his far share of shots so far with 7 yet only connected on 2 of those seven shots. Then we just cant stop Nene three for three from the field. Although, we have not stopped Martin's offensive out put we have been able to force him into bad shots he is 4-11 so far tonight.
What can I say? Domination! from start to finish. Big first half from howard and hill, stevie big on the assists, and just a great effort in all. Just keep it going to heat tommoz and I will be happy !
A great game by the Magic. I thought we would win, and it would be high scoring for us, but who thought it would be this high scoring this is probably the first game all year where both our defense, and offense showed up at the same time. We had 48 rebounds 30 assists. 30 ASSISTS! We had 6 guys score doble digit scoring. Jameer Nelson attempted a career high of field goal attempts and scored 10 points tonight. He also had 3 assists. Steveie Wonder didnt score, but he dished out dimes every where finishing with a total of 11 assists. I can not believe that Howard did not have a double double he had 9 rebounds at half time, and did not get another one all game. He did how ever have 17 points which is good enough for me. 17 points and 9 rebounds is a good night for anyone. Let alone a rookie. Mobely once again lead our team in scoring he has done this multiple times since his return. I think tha he is the most unde rated factor of this team he scores and defends for us. Yet we are to caught up with Howard, Hill, and Francis to notice sometimes. Now the bad part 18 turnovers this game 9 in each half. The good only two of those came from Steve Francis who averages 4 turnovers a game. The bad four of them came from Cuttino Mobely our leading scorer. Also we did not allow Earl Buykins one assist all game final stat line 13 points/0 rebounds/ 0 dimes. Good game overall by us we played out game on both ends of the court and crashed the board. My game MVP goes to Francis 12 points 11 dimes.
This was the last game for Denver of a long road trip, just like we they in our road trip were exhausted and tired and couldn't keep up with our tempo. This allowed us to score a season-high 33 Points on the fastbreak, some of them as a result of a turnover - they had 19 turnovers which resulted in 23 points. Speaking of TO, Dwight didn't have any, this is just the second time for him without a TO and coming off a 4 TO game against the Spurs. He also was huge with 5-5 from the field and got quite often to the line, accoutning for 11 of our total 18 free throws. Only 18 FT, this might look like we didn't go into the paint very often, but that's not telling the truth with 68 points in the paint, compared to their 46. One bad thing, it looks like without Cato we're not really good at boxing out and defending our basket - they had 21 offensive rebounds, nearly everyone had at least one except Boykins and Miller. Even though this was a great win, don't get overconfident with our win, the Nuggets were clearly tired and lacking energy to play tough defense and also missing their top scorer. Our next game against Miami (in Miami) will show how good we really are, this is a back-to-back game but won't be as tough as I expected since most of our starting 5 played less than 30 minutes, only Battie played more than 30 - 33 minutes. P.S. I'm looking forward to your Preview, Pure Skillz!
<div class="quote_poster">Quoting Coranor:</div><div class="quote_post">One bad thing, it looks like without Cato we're not really good at boxing out and defending our basket - they had 21 offensive rebounds, nearly everyone had at least one except Boykins and Miller.</div> Totally agreed. I just watched 3 quaters of the game, and I was just WHAT? AGAIN? OMG! Our guys need to work harder to get more rebounds, especially the next game against the HEAT! yeah, overall a nice game for everyone, especially Nelson and Kasun, they impressed me a lot! Kasun will be one of our important weapon on rebounding in the coming games. What a nice game showed by the Magic. Smooth passing, great runs, nice 3s Hope will bring this to Miami <div class="quote_poster">Quoting Coranor:</div><div class="quote_post">P.S. I'm looking forward to your Preview, Pure Skillz!</div> Pure Skillz. Thanks, i enjoy reading it.
I think another great part of that game was, we scored high - 117 but contained denver to under 100pts, which if u look @ our other high scoring games we normally dont do.
