The Magic stretch their winning streak to four games as they grind out another tough win against the Boston Celtics, 87-83. Dwight Howard had a rough night, scoring two field goals off of three attempts. However, Howard has a timely block at the end of the game to keep the Magic ahead. Howard finishes with another double-double, although not quite Dwight Howard type numbers. Steve Francis dropped in 19 points and added 7 assists. Jameer Nelson finishes with 16 points and DeShawn Stevenson contributes his consistent 11 points.
What exactly are the Magic doing right? Just about everything. The scoring is balanced nicely. Every player is contributing to effort of winning. The Magic, for the most part, are playing very unselfish basketball right now. Turnovers are down. Defensive energy is up. Players are passing the ball. And the Magic are finding ways to score on poor shooting nights.
The defense has been great the last 5 or 6 games. Stevenson is finally getting the playing time he deserves and the results are showing. At 24, Stevenson is rounding into one of the better defensive players in the league. Having Stacey Augmon around to give Stevenson a breather helps the Magic greatly.
Not much you can really say when the team is winning 4 straight. But, I think Hedo Turkoglu and Kelvin Cato need to become a little more consistent. I don't feel Hedo drove to lane as much as he had in the past couple games and Cato looked like he wasn't interested again tonight. Tony Battie put up some decent numbers tonight (8 and 8), but I didn't feel the energy from him like the past 2 games. Maybe we can give the Celtics a little credit for disrupting the Magic's offense enough that it affected some players more than others.
In all, this was another solid win by what is turning out to be a gritty team. Personally, I love these kind of basketball games. To me, they are a lot more exciting to watch than Phoenix and Dallas jack up 110 points every night.
