By SAM GARDNER
FOXSportsFlorida.com Magic Writer
Dec. 28, 2010
One night after it was snowing sideways in New Jersey, it was raining threes in Cleveland, and thankfully for Orlando, most of the long-distance magic was coming at their end of the court.
The Magic hit 19 of their 31 three-point shots Tuesday night at Quicken Loans Arena as they cruised to their fourth straight victory in a 110-95 rout of the Cavaliers.
The 19 threes were the most for Orlando since the Magic set an NBA record with 23 threes against the Kings in January 2009.
"I don't care where our points come from," Magic coach Stan Van Gundy said after the game. "We've put together our team to shoot the ball, and the Cavaliers are a team that gives up a lot of threes at a high percentage. They're packing it in the paint, and they've given up a lot of threes all year. So that's the way they play, and we'll take what the defense gives."
Much like that January night in Sacramento, practically everyone who took the court for Orlando got in on the action on Tuesday, and according to Van Gundy, his team couldn't afford to miss.
"I didn't think we brought a lot to the game today, just being honest," Van Gundy said. "We shot the ball extremely well, and we needed every one of them in the game today. Had we not shot the ball as well, we didn't bring enough to that game otherwise."
The Magic hit seven of their nine first-quarter threes, including three from Jason Richardson and two from Jameer Nelson, and each one proved to be vital as the Cavaliers matched them shot-for-shot and scored 33 first-quarter points against a listless Orlando defense.
Orlando cooled off from beyond the arc in the second and third quarters, hitting five of 12 attempts during the middle part of the game, but the ones that went in proved to be quite timely.
With the Magic trailing 45-39 midway through the second period, Gilbert Arenas hit back-to-back triples to knot the game at 45, and Redick's three-pointer on the final possession of the quarter gave Orlando a 60-57 lead at the break.
Both teams struggled offensively in the third quarter, as the Cavs outscored Orlando 17-15 to cut the Magic lead to one with 12 minutes to play, but J.J. Redick hit another big three near the end of the period to keep the ineffective Orlando offense churning.
"The first eight minutes of the third quarter was bad, but other than that the other 40 minutes were good offensively," Van Gundy said. "So we played about 40 out of the 48 minutes well offensively and about eight of the 48 minutes well defensively."
Orlando's defense was good in the fourth quarter, holding the Cavaliers to just 11 points, but it wasn't exactly necessary. The Magic knocked down seven of 10 threes in the final stanza and were able to blow the game open despite playing the entire quarter with the makeshift lineup of Arenas, Nelson, Ryan Anderson, Earl Clark and Hedo Turkoglu.
"I told (Magic GM) Otis (Smith) on the way in, it took me 32 games but we finally found our fourth quarter lineup," Van Gundy joked after the game. "... our concentration wasn't great, and we need to bring more to the game, but we finished it great and did enough good things to win the game."
Anderson opened the quarter with back-to-back threes to push the one-point lead to seven, Turkoglu and Jameer each added a long-range bucket to extend the lead further, and Arenas caught fire late with three more threes. The red-hot shooting rendered any plans Van Gundy had to play the regular fourth-quarter rotation useless.
"I fully expected to bring back Jason and J.J., to be honest ... but that group was just rolling along, so we played it out," Van Gundy said.
Nelson finished the game 3-of-6 from long distance, and Richardson was 4-of-6. Turkoglu hit two of his five three point shots, Arenas was 5-of-8 in his best shooting performance since joining the Magic, and Anderson was 2-for-3. Redick was three for three (he was 5-of-5 last Tuesday against Dallas and has hit 29 of his 51 three point attempts in the month of December).
Some have criticized the Orlando lineup since trading for Richardson, Turkoglu and Arenas, saying that they don't have the defense to win when they're not hitting shots, and that their offense isn't good enough to consistently shoot well from outside.
That's a problem for another day.
Said Van Gundy: "I think we're the kind of team that has different ways we can win a game, and we won it with our shooting today."
Be sure to follow @FSMagic on Twitter for Magic news, analysis and more all season long!
