Oh, the sting.
Magic fall short as Hornets rack up 40 FT tries
Orlando Magic go down 104-94 to the Charlotte Hornets.
CHARLOTTE, N.C. — Evan Fournier’s reaction following a play midway through the fourth quarter conveyed the frustration the Orlando Magic felt about the officiating Monday night as they played the Charlotte Hornets.
Charlotte’s Kemba Walker sped upcourt in transition and attempted a layup as Fournier challenged the shot. Walker lost his balance in midair, screamed and fell to the court, and referee Derrick Collins whistled Fournier for a shooting foul. Fournier’s eyes widened when he heard the whistle’s shriek, and then Fournier pressed each of his index fingers against his temples, like a person trying to ward off a splitting headache.
The Magic endured moment after moment like that against the Hornets.
Burdened by a massive freethrow imbalance, the Magic lost 104-94 at Spectrum Center. The Hornets attempted 40 free throws while the Magic took 14 free throws.
“I’ll take that up with the league — through the proper channels,” Orlando coach Frank Vogel answered when asked about free-throw imbalance.
The loss wasted one of the Magic’s best defensive performances in weeks. They held the Hornets to 40.5 percent shooting from the field and 17.6 percent shooting from beyond the arc. That helps explain why
the Magic felt so irritated by the officiating.
The game’s turning point occurred over a 15-second sequence early in the fourth quarter.
With the Magic trailing 79-76, Michael CarterWilliams stole the ball from D.J. Augustin. The Magic thought CarterWilliams had fouled Augustin, but no foul was called, prompting Vogel to immediately yell, “That’s a foul!” The resulting fast break ended in a dunk by Frank Kaminsky.
After the dunk, the Magic’s Marreese Speights shoved Cody Zeller, prompting Zeller to fall to the court on his backside. Sixteen seconds earlier, Zeller had bumped into Speights’ back as Speights was retrieving the ball following a Zeller dunk.
“My role is to bring some energy, and I do that in every way that I can,” Zeller said. “So that’s kind of how it happened tonight. [It] got the crowd into it.”
A replay review determined Speights had committed a Flagrant-1 foul, giving Charlotte two free throws and possession of the ball.
“It was a basketball play,” Speights said. “We was a little chippy out there. I was trying to take the ball out and got hit. I had to do what I’ve got to do, but it wasn’t no play that hurt nobody. It was just two guys just competing in a game, in the heat of a game.”
Not only did Zeller make both of his foul shots, but the Magic’s Wes Iwundu fouled Jeremy Lamb on the ensuing possession, producing two more Charlotte points.
In that 15-second span, the Hornets extended their lead to 85-76.
“The Flagrant-1 was not necessarily the turning point,” Fournier said. “It was more how we reacted to it because we need that kind of toughness, that kind of pushing people — not fighting, but kind of have that [tough] mentality. We need that. It’s just how we responded to it that was the problem.”
No Hornets player inflicted more damage than longtime Magic tormentor Kemba Walker, a crafty point guard who scored a game-high 29 points and made all 14 of his season-high 14 freethrow attempts.
Walker has been the primary reason why the Hornets have beaten the Magic nine consecutive times.
On Monday, however, the Magic thought they lost because they turned the ball over 20 times and because of the free-throw discrepancy.
The Hornets typically excel at getting to the line. They entered Mon- day first in the NBA in free-throw attempts, averaging 28.7 per game. But against the Magic, they exceeded their average by a significant margin.
“When you’re playing on the road, you’re really playing against six people,” Speights said. “So it’s up to us to play through it, and tonight we tried to. But it was kind of hard.”