Magic look to maintain balance exhibited taking down Raptors
The Orlando Magic put together one of their best all-around performances Friday night as they dismantled the Toronto Raptors 116-87 at Amway Center.
The Magic were efficient on offense, shooting 47.3 percent, and locked in on defense, holding the Raptors to 29.5 percent shooting.
The importance of maintaining that balance of playing well on both ends of the floor is what Magic coach Steve Clifford con- tinues to stress to his team.
“To win consistently in this league, it can’t be just defending and it can’t just be playing offense. It has to be both,” he said Saturday after practice. “That’s what I always talk to them about; it is balance. Balanced play is what wins.”
The Magic will get the chance to build some consistency Sunday when they play host to the Detroit Pistons (16-17). The game tips off at 3:30 p.m. and can be seen on Fox Sports Florida.
It’s the first game of a back-to-back for Orlando, which travels to Charlotte on Monday.
The Pistons are eighth in the Eastern Conference standings but are just 2-4 in their past six games. They beat the Magic 103-96 when the teams met in early November.
So did the Raptors, who came to Amway with the NBA’s best record and left with their worst loss of the season.
And while the offense performed well after a shaky start, Clifford said his team’s defensive intensity kept the Raptors running away early.
“What I told the guys today is that our biggest games, when we’ve played our best, is that regardless of what’s happened offensively we’ve defended,” he said.
The trio of Nikola Vucevic (30 points), D.J. Augustin (17 points) and Terrence Ross (14 points) combined to go 23-of-34 from the field to help fuel the Magic offense.
Forward Aaron Gordon led a stalwart defensive effort, spending significant minutes guarding Raptors star Kawhi Leonard.
Leonard hit 4 of his first 6 shots, including some that were well-defended, but Gordon was undaunted. Clifford said Gordon didn’t make the mistake of trying to play Leonard too closely. Instead, he gave Leonard a little space and didn’t bite on pump fakes.
“Aaron Gordon was just, to me, so disciplined and so from smart in the way he played,” Clifford said. “Being a good defender, so much of it is to me — and people talk about size and quickness and all that — it’s decision-making.”
By game’s end Leonard was 7 of 19 from the field.
The Raptors’ shooting percentage was the fifthlowest by a Magic opponent in team history and only the sixth time Orlando has held the opposition under 30 percent. The lowest is 25.3 percent on Nov. 3, 2001, at Cleveland.
Vucevic joins elite company
Double-double games are nothing new for Vucevic. But when he recorded his team-high 23rd doubledouble of the season Friday, it put him in some stellar NBA company.
Vucevic finished with 30 points, 20 rebounds and eight assists. That made him just the ninth NBA player in the past 44 years with 30 or more points, 20 or more rebounds and eight or more assists in a game.
The only other players to do that are Charles Barkley (three times), DeMarcus Cousins (twice), Kareem Abdul-Jabbar (twice), George McGinnis, David Lee, Tim Duncan, Dirk Nowitzki and Alex English.
“It’s a great honor whenever you’re mentioned with some of the biggest names in the history of basketball,” Vucevic said. “It’s an honor. It makes you want to play better, work harder. As a kid you never dream that your name will be alongside those greats. You watch them play and you only maybe dream of playing at the level they did. When it actually happens it’s a really great honor.”
Vucevic now has five 30-point games and has reached double figures in 31 of the 33 games in which he’s appeared.