Magic Report: Injury to Fournier earns rookie Hezonja his first NBA regular-season start,
The Orlando Magic adjusted their playing rotations Sunday to account for the absence of small forward Evan Fournier, who sat out the 130-116 win over the Philadelphia 76ers because of a sore right wrist.
Fournier first felt soreness in his wrist when he woke up Wednesday morning. Although he played in games Thursday and Friday, he said he felt it would be best not to aggravate the injury by facing the Sixers on Sunday.
“Probably I could play, but I’m not going to be able to use my wrist really good,” Fournier said. “It would just make it worse and worse and worse. We have 30 games left [actually, 24 games left]. I’d rather take two days off so I can finish the season strong.”
Fournier, who is on schedule to become a restricted free agent in July, hadn’t missed a game this season before Sunday.
But Fournier doesn’t want a recurrence of what happened at the end of last season. He was suffering from a core injury, but he played anyway and aggravated the injury. He wound up missing 21of the Magic’s final 23 games.
With Fournier out on Sunday, the Magic started
rookie Mario Hezonja at small forward, alongside Elfrid Payton at point
guard, Victor Oladipo at shooting guard, Aaron
Gordon at power forward and Nik Vucevic at center.
It was Hezonja’s first regular-season NBA start.
“Everybody wants to be there [in the starting lineup], right?” Hezonja said afterward. “Me too, more than anybody, I guess. So it kind of feels way different. But you’ve got to still have the same mentality when you’re coming from the bench or if you are a starter.”
He scored the game’s opening basket and finished with 13 points on 5-of-9 shooting. But his defense was problematic.
Playoff hunt
By beating the lowly 76ers on Sunday, the Magic did exactly what they had to do to remain in the Eastern Conference playoff picture.
But to have any realistic chance of reaching the postseason, they’re going to have to do a lot more than beat teams like the Sixers.
The Magic trail the eighth-place Chicago Bulls by four games with 24 games to go.
Sixteen of the remaining 24 games will be against teams that currently have winning records, so Magic coach Scott Skiles acknowledged his team will have to win more than one game it won’t be expected to win.
“We’re going to have to get more than one that we’re not supposed to, yeah,” Skiles said. “We’re going to have to get several. We know it. That’s what we have to do. We knew going in we had to beat the teams that have records worse than ours. But then at some point, we’re going to have to toss in what people would call ‘upsets’ as well. We’ve got to beat some teams in front of us.”
The Magic’s remaining schedule includes a road game against the Golden State Warriors and a home game against the Cleveland Cavaliers.
Making matters even tougher is the frequency of the remaining games. The Magic still must play eight pairs of back-to -back games.
Curry’s brilliance
When Stephen Curry scored 51 points Thursday night against the Magic, it seemed improbable that Curry could ever top that performance. But Curry did top himself — and he did so in the Golden State Warriors’ next game.
On Saturday night, Curry led his Warriors to a 121-118 win over the Oklahoma City Thunder after he sank a 32-foot jumper with 0.6 seconds left in overtime. Many members of the Magic watched that game on TV.
“That was ridiculous, unbelievable — the shots that he’s making,” Gordon said. “Very difficult shots to make, to say the least. When he played us, it’s just amazing to see how consistently he does it.”
Layups
The Magic scored 40 first-quarter points against the Sixers — their highest point total for any quarter this season.
Orlando also scored 77 points in the first half — their highest point total for any half this season, eclipsing the 72 points they scored in the second half in their win over the Boston Celtics on Jan. 31. The 77 points were one point shy of the Magic’s franchise record for points scored in a half — a record set Nov. 3, 2010, in a 128-86 win over Minnesota.