Dwight Howard at the double as Orlando Magic ease past the Phoenix Suns 103 – 93 – NBA Recap
The Orlando Magic produced a dominating display, fuelled by the brilliant Dwight Howard, to blaze past the Phoenix Suns on Wednesday. Playing at the Amway Center, the Magic delighted the home crowd with their superiority over the Suns lasting from pretty
much start to finish.
Suns centre Marcin Gortat pointed at Howard for the reason of Orlando’s landslide win.
"[Howard] just had a good game. I mean, he was himself . . . He basically destroyed me and the whole team so that's what happened. I tried to hold up to him in the first half and then in the second half, I kind of fell asleep and he started scoring like
crazy."
Dwight Howard was momentous, putting up another massive double-double, 28 points and 16 rebounds. Howard was 11-of-16 from the floor and 6-of-10 from the free throw line. The top scorer for Orlando though was one Ryan Anderson, the forward racking up 29
points.
2 other Orlando players made it into double-digits.
It was a bad night out for the Suns, with only two starters, veteran star Steve Nash and Jared Dudley, making it into double figures. Dudley scored team high 17 points and Nash managed 12. The Phoenix bench had to come contribute a lot in order to save them
from an even more humiliating defeat.
The first quarter was perhaps the only one where the game looked like a contest. The scores were close early on, although Orlando’s superiority started to show through after the halfway mark. A Ryan Anderson effort from downtown took Magic up 18 – 13 and
they remained in control at the end, 27 – 21.
The second frame was when Orlando really started to take over the game. An early 9 – 0 burst put them up by double-digits, 42 – 28. The Suns couldn’t get close to Orlando afterwards and the first half came to an end with the Magic up 57 – 44.
Things didn’t improve for the Suns after the interval either. They struggled to keep up with the Magic throughout the third period, and a late 7 – 0 burst stretched Orlando’s lead to a massive 20 points, the score 80 – 60.
The last frame saw mini-resurgence from Phoenix but it served no purpose as it only slowed down the Magic. As far as recovering from the massive deficit went, the Suns didn’t make too many inroads. It was right at the death that they managed a 6 – 0 to restore
some respectability to the score line; 103 – 93.
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