Orlando Magic will meet Atlanta Hawks for ‘do or die’ Game 6 - NBA Play-offs Preview
The Orlando Magic will meet the Atlanta Hawks for the sixth time in the first-round of the National Basketball Association play-offs on Thursday night at Amway Centre, Orlando.
Since the Magic have trimmed the Hawks lead to 3-2 in the series, their hopes are alive again and for them the next game is going to be a ‘do or die’.
The seriously sliding Magic stunned everyone with their 101-76 win on Tuesday night against the Hawks, who were 3-1 in the best of the seven game series and were just one win away to qualify for the second-round of the 2011 play-offs.
The Magic bounced back in tremendous fashion and made the series more electrifying and gripping. The second shocker of Tuesday’s game was Orlando’s shooting guard J.J. Redick, who led the side with 14 points, three rebounds and three assists in the presence
of the All-Star Dwight Howard who has earlier led the pack in first four games and did not get much support from the rest of the players.
The person behind this new approach was Magic's coach Stan Van Gundy, who came up with a new strategy. In Game 5, Gundy ran less on the offensive side with Howard, who scored with an average of more than 32 points in the previous four games.
The Magic tattered Atlanta with one pick-and-roll strategy, this approach helped Orlando in getting big contributions out of Jason Richardson and reserve guard J.J. Redick, who made 17 and 14 points respectively.
Howard used less than half an hour on the court for his meagre eight points along with eight rebounds. In spite of this, the Magic showed aggression right from the start of the game and overpowered the Hawks with 23 points lead at the half-time.
Coach Van Gundy said, "I don't think it can be one or two guys. Those first four games, it was basically just Dwight carrying us. We need more people involved. We need to have a lot of people play well."
Just as the Hawks’ coach Larry Drew stressed on his team that they are still in charge of the series after the loss, likewise Stan Van Gundy wants his team to play like a desperate squad because if they go down on Thursday they will be out of contention.
Gundy added, "Our energy and effort has to be at least what it was (in Game 5), if not better. My main message was, we're still behind. My analogy today was it's like a game when you're down 25 and then you make a run to get it back to 10. You feel good
that you're playing better, but you can't celebrate because you're still down 10 and you've got a long way to go before you actually win it."
The Hawks on the other hand shot just 36 percent and it was their worst performance out of five games they have played until now. Coach Drew is upset with his team’s performance and wants them to portray the same showdown, which they put up in Game 3 and
4.
The Hawks are expecting that Orlando will again come up with the same plan like Game 5, that has done wonders for them and it will make their job even harder. However, Atlanta believes that this will be a good chance for them to cap the series, otherwise
it will not be easy for them to snatch a win in Game 7.
To give the Hawks a motivational thrust, each one of them received a copy of the newspaper in which Orlando’s columnist wrote that the Hawks were “birdbrains” and guaranteed that the Magic will go on and win the series from here.
These columns added insult to the injury and now the fans are expecting a furious battle on Thursday night, when the two teams will meet in Amway Centre.
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