The Orlando Magic had the look of running this score up on the Sixers, but then something went horribly wrong. Dwight Howard had a monster game with 31 pts, 16 rebs, 2 asts, and 2 blks, even going 9-12 from the free throw line. Courtney Lee also stepped up with 18 points, but the other two of the Big Three, Turkoglu and Lewis were no shows. Even with that the Magic went up 18 on the Sixers and maybe that was a bad thing. It looked as though the Magic thought that lead itself would just make the Sixers quit.
The Sixers stunk it up early but came back and won this one in the end. They were led by two great performances from Andre Iguodala (20 pts, 8 asts, 8 rebs) and Andre Miller (15 pts, 7 asts, 7 rebs). The performance of the night had to go to Donyell Marshall. After dusting off the moth balls, Marshall came on and hit 3 big threes for the Sixers. He ended up playing on 11 minutes but dropped 11 points. I will agree with Barkley that the jumper that won the game for the Sixers was a lucky shot, but sometimes it's better to be lucky rather than good.
Key facts:
- The Magic got 13 pts from their bench the entire night. That's not going to win you many games. Even scarier is Anthony Johnson had 9 of those 13.
- The Sixers are up for this one. They came out and started slow, but they never backed down to the Magic. Just imagine if this team still had a healthy Elton Brand.
Are the Magic going to be the first higher seed to go home? Can they get more out of their ailing stars in Turkoglu and Lewis? Can Howard continue to perform at the line like he did?
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