A Brief, Closer Look at the Orlando Magic's Dominance of the Philadelphia 76ers

by Evan Dunlap on Oct 29, 2009 4:47 PM EDT in Analysis

Last night, the Orlando Magic opened up their 2009/10 season with a 120-106 win over the Philadelphia 76ers. 14 points is no small margin, but as Eddy, Kelly Dwyer, and I have pointed out elsewhere, it's not indicative of just how dominant the Magic were. They held a 31-point lead after three periods, and in the fourth, went into cruise control. Philadelphia made the final score with a 37-20 romp in the fourth quarter, with nothing at stake except appearances.

I wanted to get a better idea of what the game looked like when the Magic were actually trying, so I surveyed the quarter-by-quarter statistics at Popcorn Machine. The table below illustrates how the Magic and the Sixers stacked up against each other through the first three quarters of last night's game.

Team	Pace	Efficiency	eFG%	FT Rate	OReb%	TO Rate
76ers	69	100.0	46.6%	23.7	22.3	14.5
Magic	69	145.5	69.8%	19.0	33.3	14.5

Small sample size or not, holding a team of Philadelphia's caliber to one point per possession is impressive. The Magic played much better than what the final box score may have indicated, but there's still plenty of room for improvement. Keeping up the intensity, on both ends of the floor, for 48 minutes instead of the first 36 is the first step.

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Not great with reading this advanced statistics...

How do you tell from those numbers that we held them to 1 point per possession?

by bandrewg08 on Oct 29, 2009 5:22 PM EDT reply actions

Anytime a team's offensive efficiency is 100, it means the number of points it scored is equal to the number of possessions it had.

Third Quarter Collapse: An Orlando Magic blog at SB Nation | Brandon Bass: "I just play hard."

by Evan Dunlap on Oct 29, 2009 5:26 PM EDT up reply actions

OHHHHH

That makes sense

by pianolady on Oct 29, 2009 7:35 PM EDT up reply actions

VC has struggled the past couple years against the 6ers so it was nice to see him have a good game to start the season off, theese next two games should be fun, can’t wait to see him in Toronto I hope he does his usual damage

I know what Bo dont know.

by D-RAK on Oct 29, 2009 5:40 PM EDT via mobile reply actions

Nice

by derekk on Oct 29, 2009 5:54 PM EDT up reply actions

Cept for when he scored 43 on them twice.

It's not a dunk unless your hand makes contact with the rim. Yeah, I'm talkin' to you, "Superman..."

by ben_gleicher on Oct 30, 2009 1:43 PM EDT up reply actions

Stan said it best after the game - the Magic are capable of playing like this offensively, on occasion.

But in the end, it’s all about the defense.

I'm the other guy at Third Quarter Collapse, with a Twitter account.

"The second unit is kind of crazy because the second unit is only white guys." - Marcin Gortat

by erivera7 on Oct 29, 2009 7:17 PM EDT reply actions

On occasion? At this point it looks like "more often than not."

It's not a dunk unless your hand makes contact with the rim. Yeah, I'm talkin' to you, "Superman..."

by ben_gleicher on Oct 30, 2009 1:44 PM EDT up reply actions

Maybe, but Orlando can't rely on its offense all the time.

I'm the other guy at Third Quarter Collapse, with a Twitter account.

"The second unit is kind of crazy because the second unit is only white guys." - Marcin Gortat

by erivera7 on Oct 30, 2009 2:19 PM EDT up reply actions

Man, the league parity is displayed in full force with the picture of those two’s faces… I feel bad but at the same time, Orlando Magic isn’t even a big market, free spending team. There may be a lot of games where the 1st, 2nd quarters are the actual game before the Magic pull away too far. In 2 games, Raps may prove a real nice game as I think they’ve vastly improved, with some of the plus .500 West teams, 5-ish title contenders, and a few hot East teams.

by derekk on Oct 30, 2009 4:22 AM EDT reply actions