Chicago Bulls 89, Orlando Magic 81

He struggled with his ballhandling (4 assists to 5 turnovers) and three point shooting (0 for 5), but shot 9 of 15 on two pointers.

After scoring 34 points against Miami, they combined to score 13 points against the Bulls on 3 of 20 FG shooting, including 2 of 13 on three pointers.

In contrast, the Bulls’ reserves scored 32 points and outrebounded the Magic reserves 23-7. I thought Asik did a heck of a job on Howard defensively.

The Magic started out very well, making 9 of their first 12 shots. For the rest of the first half after that, the Magic shot just 7 of 24 and were outscored 36-16 after they led 19-13.

The Magic were put in a really tough spot because of the schedule. They were coming off their most emotional win of the season against the Heat facing a Bulls’ team who had a day of rest, and the Bulls had a lot to prove after their embarrassing collapse against Atlanta Wednesday night.

I know that fatigue shouldn’t be used as an excuse, because this is the NBA and every team has to play back-to-backs, but it certainly played a part for the Magic with the Bulls’ outhustling the Magic and outrebounding them by so much.

as i said before playing catch up isn’t always gonna work. the magic need to take command and control games instead of always trailing at the end of the 1st half. also need to stop forcing 3’s. work the inside. how did the bulls score? inside. the magic mostly have no inside game besides howard. bass and anderson need to help howard on the inside more. and help grab rebounds. how many off rebs did the bulls grabs. 16. to many 2nd chance points. well we won’t have howard for 1 game. and maybe we need this. so the others can get there act together.

and much worse, too

/petty

…and they’ve won 4 of their last 5 games, but like the saying goes, you can’t win ’em all.

It’s very disappointing to see Howard pick up his 16th technical foul, though. Sure, he got fouled hard, but he should be used to opposing teams fouling him hard. Be a man and go to the free throw line instead of doing something childish and immature that’s going to hurt your team.

As Evan mentioned in the recap, this will cost Howard votes in the MVP race, which is unfortunate.

Wonder though… now it’s one suspension for every TWO Techs; how will the Magic cope with ANOTHER 2-3 suspensions? Will the Owners be as “happy” with their investment; tens of millions in TAX PENALTIES, with DIMINISHED RESULTS???

I don’t think so…

but expecting OTIS to do that would just dissapoint us. I hope d12 wouldnt get injured with the amount of playing time he plays every game.

Yes I know Howard is suspended. But someone please tell me when this other big suppose to play? One game? Who do you guys want? I mean seriously? Bass, Clark, and Anderson can get the job done for a game. And yes I understand we are only a game up on Atlanta, but Dwight should understand that. Don’t blame Otis for Dwight getting technicals. As for this game, Richardson is the only guy who had any juice tonight. He should of had like 30 shots. Him and Dwight had juice. I put the onus on the players to see who has the hot hand and keep feeding them. They had been doing that pretty well the last few games, but fell back into making sure everyone has a piece of the pie.

the Bulls? Seriously? The same team that blew a 17 point first half lead to the Hawks who will be lucky to make it past the first round this year? We really should be able to handle them. On a side note, it’s going to suck to be without Dwight for a game since it’ll allow the Hawks to gain some ground on us.

Hedo, who’s been known to take a night or two off and pull the occasional “Hedo flu” sick day, clearly wanted no part in this game. I know he bumped his elbow a lil bit but he was yawning in the huddle prior to that. Even turned the funny bone bump into a looker room visit before trainer & coaches convinced him he was fine. Brendon Malone was clearly irritated by this in his brief halftime interview.
Point is, our stagnant offense last night could have bennifited from an active, aggressive Hedo pushing the pace and moving the ball.
Also, can we take better advantage of J-Rich earlier in the game? When he start letting em’ fly late when we’re in desperation comeback mode he tears it up. How bout we get that started a little earlier. Just a thought.

“I like our team the way it is. I know it’s not what everybody wants to hear. It’s not sexy. I guess I’m not sexy enough. Sorry, I’m going to stay with what I have. We’ll put No. 12 out there and let everybody else out there get all the bigs to battle No. 12. It’s not the other way around.”
Then to put icing on that clearly ignorant statement he followed with:
“Unless the big man is Patrick Ewing or Alonzo Mourning 15 years ago, then I think I’m good,” Smith said. “I don’t know how many ways I can say that. But just to get size just to say we got size? I’m not so sure I know what that does for us.”
How many times in the not so distant past did he talk about why Gortat was valuable to us? Out of his own mouth comments like:
“When your superstar center has to come off of the court you don’t want too much of a drop off”.
Or:
“If Dwight get’s into foul trouble or has to miss a game it’s key to have a quality big to be able to hold that spot down”
Now those last two quotes are not exact so don’t give me a hard time about listing the source but if you’ve followed the Magic at all you know those were constant lines used in reference to having a guy like Gortat around. So for Otis to pull a philosophical 180’ especially in the looming face of a Dwight Howard suspension, seems insane and unnecessary. It would be way better to just keep your mouth shut they to try to throw that BS out. Especially to informed Magic fans who know that’s garbage. I think he clearly is a little frazzled about having let the trade deadline slip by, perhaps thinking he had an “in” with Troy Murphy, only to see Troy go to our arch rival the Celtics. But instead trying to go with a plan B he’s pretending that the idea of a solid backup is a silly thought. How dumb of us to think that way.
Bass is 6’6’’ (did you see him standing next to Lebron? James had a full 2 inches on Bass) and Anderson doesn’t have the strength or grit to battle any hard nosed big men. I know we don’t want to just grab any bum but we do need a backup center. There’s no doubt about that. Otis is looking us in the face and telling us the 2+2 doesn’t equal 4. For our sake I hope he’s right somehow. But for my sake I hope Otis is fired after this season.

and they even tried to give them the game in the last 2min