The Atlanta Hawks ended the Orlando Magic's season Thursday night with an 84-81 victory in Game Six of their playoff series, and for the first time in four seasons, the Magic failed to advance to the second round of the playoffs. Joe Johnson scored 23 for Atlanta, while Jamal Crawford added 19, but their combined 16-of-41 shooting attests to the fact that the Hawks took this game for reasons apart from their offense.

Indeed, the Hawks--the league's second-worst offensive rebounding team in the regular season--snared 36.8 percent of their own misses Thursday night against a Magic team which led the league in defensive rebounding. As a result of the offensive boards and frequent misses, the Hawks finished the game with 12 more field-goal attempts than the Magic, which may have been the difference in a three-point game.

The rebounds weren't flukes, but rather resulted from Atlanta exploiting the defensive adjustment Orlando made in winning Game Five. Dwight Howard's ignoring his nominal matchup at center in order to shade Johnson and Crawford took him out of rebounding position, and the Magic failed to properly box out Atlanta. Johnson himself picked up 7 such rebounds, many of them of the "look what I found" variety.

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Faced with playoff elimination, the Orlando Magic responded with a 101-76 blowout of the Atlanta Hawks on Tuesday night, keeping their season alive and drawing to within one game of the Hawks, 3-2, in their best-of-seven series. Though only three Magic players finished in double-figure scoring, six more scored at least 7 points, which indicates the sort of balance with which the Magic dispatched the Hawks. Jason Richardson scored 17 points to lead Orlando, while J.J. Redick put in 11 of his 13 in the first period with Dwight Howard saddled with two personal fouls, giving the Magic all the separation they needed to keep Atlanta at bay.

The Hawks got 22 points and 11 rebounds from Josh Smith, both game-highs, but otherwise struggled on both ends of the floor. Jamal Crawford, the player who's tipped the balance in the Hawks' favor to date by scoring 20-plus points off the bench in each of the first four games, shot 2-of-8 for 8 points, with Orlando outscoring the Hawks by 30 points in the 25 minutes he was on the floor.

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The Orlando Magic shot 2-of-23 on three-pointers, the worst high-volume mark in NBA Playoff history, in falling to the Atlanta Hawks, 88-85, Sunday evening. The Magic return to Orlando for Tuesday's Game Five facing elimination as Atlanta now owns a commanding 3-1 lead in the series.

Once again, reserve guard Jamal Crawford led the charge for Atlanta, scoring 25 points in 33 minutes. And once again, the Magic had long stretches of offensive futility due to turnovers and poor shooting. Quentin Richardson sank the Magic's first three-point attempt of the game, but the team went on to miss 18 in a row before Gilbert Arenas flung one in drifting to his left, just trying to draw a cheap foul.

Trailing by three and with 10.5 seconds remaining, the Magic put the ball in Hedo Turkoglu's hands and asked him to create a tying shot off the dribble. It didn't go as planned. Trapped by Al Horford along the right sideline, Turkoglu lost control of the ball. He recovered it off the floor--just barely beating Horford to it--took a few dribbles to his right, and launched a three that hadn't a prayer. He was fortunate to even get it off; Horford, recognizing the time-and-score situation, gave several fouls that went uncalled on the play, but the officials laid off the whistle.

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The Orlando Magic battled back from an early 14-point deficit against the Atlanta Hawks on Friday night, but couldn't stop Atlanta down the stretch, losing Game Three of their Eastern Conference Quarterfinals series, 88-84, and falling into a 2-1 hole against the lower-seeded Hawks. Jamal Crawford scored 12 of his game-high 23 points in the fourth quarter, including the clinching basket with 5.7 seconds remaining: a deep, straightaway three-pointer, off-the-dribble, over a hard contest by Jameer Nelson.

He banked it in.

Though Magic players not named Dwight Howard showed some life offensively for the first time in this series, they had no answer for Crawford or Joe Johnson defensively. To be fair, there's nothing more Nelson could have done against Crawford on the winning basket, and we can fairly classify virtually all his field-goal attempts as "poor," but Crawford's made a career out of making difficult shots like that one.

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Dwight Howard played every last second of the Orlando Magic's 88-82 victory over the Atlanta Hawks in Game 2 of their Eastern Conference Quarterfinals series, leading the way with 33 points and 19 rebounds as the Magic evened the series. Orlando withstood another sterling performance from Hawks reserve Jamal Crawford, who poured in 25 points in 31 minutes, in the win.

For Orlando, little changed tonight from the first game at the offensive end. It struggled with turnovers, took fewer three-pointers than usual, and shot a low percentage from everywhere. Howard's teammates shot 18-of-66 from the field, which is precisely why Hawks coach Larry Drew can live with Howard dominating.

No, the Magic's difference came at the defensive end. Though they allowed the league's second-worst offensive rebounding team to grab 28.9 percent of its own misses, Orlando played an otherwise brilliant defensive game. Atlanta managed 82 points on the night, a figure which includes three desperation three-pointers in the first half, as well as a banked-in long two-pointer by Joe Johnson at another shot-clock buzzer. Discounting those nearly miraculous shots and you get a better idea of how stout the Magic guarded in the halfcourt.

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The Atlanta Hawks' offense hummed in a 103-93 win against the Orlando Magic in Game One of the Eastern Conference Quarterfinals on Saturday night. Led by Joe Johnson's 25 points on 9-of-16 shooting, the Hawks seized control in the second quarter, scoring 38 points in the period on 73 percent shooting. Dwight Howard set a Magic franchise record for scoring in a half, with 31 points in the first 24 minutes, but Orlando provided him precious little support; with 6 points, backup point guard Gilbert Arenas stood as the Magic's second-leading scorer at intermission.

Jameer Nelson came alive in the second half, scoring all 27 of his points to finally supplement Howard offensively, but no other Orlando player could get anything to drop offensively. Howard's 46 points stands as a personal best in the postseason, but it ultimately didn't matter. Arenas and Hedo Turkoglu finished tied as the Magic's third-leading scorer, with 6 points. That sort of offensive imbalance, with two players combining for more than three-fourths of their team's offense, won't lead to playoff success.

Atlanta, in contrast, had five players score in double-figures, with each shooting 50 percent from the floor or better. Since the Magic swept them in last year's Eastern Conference Quarterfinals by an average of 25.3 points per game, the Hawks have taken four of the last five meetings from Orlando.

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The Orlando Magic closed their 2010/11 regular season with a sloppy 92-74 victory over the Indiana Pacers on Wednesday night. Orlando committed a season-high 28 turnovers, resulting in 27 Pacers points. Electing to rest Danny Granger, the team's leading scorer, cost Indiana any chance to keep the game competitive and resulted in the Pacers shooting 30.7 percent from the field. Save for a third-quarter outburst from Mike Dunleavy, the Pacers simply had no offense to speak of. None of their wing players dared challenge Dwight Howard inside; the same went for their post players. Roy Hibbert, among the few young, back-to-basket center prospects in the league, loafed his way through an embarrassing performance, tallying five fouls in 10 minutes.

Orlando's offense wasn't exactly a sight to behold either. The Magic struggled with turnovers from start to finish, and while the team has ranked near the bottom of the league in turnover rate for most of the season, we really ought to regard a performance this shoddy as surprising. Four players had at least four turnovers, with reserve combo forward Earl Clark leading the way with six miscues in just 17 minutes.

All told, the teams combined to miss 102 shots and turn the ball over 46 times. The Magic dubbed the game "Fan Appreciation Night," but a performance like that is enough to make you think they've got a funny way of showing their love.

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In a bizarre game with some mind-bending stats, the Orlando Magic defeated the Philadelphia 76ers, 95-85, behind Ryan Anderson's 18-point, 14-rebound effort off the bench. The result clinched the seventh seed in the East for Philadelphia, which played without high-scoring reserve guard Lou Williams and franchise swingman Andre Iguodala.

Orlando scored 30 points in the first period on 6-of-7 shooting from three-point range, and may have taken a run at a 40-point quarter were it not for a string of inexplicable turnovers. Chester, PA native Jameer Nelson, who distributed tickets to 400 family, friends, and youth organizations, shot 3-of-3 on threes in the period, getting his team off to a hot start.

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