Magic at Raptors: What Didn't Work

As well as the Magic played a night ago against Detroit is exactly how poorly they played less than 24 hours later in Toronto. Orlando looked like a tired team and they didn’t match any of the intensity that the Raptors took to the Air Canada Centre in their 127-110 loss to Toronto. We are going to examine what went wrong for the Magic against the Raptors Wednesday night.

1. Defense- Lots and lots of open shots for Toronto, and they were certainly hitting them. Toronto shot 58.8% from the field (47-80) and made it look easy. Orlando was very slow on their rotations, and couldn’t guard the high pick and roll effectively. All of that led to 127 points allowed by Orlando.

2. Bench play- Toronto’s bench severely outplayed Orlando’s en route to a 37-16 scoring advantage. The Magic really showed their need for some more depth in this contest.

3. Defense on Chris Bosh- Bosh is a great player, but he’s not anywhere near as great as Orlando made him look Wednesday night. Bosh finished with 40 points and 5 rebounds, despite scoring just 5 points in the fourth quarter.

4. Defending the three- Toronto is the best three-point shooting team in the NBA, and the Magic decided to leave them open from behind the arc. The Raptors finished 11 of 20 from behind the arc for 55%.

5. Shot selection- When the Magic play defense the way they did Wednesday night, it really puts the offense in a bad situation, but Orlando took entirely too many outside shots and didn’t take it to the basket against the soft frontcourt of Toronto. Orlando hit on only 9 of the 28 three-point shots they hoisted up.

6. Hedo Turkoglu- Turkoglu’s cold shooting of late was even colder north of the border. Turk has shot just 27.5% (8-29) since the All-Star break.

---

Charlie Bernstein is the Editor-in-Chief of MagicIllustrated.com, and a regular syndicated contributor to FoxSports.com, Sirius Radio, MySpace Sports and Sportsillustrated.com. Charlie is also a columnist for the New Smyrna Observer. Feel free to contact him -HERE- with questions or comments.


For more, go to: MagicIllustrated.com