NBA Scores And More: Dwight Howard Eats Smallball Knicks For Dinner, Magic Win 112-103

The New York Knicks dropped their second straight game in the state of Florida in the same fashion: fall behind early, rally with a frantic comeback and fall short at the end . The new-look Orlando Magic won their fifth straight game 112-103 over the Knicks to improve to 21-12.

The turning point was Amar’e Stoudemire leaving the game with three fouls in the second quarter. When he left the Knicks trailed 39-32. The Magic finished the first half on a 23-8 run with Amar’e on the bench to go into the intermission with a 62-44 lead. The Magic hit five threes in the second quarter to spark their offense.

The Knicks made a run in the second half to make it interesting, but couldn’t get stops down the stretch after cutting the Magic lead to two at 98-96. The Magic outscored the Knicks 14-7 in the last four minutes behind dagger three-pointers by Jason Richardson and Hedo Turkoglu.

For the Knicks to build on their excellent start, they need to get more out of Danilo Gallinari. I split the blame between Raymond Felton and coach Mike D’Antoni. Felton took 22 shots compared to only five from Gallo. Felton, as the point guard, needs to get the ball into the scorer’s hands and not look as much for his shot. And if D’Antoni sees Felton is looking too much for his own offense, he needs to say something to his point guard.

One other major difference in the game was the Magic’s work on the offensive boards. They had 17 of them, including nine by Dwight Howard.

Orlando Pinstriped Post notes how different the Magic’s defensive intensity was in each half; Posting And Toasting wonders why the Knicks didn’t give Timothy Mozgov a chance to play.

No Dirk Nowitzki for the Dallas Mavericks. No win, either. Brian Cardinal got the start for the Mavs and while he played a solid game, you could see down the stretch that the Mavericks really missed Nowitzki. It didn’t help that Jason Terry was 3-for-16 and two of those shots were three-pointers with the game already out of reach late in the fourth quarter.

The Spurs were able to pull out the victory despite Tony Parker and Manu Ginobili shooting a combined 10-of-27 from the field. The key for San Antonio was Gary Neal who led the way with 21 points and drained five three-pointers.

I was switching back and forth with this game and Blazers-Jazz, but in my time watching I was really disappointed Brian Cardinal and Matt Bonner were not on the court at the same time. This is something Gregg Popovich and Rick Carlisle should have planned out before the game started.

The Portland Trail Blazers were able to get a huge win against the Utah Jazz, pulling the Blazers above .500. But let’s be honest: the biggest news involving either of these two teams today was the announcement that Brandon Roy will be out indefinitely. In retrospect maybe the 12-game stretch from Nov. 26 to Dec. 15 when Roy never played less than 30 minutes and played 35 minutes or more seven times wasn’t the smartest organizational decision. The blame has to fall on Coach Nate McMillan, who should have been using Roy in a sixth man role for 20-25 minutes a game to try and prolong his season and career. What makes it even worse is with Wesley Matthews and Rudy Fernandez, the Blazers have two capable shooting guards to take minutes away.

Onto Thursday’s night game, where Matthews made the Jazz pay for not re-signing him this summer. Matthews, who is one of the front runners for the Most Improved Player award, led the way with 30 points. LaMarcus Aldridge continued his strong December with 27 points.

The loss was expected for the Jazz, as they were without four rotation players in Mehmet Okur, C.J. Miles, Francisco Elson and Andrei Kirilenko. At times during this game, the Jazz rolled out a preseason-like line-up of Earl Watson, Ronnie Price, Raja Bell, Jeremy Evans and Kyrylo Fesenko. If you have that line up on the court outside of garbage time, you’re not winning an NBA basketball game.