The Magic Sweep the Hawks in Dominating Fashion

Orlando uses the same formula every game so it’s no surprise as to what they are going to do. It must be extremely frustrating for the Hawks to know what Orlando is going to do and not be able to stop it.

Offensively, Orlando does a lot of pick and rolls, they dump the ball down to Howard, and they shoot around 30-33 three-pointers. On the defensive end they are going to load the paint, and the perimeter players are going to push up and drive the Hawks into the defensive player of the year’s extended hands.

For the Hawks to solve this puzzle they need to increase the pace, get the ball up and down the floor, move from side to side, and dominate the paint. Sounds like a lot to do against a seemingly unstoppable Orlando Magic team.

Atlanta’s head coach Mike Woodson tried to give some words of encouragement to his team before the game. He said, “Hey. Take a deep breath and just relax. That’s all you have to do. And play hard for 48 minutes. This is our building. We’ve been great in this building all year. Let’s go out and prove that we can win a game tonight.”

Coming into this elimination game Orlando has been shooting lights out at 60.8% on 2-pt FG against the Hawks in this series.

They would keep up this trend as the Magic were fire hot in the 1st quarter. They had 34 points on 14-19 FG and 4-8 3-pt FG.

The hot hand, terrific ball movement, and Jameer Nelson’s lightning quickness depleted Atlanta’s aspirations of winning. Atlanta had given up defensively. There was something in the air that suggested Atlanta knew they had already lost, but they had to play anyway.

At halftime the score was 53-45 in favor of Orlando.

As the players were in the locker room, Atlanta fans could only hope that Woodson would come up with the right string of words to light a flame under his team.

Instead, the second half was just like every other half in this series…all Orlando. Orlando simply looks like they have their eye set on the prize and nothing is going to get in their way.

Orlando continued their beautiful ball movement and ended the game with 27 assists on 36 FG. There were five Orlando players with double figures. That is teamwork boys and girls. The Magic finished the series at +23 in assists.

They also kept up the hot hand in the 2nd half. Orlando had 16 3-pointers in the game. By comparison, Atlanta hit 15 the entire series. I kept waiting for Howard to step back and drain a 3-ball. He never did, but he did shoot an NBA record 84% in the series.

Lewis led the Magic with 17 pts, 6 reb, 5 ast, 1 stl, and 1 blk. Carter also played a major role with 22 points.

Josh Smith was on top of Atlanta’s losing performance with 16 pts, 8 reb, 3 ast, 2 stl, and 1 blk.

The final score was a 98-84 completing a four game sweep for Orlando. With this win, Orlando beat Atlanta by a combined 101 points!

Orlando has now won 14 straight games going back to the regular season. There is no doubt that Orlando has chosen the right time to peak.

After the game Stan Van Gundy had this to say: “Instead of going up 2-0 or 3-0 and then relaxing and feeling like you’ve got a cushion, you just stay on it. And that’s been a real positive thing.”

Howard added: “We are a championship team. We have to stay humble and cannot allow anything to distract us from what our goal is.”

A disappointed Al Horford said, “It takes a whole lot of effort. It’s almost to a point where you have to make yourself feel uncomfortable out there and I think that we didn’t have that this year with some of our guys. When fatigue set in, everyone just kind of shied away from it.”

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Barnes shut down Hawks star Joe Johnson this entire series. Johnson only had 12 PPG, 29% FG, and 2-11 3-pt FG with 2.6 turnovers/game. He finished off this miserable series by scoring only 14 points on 5-15 FG. He was booed by the home fans at the start of the game and got the same treatment when he went to bench with 3:51 to play. The fans were still a little ticked off that he said he did not care if they “showed up or not” after they heckled the team in a 30-point loss in game 3.

“It doesn’t bother me,” said Johnson, who’s last shot was a 25-foot airball as the shot clock ran down. “I’ve got thick skin. I’ve been booed louder than that.”

After the game a fed up Joe Johnson muttered, “We won 53 games and finished 3rd in the East, but yet we still come up short. We just have to take some time to rethink this thing and see where we are at.”

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Looks like this is Joe Johnson’s last time in a Hawks’ uniform as he turned down a contract extension before the season to join what is quite possibly the greatest free-agent class in NBA history. However, he did a poor job of boosting his resumé at the end of the season. Over his last seven playoff games, he averaged just 13.4 PPG on 32% shooting. Ouch.

Orlando won by an average of 25.3 PPG. That’s the biggest average margin of victory in a four game sweep in NBA postseason history. The next best were the 2001 Lakers who beat the Spurs by an average of 22.3 PPG.

Now the Magic get to wait patiently as they watch the Boston-Cleveland series to see which team will be the next in line in their trek for the title.

By: Brian Mabes
Pro Basketball Fans Orlando Magic Correspondent

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