Final: Magic – 90 Heat – 86

Sweet Lew is not in tonight's starting lineup

7:00 PM EST, Amway Arena, Orlando Florida
It can be heard locally on WDBO AM 580

Tonight’s Starters:

Orlando Magic

Dwight Howard
Brandon Bass
Matt Barnes
Vince Carter
Jameer Nelson

Miami Heat

Joel Anthony
Udonis Haslem
Michael Beasley
Dwyane Wade
Mario Chalmers

Final: Magic win 90-84. I’ll have  a recap of the game plus my thoughts later tonight.

End of 3rd Quarter Update: Orlando leads Miami 74-63. It seemed to be a pretty sloppy 3rd quarter. Orlando built a 69-51 lead, but the Heat scored the next 10 points.

Halftime Update: Orlando leads Miami 55-47. Dwight Howard leads the Magic with 11 points and 7 rebounds. Vince Carter has 6 points and is once again struggling from downtown (0-4). JJ Redick and Brandon Bass have 7 points a piece, while Mickael Pietrus has 8. Orlando is shooting 52% and is 16-19 from the Free Throw line. The two teams have combined to shoot 35 free throws. Dallas and Orlando combined to shoot 92 free throws on Monday.

Michael Beasley and Dwyane Wade lead the Heat with 10 points each. James Jones has 8.

Howard, Anderson, Barnes, Carter and Nelson start the 2nd half.

End of 1st Quarter Update: Orlando leads 29-23. Dwight Howard has 7 points and 2 rebounds. JJ Redick has 7 points off of the bench. Ryan Anderson got off the bench early, scoring 5 points, but he does 2 fouls. Michael Beasley has 6 points to lead the Heat.

Feel free to leave your thoughts in the comments section below.

What I’d like to see:

Vince Carter needs to attack the basket. Carter took way too many three-pointers in the first game and needs to get back to what he does best.

Limit turnovers. The Magic, as expected, played very sloppy in the opener. They need to take better care of the ball.

Dwight Howard needs to shoot better from the line. Stop me if you’ve heard this before. Howard said that he wanted to shoot 70% from the line this year, but he was just 9-of-17 (53%) against Dallas Monday.

Play better defense. The Magic gave up 105 points Monday and Magic Head Coach Stan Van Gundy was not happy as Tania Ganguli notes here.

Limit Dwayne Wade, at least some what. Wade scored 50 points last time these two teams met. I know the Magic are famous for letting at least one player on the opposing team absolutely go off, but this just can’t happen.

There were some other interesting notes in Ganguli’s report.

Stan Van Gundy said today Barnes was the best player Monday night. That’s a pretty lofty statement when you’ve got four All-Stars on your team.

It is a lofty statement, but if you saw the game, you would not be surprised. Barnes scored 16 points, grabbed 4 rebounds, and had 3 assists. He brought a lot of energy and was all over the place on both ends of the court. I was very impressed.

I’d like to see Ryan Anderson and Anthony Johnson tonight. They did not play Monday. Brian Schmitz says that both should see some action tonight.

(Andrew Melnick is Howard the Dunk’s lead blogger. Subscribe to his RSS feed and add him on Twitter to follow him daily.)