Magic Beat the Heat, Start the Preseason 2-0

The Orlando Magic defeated the Miami Heat 90-86 Wednesday night.

Ryan Anderson finally got to see his first action in a Magic uniform. After not playing in Orlando’s first preseason game, Anderson scored a team-high 16 points in 24 minutes off of the bench. He was 4-of-6 from downtown and had 5 rebounds. It was an excellent first game for Ryan.

JJ Redick scored 13 points, but shot just 4-of-9. Redick’s shooting woes may have continued, but Redick played solid defense throughout the game. He has really built on his performance against the Celtics during the playoffs last night.

Dwight Howard finished with 11 points and 9 rebounds but played just 28 minutes. He also had 5 blocked shots.

Newcomers Matt Barnes and Brandon Bass continued to impress. Both Bass and Barnes started the game. Bass was 4-of-6 from the field and had 11 points. Barnes was just 2-for-7 from the field (2-for-5 on three pointers), but he had 5 rebounds and 4 assists and continued to provide a lot of energy on both ends of the floor for the Magic.

Vince Carter had a second straight subpar game. He was just 2-for-11 from the field in 23 minutes of play. Carter was 0-for-4 from downtown. It wasn’t a total loss as Carter did seem to attack the basket more, which is something that I wanted to see.

Carter wasn’t the only member of the backcourt to struggle. Outside of Mickael Pietrus, who had 14 points off of the bench, the Magic guards were awful. Jameer Nelson had 2 points on 0-for-5 shooting, but he did have 4 assists and 3 rebounds. Anthony Johnson shot the ball  going 2-for-3 from the field for 4 points, but also had 3 turnovers.

Marcin Gortat had good numbers in limited action. The Polish Machine scored 5 points, grabbed 7 rebounds and had 3 blocks in just over 15 minutes of play.

Morris Almond and Linton Johnson saw their first action. Neither player scored.

Rashard Lewis and Jason Williams did not appear in the game.

Overall, I liked what I saw from the Magic. The Magic did have 23 turnovers and Stan Van Gundy seemed very upset about that, but he was happy about their defensive performance. Dwight Howard’s 5 blocked shots were part of the 16 blocks the Magic had as a team. Redick, Pietrus and Johnson had 2 a piece. The Magic held the Heat to just 33.8% shooting from the field (27-for-80) and were able to keep Dwyane Wade under control (17 points on 6-of-18 shooting). Although Wade’s 17 points were a game-high, he shot just 33.3% from the field. The two teams combined to attempt just 63 free throws compared to the 92 attempts that Dallas and Orlando combined for Monday. The Magic were 25-for-29 (86.2%). The Magic shot just 66.7% from the line on Monday.

Overall, Head Coach Stan Van Gundy has to be fairly pleased with Orlando’s performance.

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