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Starters

Orlando

Dwight Howard
Matt Barnes
Mickael Pietrus
Vince Carter
Jameer Nelson

New Jersey

Brook Lopez
Eduardo Najera
Trenton Hassell
Terrance Williams
Rafer Alston

Final: Magic win 88-72.

• Matt Barnes was great scoring 13 points, grabbing 13 rebounds and dishing out 5 assists.
• Dwight Howard 26 points, 12 rebounds, and 5 blocks.
• I’ll have a full recap and analysis later tonight.

End of 3rd Quarter: Magic lead 62-56

• Orlando once again played solid defense in the third quarter. They forced then Nets into a couple of shot clock violations and held them to just 36% (6-of-20) shooting in the quarter.
• Dwight Howard has 26 points, 10 rebounds and 5 blocks.
• Outside of Howard, the Magic are still struggling on offense. They are shooting 28.5% (12-of-42) and the bench has not scored.
• Matt Barnes now has 10 rebounds. Pretty impressive considering he is playing out of position.
• The Magic have thrown some beautiful passes tonight with most of them coming from Barnes.

Halftime: Magic, Nets tied at 42.

• The Magic picked it up on defense in the second quarter. The Nets were just 6-of-24 in the quarter. The Nets were also 0-of-4 from downtown after going 3-of-4 in the first quarter.
• Orlando went ice cold in the period, going six minutes without a bucket. Halfway through the quarter, Orlando had scored just six points.
• The Nets went up by as many as 10, 36-26.
• They don’t have Ryan Anderson or Rashard Lewis to stretch the floor and the shots aren’t falling (1-of-6 from 3 in the quarter, 3-of-17 overall) so Orlando has been doing a great job getting the ball into Dwight Howard. He has 20 points on 8-of-10 shooting.
• Matt Barnes is filling up the stat sheet – again. He’s been responsible for several of Howard’s dunks because of his excellent passing tonight. He has 4 points, 5 rebounds, and 5 assists.
• Mickael Pietrus was playing out of control. He has committed 4 turnovers, but he seemed to have calmed down a little midway through the second quarter.

End of 1st Quarter: Nets lead 27-23

• The Nets are shooting 50% (9-of-18) and have made three of their four 3-point attempts.
• Another opposing Point Guard is having a big game – 7 points and 5 assists for Rafer Alston in the quarter.
• The Nets had too many open shooters.
• Alston was cheered during the pre-game introductions.
• Vince Carter is still not getting to the basket. He has 3 points on 1-of-3 shooting, all from beyond the arc.
• The Magic did a good of getting the ball to Dwight Howard in good position. He had several dunks and caught a nice lob for a dunk from Matt Barnes. He has 13 points and 3 rebounds.
• Orlando continues to struggle from downtown. They were 2-of-11 in the opening period.

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