CHAPTER NINETEEN CHAPTER NINETEEN The Magic’s playoff run hadn’t been easy. The Philadelphia 76ers had been tough. The Boston Celtics had been tougher. The Cleveland Cavaliers had been the toughest of all—until the Orlando Magic faced the Los Angeles Lakers, that is.
This was the Lakers’ thirtieth trip to the NBA Finals, more times than any other team in the league. They’d won fourteen titles, the last in 2002. They had come close to winning again in 2008, but were defeated by the Boston Celtics. Now they returned with many of the same superstar players, including the NBA’s newest Most Valuable Player, Kobe Bryant. All were hungry to add a fifteenth banner to their arena rafters.
By comparison, the Magic had only been to the Finals one time before. That was in 1995, when they lost 4–0 to the Houston Rockets. Obviously, their roster had changed completely since then. Yet their current lineup was filled with top talent, and if the teams’ two regular season meetings were any indication, there was a very real possibility that Orlando could beat out Los Angeles for the ring.
The Magic had won both of those matches, although the margin by which they had won was small. Still, it proved that they could power past the mighty Lakers. They were confident they could do it again in the Finals.
Their confidence took a severe beating in Game 1, unfortunately.
The match was played at the Staples Center in Los Angeles before a crowd of more than eighteen thousand cheering Lakers fans. Those fans expected to witness a blowout by their team. After the first quarter, however, their cheers turned a bit quieter, for the score was nearly even at Magic 24, Lakers 22. They were subdued through the early minutes of the second quarter, too, when Orlando kept the lead.
That changed four minutes into the second quarter. The Lakers returned from a full time-out and took over the game. Luke Walton made back-to-back jumpers. Kobe Bryant stuck three long bombs in a row to make it ten unanswered points—and the Lakers weren’t done yet.
By halftime, the Lakers were up by ten points. In a punishing third quarter, they held the Magic to just 15 points while adding 29 to their side of the board. Neither team cracked 20 points in the final twelve minutes of play, but by then the Lakers had run away with the game. Final score: Los Angeles 100, Orlando 75.
How had the Lakers done it? One strategy was to control Dwight Howard by covering him with two and sometimes three men. They executed that strategy so well that he took only six shots that night. Of those six, only one made it through the hoop. The rest of his 12 points came from free throws.
Howard was effective on defense, pulling down 15 rebounds and blocking 2 shots. Without his efforts there, the score might have looked a whole lot worse for the Magic.
Los Angeles now had the upper hand. But the Magic weren’t beaten yet. After falling behind in the first half of Game 2, they charged forward to take a two-point lead late in the game. Rashard Lewis led that charge by scoring two free throws, assisting Hedo Turkoglu with his 23-foot jumper, and assisting Dwight Howard with his slam dunk. Rafer Alston, Mickael Pietrus, and Jameer Nelson also helped bring the Magic’s score up 30 points in the third quarter.
The teams battled for the advantage throughout much of the fourth quarter. Neither succeeded in capturing it, although the Magic came very close in a play that was featured on the sports highlights over and over again.
The score was knotted at 88 apiece when Orlando called a time-out. After a quick discussion on the sidelines, Turkoglu took the ball out of bounds at half court. The referee blew his whistle. Courtney Lee raced to the hoop. Turkoglu lobbed a pass to him. Lee caught the ball cleanly but was running so fast that he overshot his layup. The ball ricocheted off the glass and bounced to the floor. The game would be decided in overtime.
Dwight started the ball rolling for the Magic with a three-point play two minutes into the extra period. The Lakers answered with seven points of their own to go up 97–91. As time ticked down, Lewis got the ball and dished it to J. J. Redick under the hoop. Redick laid the ball in for two points to make it 97–93. But once again, Los Angeles upped their side of the score—and this time, it was Dwight’s fault. He fouled Laker Pau Gasol when the ball squirted loose. Gasol went to the line and made both free throws.
But all was not lost. With just twenty-six seconds on the clock, Lewis snared the ball and hit a basket from outside the arc! With the score at Lakers 99, Magic 96 and time still left to go, a second overtime period looked possible.
It didn’t happen. Laker Lamar Odom was fouled and made both his foul shots. The final score was Los Angeles 101, Orlando 96.
Dwight had had a good game overall, with 17 points, 16 rebounds, 4 assists, 4 steals, and 4 blocks. He was the second player in NBA history since Hakeem Olajuwon in 1986 to earn such high marks in these five stat categories. But he also committed seven of the team’s twenty turnovers.
“I’ve just got to do a better job of finding my teammates and being aware of the guards coming in the paint for strips,” he wrote in his blog. “Tough, tough loss… [but] it’s not over yet.”
The series moved to Orlando for Game 3. Back on their home court, the Magic were not to be denied. They found their shooting touch early on, hitting 75 percent of their shots in the first half for an NBA Finals record.
But somehow, the Lakers emerged on top, 31–27, after the first twelve minutes. After that, the score ping-ponged back and forth throughout the remaining thirty-six minutes. Many fans began to wonder if yet another overtime decision was looming.
They got their answer in the last thirty seconds of the match. That’s when Howard stole the ball from Bryant. Mickael Pietrus was fouled and made both of his shots to put the Magic ahead 106–102. The Lakers tried to tighten the gap but missed four out of four three-pointers before Bryant caught his own rebound and snuck in a layup. Then Bryant fouled Lewis, sending him to the line. He made both count. Final score: Magic 108, Lakers 104.
Howard had fulfilled his vow to control his turnovers that night. He ended with just one. His other stats were just as strong: 21 points, 14 rebounds, 2 assists, 2 blocks, and 1 steal. He was delighted to have helped his team to the win, but was even happier that the team had played so well together. “We were patient, we were confident, and we played with a swagger again,” he blogged. “We ain’t no pushovers.”
The Magic certainly weren’t “pushovers” the next game, either. Powered by incredible rebounding and blocking by Dwight, plus on-target shooting from the starting lineup, they motored ahead of the Lakers by 12 points by halftime. Howard punctuated his determination to win with an immense slam dunk at the start of the third quarter.
Those were his only points of that period, unfortunately. The Lakers shut down the Magic’s offense, holding them to just 14 points in the third quarter, while scoring more than twice that number themselves to go up by four at the end of the twelve minutes!
The Magic fought back against the Lakers’ scoring tidal wave to tie it all up, 75–75, at the five-minute mark in the fourth quarter. Pietrus gave them a one-point edge with a free throw, but the Lakers swooped in and scored twice to go up by four. Then, with four and a half minutes remaining in the game—boom!—Dwight thundered down a rim-rattling dunk. And when Turkoglu stuck a free throw and Dwight chalked in a two-pointer followed by a foul shot, the Magic were once more in the lead!
Unbelievably, Los Angeles closed the gap in the final thirty seconds of the game. That gap might have been wider had Dwight made even one of two free throws at the eleven-second mark. But he missed both, and when the time ran out, the score was tied.
Game 4, like Game 2, was decided in overtime. The Magic rallied as best they could, but the Lakers made the shots when they counted the most. The final score of the game was 99–91.
“I don’t know what to say,” Dwight apologized to his fans online later. “I have been working so hard on my free throws, and making a lot of progress the last couple of weeks, but last night just wasn’t my night.”
His poor free throwing aside, Dwight had had a monstrous game: 16 points, 21 boards, and 9 blocked shots, the most of any NBA Finals game. That it had all been for nothing made him miserable, but not defeated. “Nobody is hurting more about what happened last night than me,” he said. “But I’ll tell you this: we ain’t quitting now.”
The Magic didn’t quit—but they didn’t win the next game, either. After a very strong first quarter in which they leaped ahead by 9 points, they were flattened by the Lakers, who went on a 16–0 scoring spree midway through the second quarter. Los Angeles maintained a double-digit lead for much of the remainder of the game. In the end, Orlando simply couldn’t stop them.
Final score: Los Angeles Lakers 99, Orlando Magic 86.
While the Lakers celebrated their fifteenth championship title, Dwight and Jameer Nelson sat on the sidelines, watching. “It hurts,” Dwight said, not a trace of a smile on his face. “It hurts a lot.”
But it was pain with a purpose: They wanted to carry the image of the Lakers’ celebration with them into the off-season as a way of motivating them to work harder.
Later, in front of the cameras during the postgame press conference, Dwight complimented his teammates for getting to the Finals, adding that few people outside of the team had believed they could go so far that season. He was also gracious in his praise of the Lakers, particularly Kobe Bryant, and admitted that Los Angeles had been the better team overall.
In response to a question about whether he thought they could return to the Finals in 2010, Dwight’s natural optimism shone through loud and clear: “I’ve got a great feeling that we’ll have a chance to be back,” he said with a hint of a smile. “There’s no doubt in my mind about that.”