ORLANDO, Fla. (AP) \u2014 Kevin Durant scored 26 of his season-high 40 points in the second half and the Houston Rockets wiped out a 19-point Orlando lead in less than four minutes to beat the Magic 113-108 on Thursday night.<\/p>\n
Reed Sheppard came off the Houston bench to add 20 points, hitting five 3-pointers in the second half. Alperen Sengun had 16 points, six rebounds and five assists.<\/p>\n
Desmond Bane led the Magic with 30 points. Paolo Banchero added 19 points, nine assists and eight rebounds.<\/p>\n
Jalen Suggs, coming off the Magic bench for the first time this season, scored three points in 13 minutes after missing three games with back spasms.<\/p>\n
Bane hit all five of his 3-point attempts in the first half, helping Orlando to a 53-43 lead.<\/p>\n
The Magic led 76-57 when Banchero converted a steal by Suggs into a dunk with 5:04 left in the third quarter. The Rockets responded with a 21-0 run over the next 3 1\/2 minutes. Sheppard hit three 3-pointers and scored 11 points during the run, which left Houston with a one-point lead.<\/p>\n
Three baskets by Bane helped the Magic regain a five-point lead in the middle of the fourth quarter, but Durant scored seven straight Rockets points and assisted a layup by Sengun that put Houston up for good, 101-100 with 3:07 remaining.<\/p>\n
Durant made 14 of 28 shots and finished with eight rebounds and three assists.<\/p>\n
The Rockets made 10 of their final 17 3-pointers after hitting one of 12 before the big rally.<\/p>\n
Up next<\/p>\n
Rockets: At Miami on Saturday.<\/p>\n
Magic: Host Detroit on Sunday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"ORLANDO, Fla. (AP) \u2014 Kevin Durant scored 26 of his season-high 40 points in the second half and…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":171290,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[2205,28,139,141,1239,140,1240,110],"class_list":["post-171289","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-orlando","tag-associated-press","tag-florida","tag-orlando","tag-orlando-headlines","tag-orlando-magic","tag-orlando-news","tag-professional-basketball","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/171289","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=171289"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/171289\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/171290"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=171289"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=171289"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=171289"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}