SACRAMENTO – After his team\u2019s morning shootaround, Orlando Magic veteran center Nikola Vucevic mentioned paint points and rebounding as two of the main keys going into Tuesday\u2019s matchup against the Sacramento Kings.<\/p>\n
The Magic outscored the Kings by 30 in the paint and outrebounded them by 14 en route to a 107-100 victory at the Golden 1 Center.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Another big factor was the turnover difference. Sacramento committed 21 turnovers, which led to 33 Magic points, while Orlando kept its miscues in check with just 14 of them.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cThe guys did a great job, especially forcing turnovers,\u201d Magic head coach Sean Sweeney said. \u201cI thought we were really aggressive, did a great job with our hand activity a number of times. I thought we did a really good job with our communication, especially with (Darius) Acuff and (Zach) LaVine. Those guys are tough to guard. Good team effort.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Franz Wagner led the way for the Magic with 33 points, seven rebounds and seven assists, while Anthony Black recorded 26 points, seven rebounds, five assists and four steals and Desmond Bane, back after missing last game with an illness, finished with 15 points.<\/p>\n
Although he had just five points Tuesday, Vucevic passed Magic Johnson for 91st\u00a0on the NBA\u2019s all-time scoring list.\u00a0<\/p>\n
LaVine racked up 31 points for the Kings, while rookie standout Acuff Jr. had 29 points and six assists.<\/p>\n
With Sacramento within striking distance through three quarters, Orlando used an 8-2 run in the first few minutes of the fourth to seize control. Wagner, Black, Wendell Carter Jr. and Orlando\u2019s unsung hero of the game, Alex Morales, all scored in the paint in that stretch.<\/p>\n
Getting a boost from Morales was critical, especially with the Magic not having Paolo Banchero (ankle), Jalen Suggs (knee), Noah Penda (hamstring), Jonathan Isaac (knee) or Tristan da Silva (calf).<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s not easy when you don\u2019t know how much you are going to play,\u201d Wagner said. \u201cCome in, play 29 minutes and play like that \u2013 big energy plays. It\u2019s important to him. That guy is ready to go.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
This was the Magic\u2019s fifth straight win against the Kings.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Orlando will look to build momentum off this win when it wraps up its four-game West Coast trip on Wednesday against the Utah Jazz at 9 p.m. ET.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"SACRAMENTO – After his team\u2019s morning shootaround, Orlando Magic veteran center Nikola Vucevic mentioned paint points and rebounding…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":913408,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[64],"tags":[87686,379639,829,355,99,50859],"class_list":["post-913407","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nba","tag-game-recap","tag-josh-cohen","tag-latest-news","tag-nba","tag-sports","tag-team-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/913407","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=913407"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/913407\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/913408"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=913407"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=913407"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=913407"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}