The Sports Inquirer

By E. Marcel Pourtout, Editor

Atlanta extended its winning streak to nine games with an 87-81 win over Orlando at Philips Arena on Friday night.

Paul Millsap had a game-high 23 points in the victory along with a team-high eight rebounds for Atlanta. Al Horford (17 points), Jeff Teague (13 points) and DeMarre Carroll (12 points) also scored in double figures for the Hawks.

Atlanta shot a season-low 37.2 percent from the field in the win, including going nine-for-29 on three-pointer attempts.

“Give our guys credit for finding a way to win a tough game,” Hawks’ head coach Mike Budenholzer said. “We weren’t very good offensively, we weren’t efficient. We had guys come in off the bend and kind of change the energy, change the defense which again gave us a chance to win.”

Victor Oladipo scored a team-high 21 points for Orlando, including making all three of his three-pointer attempts. Evan Fournier (18 points), Kyle O’Quinn (14 points) and Tobias Harris (13 points) were in double-figures. Harris and O’Quinn had double-doubles, grabbing 11 rebounds and 10 rebounds respectively.

“The Hawks were able to put our offense out (in the fourth quarter) and make us react to them,” Magic head coach Jacque Vaughn said. “They were pretty aggressive. We have to focus on 48 minutes of play. We can’t afford to have one minute where we have a lapse and lose our concentration.”

In the low-scoring affair, the score was tied at 67-67 with 8:58 left in the game. The Hawks went on a 9-4 run which included three-pointers by Korver and Millsap, taking a 76-71 lead at the 6:32 mark in the fourth quarter.

Late free throws by Teague and Korver with less than a minute left in the game sealed the victory.

“We needed a game like this where things weren’t falling on the offensive end,” Teague said. “We had to pick it up defensively. The second half we did a pretty good job making it tough on them.”

Carroll added, “We just try to hang our hat on defense. Some nights we might not have it on offense.”

With the score tied at 40-40 to start the second half, Orlando jumped out to a 61-52 lead with 3:38 left in the third quarter. However, Atlanta finished the quarter on a 12-3 run, punctuated by an Al Horford three-pointer to tie the score at 64-64 going into the fourth quarter.

Atlanta finished the first quarter on a 7-0 run to take a 29-26 lead into the second quarter. Both teams shot well in the first quarter with Atlanta at 63 percent and Orlando at 59 percent.

Both teams’ shooting cooled off in the second quarter, with Atlanta at 22.7 percent and Orlando making only 18.2 percent of its shots during the quarter.

Each squad finished the first half with a 39 percent shooting percentage and the score was tied 40-40 at halftime.

Horford had a game-high 12 first half points for Atlanta while Millsap had nine.

Fournier and Victor Oladipo each had a team-high nine points for Orlando in the first half. The Magic outrebounded the Hawks 23-19 paced by Harris and Channing Frye each grabbing six in the half.