- LARRY KUZNIEWSKI
- Mike Conley, like his team, was just good enough to beat a depleted Magic squad.
The Lead: If the Grizzlies were doing an experiment in how listlessly they could play and still win, they probably cut it pretty close against an Orlando Magic team reduced — by the trade, injury, and suspension — to a seven-man, near-Summer-League assemblage.
Six of the Magic’s seven active players were rookies or sophomores and with a little under five minutes to go in the game two of them — starters Nikola Vucevic and Andrew Nicholson — had fouled out, leaving the Magic with every active player on the floor.
Was it hard to tell your team this Magic squad could beat them?, Lionel Hollins was asked to begin his post-game press conference. Hollins took the question literally and delivered a dry response: “It wasn’t hard to tell them that,” Hollins said, “But it is hard for them to believe this team has a chance to beat them.”
Hollins credited Orlando with playing hard from beginning to end and judged that his own team “did enough to win, and it wasn’t pretty.”
