Vucevic leads Magic to 97-84 win over the Wolves

By Josh Robbins
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Updated: April 4, 2015

Nik Vucevic launched his first shot Friday night against the Minnesota Timberwolves from 18 feet, and when it sailed through the hoop and fell through the net, he knew how the rest of the night would go.

“It just felt good,” Vucevic said. “It was just one of those nights when you just feel good. I had that feeling like I was going to make every shot that I take.”

His premonition was almost spot on.

Vucevic took advantage of injuries to big men Nikola Pekovic, Gorgui Dieng and Kevin Garnett to lead the Orlando Magic to a 97-84 wire-to-wire win over the Timberwolves at the Target Center.

The 7-foot center scored a career-high 37 points as he made 18 of his 25 shot attempts.

“He was fantastic,” said James Borrego, the Magic’s interim coach. “From the start, really, his intensity [was great]. I loved the mentality he had tonight.”

Even in this disappointing season, even on the road, the Magic should’ve have been expected to beat the injury-ravaged and lottery-bound Wolves, who had just eight healthy players.

Vucevic made sure that victory happened while Tobias Harris added 25 points and 12 rebounds.

Harris scored the game’s first basket just 37 seconds after the opening tipoff, and the Magic led the rest of the way without a single tie.

It wasn’t easy.

The Wolves cut the Magic’s lead 76-73 with 7:30 to play on a Kevin Martin jumper.

On Orlando’s ensuing possession, Victor Oladipo had a shot blocked from behind, and Minnesota had an opportunity to tie the score or cut the deficit to one point.

But Oladipo almost immediately poked the ball away from Martin, and on the fastbreak that followed, Willie Green drew a foul and made both of his free throws.

A few sequences later, Vucevic corralled a miss by Elfrid Payton and scored on a putback to extend the Magic’s lead to 80-74.

“He was amazing on the boards tonight,” Payton said. “It was definitely something we knew he was capable of, and he put on a show.”

Vucevic finished with 17 rebounds.

“Vucevic is a good player,” Wolves coach Flip Saunders said. “You’re probably talking about one of the best centers in the league. We had problems [stopping him]. He’s got a nice touch shooting the ball.”

The Magic (23-53) needed a win.

They won for only the second time in their last 12 games, and they also snapped a 12-game road losing streak.

The Timberwolves (16-60) continued to struggle.

They have lost six consecutive games. But their loss may help them in the long run. They hold the NBA’s second-worst record, and their loss to the Magic will enhance their chances of entering the 2015 NBA Draft Lottery with the second-highest odds of winning.

Injuries have hampered the Wolves’ playing rotation.

Minnesota’s Ricky Rubio, Shabazz Muhammad, Gary Neal, Anthony Bennett, Pekovic, Dieng and Garnett did not play.

Andrew Wiggins, the Wolves’ dynamic rookie swingman, scored a team-high 22 points. But he didn’t record a basket after he sank a jumper with 2:19 to go in the third quarter.

Another rookie, Magic forward Aaron Gordon, helped slow Wiggins down.

“We’ve played before in high school, and he’s a talented player,” Gordon said. “He has a lot in his game. I want to take on the challenge of guarding the best player every night. So it’s just one step at a time.”

The Magic knew Vucevic would have a mismatch all game long, and the team took advantage of it.

“He was definitely a focus for us tonight,” Borrego said. “We didn’t go into the game saying, ‘Nik, you’re the guy.’ But we threw it to him. Our group saw we liked that mismatch. They kept feeding him the ball. He got rolling and it just continued from there. So it’s a credit to his teammates [and] to Vooch to be a presence, to demand the ball. And I think as a group we were able to find him.”

Vucevic had scored more points on at least one occasion before.

When he was 10 years old and lived in Brussels, he played point guard in a youth league with lower hoops and a smaller basketball. He scored 42 points in one game.

On Friday night, on 10-foot hoops, with an NBA regulation basketball, he was almost as dominant.