Mike Bianchi, SPORTS COMMENTARY
2:18 a.m. EST, April 29, 2012
INDIANAPOLIS â€" Hedo Turkoglu played with a broken face.
Glen "Big Baby" Davis played with a bum ankle.
Stan Van Gundy coached with an injury-riddled lineup that was both undersized and overmatched.
And Dwight Howard was somewhere in L.A. rehabbing a bad back.
And somehow, someway, the Orlando Walking Wounded still found a way to shock the heavily favored Indiana Pacers 81-77 in Game1 of their playoff series Saturday night. Unbelievably, they did it on the road against one of the hottest teams in the league. Inconceivably, they did with guts and grit in the fourth quarter, scoring the final 11 points and sending the sellout crowd of 18,165 fans to the exits in stunned silence.
Admit it: You didn't think they could do it, did you? Ever since Dwight went down with a herniated disk, nobody gave the Magic a snowball's chance in South Beach of winning this series. Not locally. Not nationally.
Locally, sports-radio personality The Shot Doctor said the Magic had "no hope" of beating the Pacers, while WKMG-Channel6 sports anchor David Pingalore predicted an Indy sweep. Nationally, TNT analyst Chris Webber said of the Magic, "I think they have no ï¸ chance."
"We don't care what other people believe," said Magic point guard Jameer Nelson, who scored 17 points and hit two critical free throws to give the Magic a 3-point lead with 24 seconds left. "We have a bunch of guys who believe in this team and have each other's backs."
The Orlando Magic's playoff motto heading into these playoffs is "We All We Got" from that 1991 Wesley Snipes movie "New Jack City."
Judging by the Magic's injury report Saturday night, the mantra probably should have come from another movie: "The Hurt Locker."
Or maybe even the old horror classic "Night of the Living Dead."
After all, Turkoglu looked like he stepped right out of a monster movie when he took the court wearing a hard plastic mask to protect the surgically repaired bone in his cheek that was broken three weeks ago. Van Gundy said the injury usually takes six to eight weeks to heal, but, of course, the Magic don't have six to eight weeks.
"Turk could have very easily taken the playoffs off, and nobody would have had anything to say based on his injury," Van Gundy said.
Who would have ever thought it would be Turk who manned up during the playoffs and played with a broken face? Let's face it, he has always been considered a "finesse" player. Nobody has ever accused him of being the NBA's version of Jack Youngblood, the Orlando resident who once played in the Super Bowl with a broken leg.
Why did Youngblood do it? "Because it was Sunday," he once said, "and that was the day I went to work. Pain or other circumstances can be there, but if you want to do a job bad enough, you'll find a way to get it done."
Just ask Turkoglu and Davis, two players who have been criticized for much of this season but on Saturday night proved to be the ultimate team players. Broken facial bones and swollen ankle tendons weren't about to keep these guys out of the lineup. It's the playoffs â€" a time when you tape it up, shoot it up and do whatever you have to do in order to play. That's what Turkoglu did with his broken face. It's what Davis did by playing a team-high 40 minutes on his badly swollen ankle.
"You play through pain at this time of year," Davis said.
Added Turkoglu, who is playing in his 12th season: "I only have a few more years left. I don't want to miss these opportunities to be in the playoffs. … I can't promise anything to anybody, but I can promise … I'm going to do whatever it takes to help this team win."
He did just that Saturday night. And so did Davis. And J-Rich. And Jameer. And Earl Clark. And Van Gundy. And everybody else up and down the Magic bench.
"We all we got."
The team huddled together after the game and chanted their new mantra.
It is a line from "New Jack City."
But this team is starting to remind Magic fans of another old movie.
One of their favorites.
It's called "Heart and Hustle."
mbianchi@tribune.com. Follow him on Twitter @BianchiWrites. Listen to his radio show every weekday from 6 to 9 a.m. on 740 AM.
Copyright © 2012, Orlando Sentinel
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