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Magic's Nikola Vucevic beats buzzer and Lakers with turnaround jumper
The Orlando Magic have been a surprisingly enjoyable squad so far this NBA season, parlaying their young core and the intensity of new head coach Scott Skiles into five margins of five points or fewer in their first eight games. The bad news for Orlando is that they were unable to turn those close finishes into wins — they took just one win from those five games on their way to a 3-5 start.
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Those fortunes turned Wednesday night at the Amway Center against the visiting Los Angeles Lakers. Tied at 99-99 with 1.5 seconds on the clock, Tobias Harris inbounded a pass to Nikola Vucevic, who quickly turned around and fired this mid-range jumper:
The buzzer-beater gave the Magic a 101-99 win to give them four victories in their last five games. Orlando's final possession was also far better than that of the Lakers, who counted on Lou Williams to create something off the dribble and ended up with a shot clock violation:
That's a shot that has typically gone to Kobe Bryant, but the Lakers icon missed his second straight game due to a sore back. Of course, there's no guarantee that the current incarnation of Bryant would have done better than Williams, who shot just 2-of-8 from the field overall (with 9-of-10 FT) for 13 points.
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On the other side, Vucevic returned to the Magic lineup after three games on the shelf with a bone bruise in his right knee. He came off the bench for 26 minutes and put up impressive stats of 18 points (9-of-16 FG) and five boards. The Magic also got useful bench performances from Channing Frye (14 points on 6-of-7 FG) and especially Shabazz Napier (22 points on 8-of-16 FG and 5-of-9 3FG), a necessity because Victor Oladipo left the game after only seven minutes due to the symptoms of a concussion.
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Eric Freeman is a writer for Ball Don't Lie on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at efreeman_ysports@yahoo.com or follow him on Twitter!
