Banchero scores 27, Magic top Heat 121-117 and move to 5-0 vs. Miami this season
MIAMI (AP) — Paolo Banchero scored 27 points, Desmond Bane added 21 and the Orlando Magic beat the Miami Heat 121-117 on Saturday night, becoming the second team in the last 30 years to beat the same opponent five times in one season.
Wendell Carter Jr. scored 15 for the Magic, who won their seventh straight and snapped Miami’s season-best, seven-game winning streak.
Orlando led by as many as 22, before Miami twice got within two in the final 18.5 seconds.
Orlando (38-28) moved a game clear of Miami (38-30) in the race for fifth in the Eastern Conference, plus is 10 games over .500 for the first time since the end of the 2023-24 season.
Jaime Jaquez Jr. scored 22, while Bam Adebayo and Norman Powell each had 20 for Miami, which hadn’t gone 0-5 against one team since doing so against New York — then coached by now-Heat President Pat Riley — in 1992-93.
The only other instance in the last three decades: New Orleans went 5-0 against Sacramento in 2023-24.
The Heat got Tyler Herro and Powell back from injuries, with Herro starting and Powell coming off the bench for the first time since 2023-24 with the Los Angeles Clippers. Herro scored 10.
The five-game season series was impossible for the better part of the last three decades, given that the NBA scheduling formula almost always called for teams to play four games against opponents from their division, three or four games against the other in-conference opponents and two games against each opponent from the opposite conference.
The advent of the NBA Cup — and the quirk of two games being added to each team’s schedule after pool play — makes the five-game series possible. It has now happened 13 times over the last three seasons.
Up next
Magic: Visit Atlanta on Monday.
Heat: Visit Charlotte on Tuesday.
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