Despite a disappointing loss to the Chicago Bulls on Friday, which culminated with a one-game suspension for Dwight Howard that’ll be served tonight against the Portland Trail Blazers, last week was fairly successful for the Orlando Magic. After Howard pleaded with his teammates to bring more to the table after losing to the Sacramento Kings on February 23, the Magic were able to respond with wins against the Oklahoma City Thunder, New York Knicks and Miami Heat.

Each victory signified the latent potential Orlando has as they proceed to prepare for the 2011 NBA Playoffs. But of course, the Magic’s win against the Heat reinforced the belief that they’ll almost always go down with a fight.

Even though Orlando was trailing by as many as 24 points in the second half against Miami, they kept at it. The intensity on defense picked up, and the Magic were ruthless not only in their half-court execution on offense but in the fast break where they were able to find numerous open looks from the three-point line. It’s easy to state that the Heat eased up a bit after building a big lead, which is true. But Orlando still had to go out there and make plays.

What proceeds is a run, and comeback, for the ages.

Leading the way for the Magic was the three-headed monster of Jason Richardson, Jameer Nelson, and Gilbert Arenas.

Due to technical difficulties, there is a delay in the video.

Rashard Lewis has had a number of memorable games with the Orlando Magic, but at the top of the list had to be his Game 1 performance against the Cleveland Cavaliers in the 2009 NBA Eastern Conference Finals.

Lewis started the game off slow, scoring four points in the first half.

But in the second half, Lewis found his groove and torched the Cavaliers for 18 points on 7-of-8 shooting from the field — culminating in his game-winning shot.

Enjoy Lewis’ masterpiece.

The Orlando Magic have been going through a rough patch lately, making it harder for the mainstream media and blogosphere to consider them an elite team and a championship contender right now. That being said, if there’s been a bright spot amidst the darkness for the Magic, it’s been Dwight Howard.

Mental gaffes against the Memphis Grizzlies aside, Howard has been playing like a man possessed lately. Howard toyed around the Cleveland Cavaliers on Monday, putting up 20 points, 20 rebounds, and two blocks in roughly 26 minutes of playing time. But the game that stands out for Howard was his performance on Friday.

On that night, Howard put on a clinic against the Chicago Bulls — also known as the best defensive team in the NBA, given that they rank first in defensive efficiency. No matter who the Bulls assigned to Howard, whether it was Kurt Thomas, Carlos Boozer, or Omer Asik, there was little that could be done to slow down the big fella.

For the most part, head coach Tom Thibodeau made the decision to play Howard straight up, given that’s the strategy he elected to use as the assistant coach of the Boston Celtics last year in the 2010 NBA Eastern Conference Finals when they won the series in 6 games.

Let Howard get his, then stop the perimeter attack for Orlando.

Granted, the strategy worked — Chicago lost the battle but won the war — but not before Howard unleashed his fury. For those that want to make the argument that Howard is on the shortlist to win the Most Valuable Player award, this is the game to watch.

On Monday, the Orlando Magic and Boston Celtics engaged in another one of their memorable battles. In recent years, whenever the Magic and Celtics go toe-to-toe with each other, fans are — more often than not — treated to a great game.

Head coach Stan Van Gundy and Doc Rivers are two of the better coaches in the NBA — master tacticians with their respective teams. Plus, the different personalities and star power make things interesting on and off the court.

General manager Otis Smith has gotten a lot of flack recently, saying that Boston acts tough but isn’t really tough. And Glen Davis made heads turned when he said that Dwight Howard was a finesse player. Needless to say, these are two franchises with people that aren’t afraid to speak their mind. But rather delve deeper in psychological warfare, it makes more sense to revisit an epic fourth quarter that saw two Eastern Conference heavyweights trade haymakers with each other. This time around, Orlando lost the battle but it was surely entertaining to watch.

For the last five minutes of the game, the Magic and Celtics traded jabs, uppercuts, you name it, before Paul Pierce put things to rest with a go-ahead jumper with 38 seconds left in the game. Despite that, one of the encouraging things that Orlando can take away from the loss is the crunch-time abilities of Jason Richardson and Hedo Turkoglu. Richardson, especially, has not been afraid to take — and make — big shots for the Magic since he arrived in late December. For whatever reason, Richardson becomes laser-focused during the clutch. Same with Turkoglu.

Watch.

On Saturday, the Orlando Magic and Dallas Mavericks engaged in one of the more entertaining regular season games in the NBA this year. For those a fan of offense, the Magic and Mavericks did not disappoint — much to the dismay of head coach Stan Van Gundy, who preaches a defense-first mentality every minute of every hour of every day.

Orlando and Dallas entered the fourth quarter separated by one point. But in the blink of an eye, the Magic went on a furious 26-3 run highlighted by Hedo Turkoglu‘s playmaking prowess in the 3/5 pick and roll with Dwight Howard. In total, Turkoglu was able to pile up 17 assists in the game (five coming in the final period).

Turkoglu’s 17 assists were a career-high and the most by an Orlando player since Penny Hardaway in 1995. Not bad, eh? And when Turkoglu got a triple-double against the Golden State Warriors last week, he surpassed Hardaway and Tracy McGrady as the most players with a triple-double in Magic franchise history.

Maybe Turkoglu should be nicknamed the “Penny Hardaway of Turkey” instead.

It’s been a few weeks since Hedo Turkoglu was traded to the Orlando Magic, and it looks like he hasn’t missed a beat with his old teammates. The Magic have gone 6-2 since Turkoglu’s return and, of course, the highlight of that eight-game stretch was his triple-double which came against the Golden State Warriors on Monday.

Triple-doubles are always hard to come by but the Warriors offered Turkoglu a perfect storm, of sorts, to accomplish the feat for the third time in his career — play at a high pace (which means there’s more possessions for missed shots to turn into potential rebounds) and not defend very well (which means there’s more opportunities for assists and points on offense).

And voila.

The Orlando Magic are in the midst of a three-game winning streak, which is modest by NBA standards, but one of the wins came against the Boston Celtics — holders of the best record in the Eastern Conference — on Christmas Day. The reason why that is a big deal, of sorts, is because the Magic are trying to integrate three new players (more like two, given that Hedo Turkoglu is on his second stint with the team) into their rotation.

Whether or not the trades executed by general manager Otis Smith work will be determined in the playoff. But it doesn’t hurt for Orlando to know that, after beating one of their conference rivals (the other being the Miami Heat), they’re heading in the right direction.

The main theme in the Magic’s win, that’s worth pointing out, was the strong start and finish to the game against the Celtics. At the start of the first quarter and end of the fourth quarter, Orlando went on a combined 28-1 run.

It’s true that, between that timeframe, Boston was in control. However, to use a boxing analogy, the Magic were able to come away with a 12th-round knockout to steal the fight.

There are many ‘what if’ questions that Magic fans ask on occasion. Some wonder how the Orlando Magic would have fared if Grant Hill was healthy. Others try to figure out if the Magic had a chance to beat the Los Angeles Lakers in the 2009 NBA Finals if Jameer Nelson didn’t have to rush back from injury to play.

Although Orlando lost in five games, apart from Game 1, this was a competitive series.

In fact, the Magic were two plays away from heading into Game 5 with a 3-1 series lead if Courtney Lee made a game-winning layup in Game 2 and Derek Fisher didn’t hit a game-tying three-pointer in Game 4 with 4.6 seconds left in the fourth quarter. And this was with a hobbled Nelson running around the court while this was all happening.

Nelson tortured the Lakers in the regular season and many people ponder the possibilities of him playing in the Finals at the All-Star level he was playing.

As I wrote at the Heat Index last week when previewing the grudge match between the Orlando Magic and Miami Heat, the key to victory for the men in blue came down to one thing.

Pick and rolls.

That’s it.

Scouting the Heat’s loss against the New Orleans Hornets and witnessing Chris Paul butcher a defense in the pick and roll made me realize that the Magic could do the same thing (a fun exercise is to watch to compare both games and see how similar they are in terms of offensive execution).

Instead of Emeka Okafor on the receiving end of alley-oop passes from Paul, it’d be Jameer Nelson and Dwight Howard. Instead of David West and Jason Smith on the receiving end of open looks for mid-range jumpers in pick and pops, it’d be Rashard Lewis and Brandon Bass. Head coach Stan Van Gundy is one of the most diligent coaches in the NBA when it comes to scouting opponents and he must have seen the same footage.

Even though Nelson isn’t as great as Paul, he’s good enough to break down Miami’s defense as long as he was aggressive offensively and attacked. And that’s what Nelson did on Wednesday. Orlando ran a steady diet of pick and rolls from the opening tip until the final buzzer and Nelson was the orchestrator of a systematic breakdown of one of the best defenses in the league.

If there was any doubt that Jameer Nelson has fully returned to being an All-Star caliber point guard like he was in 2009, his performance against the Miami Heat proved that he’s playing to the peak of his ability once again.

Led by Dwyane Wade, the Heat made a furious comeback in the fourth quarter after trailing by as many as 12 points earlier in the game. All it took was a 12-3 run that spanned roughly three minutes for Miami to take an 88-87 lead. Magic fans had seen this movie too many times before, and it seemed like Wade was going to steal another win for the Heat against their rival.

However, Nelson — with a verbal push from Brandon Bass — “let it fly” in the late stages of the fourth quarter when the Magic needed buckets. Nelson scored 11 points in the period and Orlando was able to come away with a much-needed win versus Miami, even if they’re not playing to their full potential. With that scoring flurry, Nelson reminded everyone why he’s the engine that makes the Magic go.

The one thing that stands out the most from the video, however, is that on two separate possessions, the Heat elected to use Wade and LeBron James to defend Nelson on the perimeter. Didn’t work. And this last point won’t comfort supporters of Miami but at the 0:33 mark of the video, look at Chris Bosh’ worthless attempt at help defense as Nelson attacks the basket.

Instead of meeting Nelson as he enters the paint, Bosh waits until the very last minute before putting up any resistance defensively.

Something to keep in mind when the Magic and Heat face off again.