Orlando Magic 99, Cleveland Cavaliers 88

Wally Szczerbiak was dominating their defense for crying out loud. It was not even LeBron James.

The defense, a sore spot during Orlando's two-game slide and the games surrounding it, was porous. Stan Van Gundy let his team know it at halftime.

And abra-cadabra (I wrote a really bad cliche) the defense finally appeared. And it shut down James. It shut down Szczerbiak. And It shut down the Cleveland Cavaliers.

Orlando held Cleveland to 32 second half points (the amount the team scored in the first quarter) and won 99-88 thanks to a barrage of 3-point shots in the third quarter.

But the key was the defense. After taking its hits and laying back in the first half, Orlando began getting physical and pushing Cleveland outside of the paint. It was evident that the Cavaliers were not going to try and challenge Dwight Howard throughout the game. When they did, they got hit (fouled or knocked to the ground) or had their shot blocked.

Look at James' stat line: 23 points on 10-of-27 shooting, 3 for 6 from the line.

James took only six foul shots because Courtney Lee turned him into a jump shooter -- the only chink in his armor right now. It turned Cleveland into the one dimension offensive team that has been coming up short in past years.

Orlando got the ball to Dwight Howard early and often and it set up the 3-point shooting of Rashard Lewis and Jameer Nelson, who were both named to the All Star team Thursday. The 3-point shots were not falling in the first half, but they fell in the second.

When they fall at the rate they were in the second half, Orlando is an extremely tough team to beat.

This was a game Orlando needed. After getting blown out and dismantled on national television at home last week, this was a redeeming trip on TNT for the Magic. It legitimizes them as an Eastern Conference title contender in the national spotlight -- and not some one trick pony that thinks it can compete.

However, it did not seem Cleveland had the same intensity as Orlando defensively. To them, it seemed like a ho-hum middle of the season game and it looked like both teams were trying to conserve energy in the first half.

That is a tough thing to sell to anyone being that this game could go a long way to determining home court in the playoffs (the two teams meet only three times this season). But that is what it felt like.

Orlando has played well against Cleveland and it will be interesting to see how they match up the rest of the season. This loss, the worst of the season for the Cavaliers, will stick with them for a while.