Magic, Howard too much for Sixers

YOU WON'T CATCH many of the 76ers players humming the song "Inside and Out" after last night's game against the Orlando Magic.

The reasoning is partly due to the fact that many of the players weren't even born when the Phil Collins hit came out, and partly because it is what killed them against the Magic - the inside-out game.

As they had done the previous two games vs. the Magic, the Sixers hacked at Orlando's monstrous center Dwight Howard, sending him to the line 19 times. Problem was he made 14 of those. The other problem was when the Sixers paid extra attention to Howard, Orlando did a magnificent job of moving the ball on the perimeter and wound up hitting 10 three-pointers, which helped it pull out a 99-95 win at the Wells Fargo Center.

"That was a tough team to defend," said Sixers coach Doug Collins, whose team dropped to 24-28. "Howard getting that ball inside and they collapse and then have all those three-point shooters. You can do a great job on them, they could be 7-for-23 and then they'll hit four in a row on you. You can be up eight or nine on this team and it's a three possession game.

"Howard was the big difference. He stepped to the line and hit his free throws."

Howard, who finished with 30 points and 17 rebounds, sat for only 4 minutes and 20 seconds the whole night, all of it coming in the second quarter. When he left the game then, the Sixers held a five-point lead and seemed primed to expand on that while Howard caught his wind.

But they couldn't. In fact, with the help of three-pointers by Jason Richardson, J.J. Redick and Richardson again, the Magic forged ahead by 40-38 when Superman re-entered.

Lou Williams led the Sixers with 23 points, 18 of them coming in the fourth quarter. Andre Iguodala scored 21 and dealt eight assists, but also turned the ball over five times. Jodie Meeks added 17 points and eight rebounds.

Redick backed Howard with 13 points, and the Magic (34-20) got 12 points from Ryan Anderson, Richardson and Jameer Nelson.

"They're tough. No matter who you're playing, you always want to take away the interior first and make them make shots," said Spencer Hawes, who finished with 10 rebounds. "But that's what they're tailor-made to do, that's how their roster is put together. You pick your poison and sometimes it works out and other times it doesn't."

Last night it didn't. Both teams were coming off wins the night before and had to travel to Philadelphia after - the Sixers coming from Atlanta, the Magic from Orlando. Though the play seemed a bit sluggish at times, Howard never did. And he did most of his damage from the place where he is the least comfortable on the court - the foul line.

In three games against the Sixers this season, Howard has gone to the line a whopping 58 times, making 34. And when he isn't doing that, the long-range bombs start coming.

"It's easy for them because they have Dwight and four shooters," said Williams. "As much as we rotate, every guy is a live ball so it's always tough when you guard a team like that, that has four shooters and then has a dominant big man."

Trailing by eight early in the fourth quarter, the Sixers used an 8-0 run to tie the game at 77. But the Magic then got three straight triples to take an 86-80 advantage with 3:37 remaining.

Williams scored three consecutive points to cut the lead in half, but Redick then hit an 18-foot pull up and then a floater in the lane to up the lead to seven at 90-83. Williams hit a couple of threes down the stretch, the first pulling the Sixers to 94-92. But Redick found Howard all alone off the inbounds pass for a dunk and a foul shot after a foul by Elton Brand. Williams then hit another three with 14.4 seconds remaining for a 97-95 deficit, but Richardson closed it out with two free throws at 6.7 seconds to seal the win for Orlando, which is 30-2 this season when leading after three quarters.

"We fought to the finish and I thought our guys played well," said Collins. "Orlando has gone back to playing a lot like they did when they went to the NBA Finals. The are very difficult to guard because now that four-man [power forward Anderson who hit four three-pointers] shoots the ball. All in all, I thought our guys played well. Orlando made some big shots when they had to. J.J. hit that shot off his dribble and then made the nice floater in the lane when we tried to chase him off the three.

"I don't think it's anything that we didn't do. I think they showed tonight that, right now, they're a better team than we are."

When the inside-out game is functioning as well as it did last night, Orlando is better than an awful lot of teams in the league.

"I think that's classic basketball and that's why they're successful in the long run," said Hawes of the Orlando game-plan. "That's how they play. That's why you've seen them the last few years in the postseason making long runs."

Spencer Hawes had nine rebounds in 7 minutes, 33 seconds of playing time in the first quarter . . . Swingman Evan Turner played just under 13 minutes due to muscle spasms in his upper back. Turner said he first felt it after his pregame nap. He got it worked on before and after the game and said he should be fine tomorrow when the Sixers host San Antonio . . . The crowd was a disappointing 12,091. You would think more fans would have turned out with the Sixers playing well and the attraction that is Dwight Howard and Co.

For more Sixers coverage, read the

Daily News' Sixers blog, Sixerville, at

www.philly.com/Sixerville.

Follow him on Twitter at

http://twitter.com/BobCooney76.