Magic not shaken by Game 1 loss

June 6, 2009 at 12:00a.m.

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Back in his Clark Kent days, when he was an 18-year-old rookie, Dwight Howard was welcomed to the league by Kobe Bryant.

It wasn’t with a fist bump or handshake.

It wasn’t friendly at all.

In his first game against Howard, Bryant drove the lane and delivered a ferocious dunk that still haunts Orlando’s center five years later.

“Don’t remind me,” Howard said, playfully covering his eyes. “He baptized me, brought me into the NBA and back to reality with one play.”

On Thursday night, Bryant initiated Howard again — this time into the NBA finals.

Looking much more like The Man of Steel than Howard, Bryant scored 40 points — his most in a finals game — and the Lakers steamrolled to a 100-75 win in Game 1 over the Magic, who watched tape of the rout at their hotel before heading to Staples Center on Friday for practice.

Orlando, in the finals for the first time since 1995, was way out of its league.

Bryant scored almost at will, punctuating each bucket by extending his lower jaw to show his lower teeth — a menacing look underscoring the self-proclaimed Black Mamba’s intensity. The Magic hurt themselves by shooting 30 percent and missing open shots, and Howard was a non-factor on offense with 12 points and only one field goal, a 7-foot hook shot in the game’s first two minutes.

Howard understands he and his teammates have to do much more in Game 2 on Sunday night.

“We just didn’t have any energy or effort,” Howard said. “We didn’t box out, all the little things. We can’t control Kobe scoring 40 points, but we can control boxing out, getting loose balls, stuff like that, and we didn’t do that. We have to come out with a better effort.”

The Magic are no strangers to adversity.

They made it to the finals despite losing All-Star guard Jameer Nelson for 42 games because of a shoulder injury, and they came from behind against Philadelphia and Boston to win previous series this postseason. Against Cleveland in the Eastern Conference finals, the Magic shot their way back from impossible deficits.

They’re in another hole. It’s not deep. Not yet.

“It’s just one game,” said forward Hedo Turkoglu, who went just 3-of-11 from the floor. “It’s a long series. We’ve got a couple days to work on some things. We know how good we are, and we know what we need to do to win.”

A good place to start would be getting Howard more involved on offense.

Nothing came easy for him in Game 1. The Lakers’ forwards and centers were everywhere he turned. Andrew Bynum, Pau Gasol and Lamar Odom pushed him, prodded him, poked him.

“They’re going to make it tough to get Dwight rolling,” Magic coach Stan Van Gundy said. “We got him the ball a lot, but they’re always coming with another guy.”

The ever critical Van Gundy’s biggest beef was with his team’s inability to rebound. The Lakers dominated the boards 55-41, a differential Orlando’s coach chalked up to lack of effort.