No Rust to Knock Off the Magic

Time off? No problem.

Loss of momentum?

Not with Shaquille O’Neal and Penny Hardaway.

Coach Brian Hill’s concern that his team would be sluggish after a week off that followed an easy first-round sweep of Detroit proved unfounded Wednesday night when O’Neal scored a personal playoff-best 41 points and Hardaway added 32 in the Magic’s 117-105 victory over the Atlanta Hawks in Orlando.

“I can’t even begin to tell you how scared I was. It’s a coach’s nightmare to be off that long,” Hill said. “The thing you can’t do in practice or scrimmages is simulate playoff intensity, so I really wasn’t sure how we’d react.”

He need not have worried, particularly in Orlando, where the Magic have the best home record in the NBA over the past two seasons and where it has beaten Atlanta six times in a row, with Game 2 of the best-of-seven series at home on Friday night.

“We are not a team that is going to quit,” Atlanta Coach Lenny Wilkens said. “We are going to keep working hard, and the next game we’ll be a lot better.”

Maybe, but to get better Atlanta’s Christian Laettner is going to need some help with O’Neal, who made 18 of 28 shots and took down 13 rebounds, nine on the offensive end.

“They didn’t double-team me much, and when teams don’t double-team me I try to get as many points as I can down low,” O’Neal said. “I think we lost our killer instinct just a little bit, but we’ve got the first game out of our system, so I think we’ll be all right.”

He played down outscoring Laettner, 41-7. Hawk backup Sean Rooks didn’t have much success slowing down O’Neal, either.

“I’m just going to go out every night and play my game. I hope y’all are not going to make it some Laettner-O’Neal matchup,” O’Neal said.

No danger when Hardaway makes 12 of 19 shots and Nick Anderson adds 21 points.

Stacey Augmon led Atlanta with 23 points. Mookie Blaylock and Steve Smith had 18 each.

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NBA Notes

Hakeem Olajuwon was fined $5,000 by the NBA for elbowing Detlef Schrempf in the back of the head in Game 1 of their playoff series. . . . Former Portland Trail Blazer executive and Clipper assistant coach Brad Greenberg was named general manager of the Philadelphia 76ers.