ORLANDO, Fla. — During the Game 5 pregame festivities Sunday there was a montage of the Magic’s playoff run playing on the scoreboard above the Amway Arena court.

Included were all of Orlando’s moments of triumph and survival on their way to the Finals, set to the backdrop of Van Halen’s classic rally track “Right Now.”
It was a fitting song choice. It was also the theme of Magic center Dwight Howard’s motivational speech to his teammates during a team meeting the day after a heartbreaking overtime Game 4 loss that put them in a 3-1 series hole and on the brink of watching their championship dreams end.
After missing two late free throws that could have secured the win in regulation and tied the series at 2-all, a lot of fingers were pointed at Howard. The criticism came despite a night that to that moment had been one of his most memorable of the Finals with 16 points, 21 rebounds and nine blocks.
“I’ve was thinking about that all day,” Howard said. “(It was) the last shoot-around in Orlando. Last game of the year . . . I just need to go out and have fun . . . and do what people said we couldn’t do.”
Faced with a Finals’ hole that no team had ever crawled out of, Howard went into his last game of the season at Amway on Sunday hopeful that both he and his team could find redemption.
While the sentiment was clearly there, enough of the basketball wasn’t Sunday as Howard struggled with foul trouble and never got going and the Lakers claimed their 15th NBA title, 99-86.
He was stifled almost from the opening tap, with just three points, four rebounds and an assist in the opening 12 minutes.
He picked it up some before the break, adding six more points (3-for-3 from the field) and two more boards, but was tormented down low by the Lakers’ big men as the Magic fell into a 56-46 halftime pit.
“They made a run and instead of playing like we did all season, we kind of put our heads down,” Howard said.
It was part of a dreadful second quarter for Orlando in which they were outscored 30-18. Even more crushing was the plus-11 margin the Lakers held on the boards (47-36) with only Rashard Lewis joining Howard in double-digit rebounds.
“Those are the numbers,” Coach Stan Van Gundy said. “I thought our guys fought hard. I did not think that we handled the frustration really well, and that’s why I think one mistake, one bad play in that stretch kept leading to another.”
Howard got off only one field-goal attempt and no free throws in the third quarter before going to the bench with 3:39 left with four fouls. He came back at the 2:39 mark, but almost immediately picked up fifth foul with 1:14 to play in the period.
Howard came back with 9:22 left in the fourth and made it to the end of the game, but his double-double of 11 points and 10 rebounds was hardly of the caliber that’s been his calling card this season.
The 11 points tied his second-lowest scoring output of the playoffs.
Despite the outcome, Howard said there was a lot to take away from the Magic’s run, however.
“It’s good to be in the Finals, but for a basketball player there’s really no difference except the stakes are higher,” he said. “Were they the better team in this series? Yes, that’s why they’re the champs . . . There’s little lessons from this series and the season. We gave a good effort. . . . So for that there’s no reason to hang our heads.”