ORLANDO, Fla. — The Cleveland Cavaliers slowed down Magic all-star center Dwight Howard in regulation Tuesday night in Game 4 of the Eastern Conference finals.

Then overtime happened.
Howard finally got the best of Anderson Varejao, Zydrunas Ilgauskas and the Cavs in the extra period, muscling his way inside to score 10 points in overtime — including the first six on thunderous dunks that sent the crowd into hysterics and helped the Magic to a 116-114 victory.
The all-star center ended up with 27 points on 10-of-16 shooting. Overtime was an incredible turn of events after a mostly quiet night for Howard.
After a super-hot first quarter, in which Howard scored 11 points on 4-of-6 shooting from the field, the Cavs held Howard in check.
They didn’t need Hack-a-Dwight to do it. A heavy dose of pushing Howard away from the basket, along with double- and triple-teams did the trick.
Varejao and Ilgauskas banged and pushed Howard. LeBron James got into the act, too. The keep-away shut down any semblance of an inside game for the Magic.
Howard had an extremely difficult time getting into position under the basket, and ended up with long scoring droughts.
The most telling stat of regulation has to be this one: Howard went from the 4:11 mark of the third quarter to the 1:43 mark of the fourth without scoring. And his point in the fourth quarter came on a free throw.
His point totals by quarter: two in the second quarter; three in the third quarter; and one in the fourth.
But that excellent Cavs defensive effort was completely wasted after Howard’s monstrous performance in overtime. Plain and simple, Howard willed his way inside, and Varejao was helpless to stop him. Varejao eventually fouled out when he was vying with Howard for a rebound.
Howard added two free throws with 21 seconds left to help seal the game. He finished 7-of-9 at the free-throw line.
Going into the game, Cavs Coach Mike Brown hinted that his team would use the Hack-a-Dwight strategy. That’s what the Cavs did in Game 3, though it didn’t exactly work as planned.
Howard was 14-of-19 from the free-throw line in Game 3, and 5-of-8 from the field playing 39 minutes. Varejao and Ilgauskas both fouled out as they tried to contain Howard.
Fouling Howard makes sense, considering he is a poor free-throw shooter. But Howard is making his free throws in the conference finals at a clip of 69 percent. In the regular season, Howard made 59.4 percent of his free throws.
“The one thing we want to do if Dwight does get to the paint, we don’t want to give him a dunk,” Brown said Tuesday morning. “We want him to try to shoot 80 percent from the free-throw line again or whatever he shot the last game because that’s a lot better than the 99.99 percent he’ll shoot with a dunk.”