{"id":521876,"date":"2026-01-07T05:49:12","date_gmt":"2026-01-07T05:49:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/521876\/"},"modified":"2026-01-07T05:49:12","modified_gmt":"2026-01-07T05:49:12","slug":"cj-mccollum-leads-wizards-past-magic-120-112","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/521876\/","title":{"rendered":"CJ McCollum leads Wizards past Magic 120-112"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>By\u00a0\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/apnews.com\/author\/ben-nuckols\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">BEN NUCKOLS<\/a><\/p>\n<p>WASHINGTON (AP) \u2014 CJ McCollum scored 27 points and steadied the Wizards after they nearly blew a 26-point lead as Washington held on for a 120-112 victory over the Orlando Magic on Tuesday night.<\/p>\n<p>Alex Sarr added 23 points for the young and suddenly competitive Wizards, who have won five of seven. Washington, in the midst of a yearslong rebuild, began the season 3-20 but has gone 7-5 since.<\/p>\n<p>The Wizards\u2019 inexperience showed after they took an 89-63 lead on Justin Champagnie\u2019s 3-pointer in the third quarter. Orlando cut the deficit to 14 points by the end of the period and continued its rally as Washington began the fourth quarter by going 2 of 10 from the field.<\/p>\n<p>Goga Bitadze\u2019s layup got the Magic within 107-105 with 5:03 left, and Orlando could sense the biggest comeback victory in franchise history. But McCollum found Sarr for an alley-oop, then followed with a midrange jumper and a 3-pointer to put Washington ahead by nine.<\/p>\n<p>Another 3 by McCollum made it 117-107 with 1:52 remaining.<\/p>\n<p>Reserve Jase Richardson led the Magic with 20 points and Desmond Bane scored 15.<\/p>\n<p>The Magic have not won consecutive games since winning three straight from Nov. 25-Dec. 1, before leading scorer Franz Wagner suffered a high ankle sprain that has sidelined him for the past month. Orlando still entered play leading the Southeast Division and was sixth in the Eastern Conference.<\/p>\n<p>Orlando was missing another starter in Jalen Suggs, who suffered an MCL contusion in his right knee in a loss at Chicago on Jan. 2. Suggs has not been cleared for on-court activity, coach Jamahl Mosley said before the game.<\/p>\n<p>Up next<\/p>\n<p>Magic: At Brooklyn on Wednesday night.<\/p>\n<p>Wizards: At Philadelphia on Wednesday night.<\/p>\n<p>___<\/p>\n<p>AP NBA:\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/apnews.com\/hub\/nba\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">https:\/\/apnews.com\/hub\/nba<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By\u00a0\u00a0BEN NUCKOLS WASHINGTON (AP) \u2014 CJ McCollum scored 27 points and steadied the Wizards after they nearly blew&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":521877,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3779],"tags":[2097,7,2241,48,6,47,76,3883,1979,66],"class_list":{"0":"post-521876","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-orlando-magic","8":"tag-associated-press","9":"tag-basketball","10":"tag-fl","11":"tag-magic","12":"tag-nba","13":"tag-orlando","14":"tag-orlando-magic","15":"tag-orlandomagic","16":"tag-professional-basketball","17":"tag-sports"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nba\/115852251312325699","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/521876","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=521876"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/521876\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/521877"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=521876"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=521876"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=521876"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}