Jameer Nelson and the Orlando Magic showed just how deep they are with star center Dwight Howard hampered by foul trouble Thursday night. Nelson had a season-high 16 points and nine assists, Hedo Turkoglu and Rashard Lewis scored 20 points apiece and the Magic beat the Philadelphia 76ers 98-88 on Thursday night.

Dwight Howard had 22 points and 15 rebounds to lead the Orlando Magic past the Chicago Bulls, 96-93 on Monday night. Chicago’s Ben Gordon missed a fall-away jumper with 15 seconds left that would have tied the game and the ball was batted out of bounds off Chicago. Rashard Lewis made two of four free throws in the final 23 seconds before Andres Nocioni missed a leaning 3-pointer at the buzzer that would have send the game into overtime. Lewis finished with 21 points and 11 rebounds. Drew Gooden led Chicago with 21 points. Nocioni added 20 and Gordon 17.

Creativity was clearly the focus of this year’s Sprite Slam Dunk competition, leading up to it and during the competition itself. Imitation would not be accepted. If you didn’t bring something new to the contest, you would be staring at five NBA legends green cards with nothing but 8s on them.

Howard brought the spice tonight. And it wasn’t just spicy. It was down right impressive. Howard dominated both rounds of the competition, scoring 50s on both of his first round dunks and receiving 78 percent of the fans’ votes in the finals.

The key to Howard’s victory may have been that his two best dunks (the two he showed us in his YouTube video) were not in the same round.