Orlando Magic continue to search for way to stop Jamal Crawford

At some point Jamal Crawford has to cool off, right?

The Atlanta Hawks shooting guard has torched the Orlando Magic in the first four games of this playoff series, averaging 24 points and shooting 56.5 percent from three-point range. In a series defined by ugly offense and hard-nosed defense, Crawford's finesse and efficiency shooting the basketball have stood out.

And the frustrating part for the Magic is they're keeping a defender nearby and in his face — he's just connecting on the jumpers, anyway.

"I really don't think our defense has been that bad," Dwight Howard said. "They've been hitting a lot of tough shots."

Crawford's remarkable consistency — he's scored 25, 23, 25 and 23 points in the four games — has carried the Hawks. The Magic assumed the law of averages might help limit Crawford, but that hasn't worked.

His shooting percentage (47.1 in the playoffs compared to 42.1 in the regular season), three-point percentage (56.5 to 34.1) and points per game (24 to 14.2) are far above his usual performance.

He's not going to just start missing on his own, as the Magic may have hoped.

So on Monday at practice, the Magic focused on stopping Crawford (and Joe Johnson, who's averaging 20 points per game this series).

"A lot of it's just been one-on-one on the pull-ups, but we made a couple of adjustments today and we'll continue to do that," Magic coach Stan Van Gundy said. "What he's basically getting is he's just lining guys up one-on-one and either creating space for his pull-up or putting the ball on the floor and getting to the rim. Not a whole lot to the rim, but some."

Very little to the rim, actually. Only three of Crawford's 32 field goals have come at the rim. So the Magic will continue to try and apply more pressure to his jumpers, which has been a fruitless endeavor so far this series.

"I just think we have to apply more pressure to him, not allow get into a rhythm," Howard said. "Once he has a chance to pat the ball and get into a rhythm, he's pretty good. We've got to do a better job of that."