With the Charlotte Hornets down 74-62 at home to the Orlando Magic in the opening game of the team?s playoff series, Charlotte was in desperate need for a spark to propel them back into the game.  Tracy McGrady was hobbling with sore back, yet he was still dominant enough to be able to score freely on Hornet forward Lee Nailon.  Enter George Lynch.

Lynch, acquired in the off season from the Sixers for Derrick Coleman, came in and did what McGrady couldn?t.  He played hard and he played tough, exposing the one weakness that McGrady possessed in the game; health.

"From the start of the game, you could tell Tracy wasn't the same," said Lynch. "If he was the same, he probably would have scored 40. His back was bothering him. This is the playoffs. You can't let a player with an injury like that beat you. I had to get physical with him. I had to make it tough for him."

Lynch entered the game with eight minutes to go in the game, the Hornets down 12 points, and held McGrady without a field goal the rest of the way, setting up the Hornets comeback and win.

"That was the biggest substitution of the game," Charlotte forward P.J. Brown said.

"That's what we got him for," added coach Paul Silas.

While he did save them from a disappointing home loss to start their playoff campaign it wasn?t all good news for the bugs.  Charlotte lost Jamal Mashburn in the opening quarter to flu like symptoms, leaving the court on a stretcher and being admitted into hospital for an overnight stay.  Silas hopes he?ll be ready for game 2.

"If the Magic were to win this game, it would have been tough for us to come back and win three games from them," Lynch said. "When it got down to four minutes to go, I kept telling myself, 'We have to win this game. We have to win this game.' That comeback was what we needed to win this series."