The Wolves welcome the New Year just like they rang out the old on Wednesday: With a loss, their 27th in 34 games this season.

This time, they held Superman -- a.k.a. Dwight Howard -- to just nine points.

That's only the fourth time in the Magic's 24-8 start that the big man has been limited to single digits.

No matter.

The Magic simply spread the floor and beat the Wolves with their shooters (you know, guys who can make shots).

Even without Howard, six Magic players reached double figures, led by Rashard Lewis' 21 points.

Those 21 included five of the Magic's 15 threes -- 15 of 37, 10 more attempts than its season average.

Reserve forward Ryan Anderson made four more as the Magic exploited a mismatch at either end of the floor at power forward with Kevin Love mostly.

Love's a beast on the boards -- eight of his 10 rebounds were offensive boards -- but he had a wee bit of trouble chasing the Magic's "power'" forwards out to the three-point line.

"That's one of the struggles Kevin Love is going to ahve to deal with in his career," Kurt Rambis said. "With a power forward in this league, sometimes you're guarding a big, strong power play that plays inside, and the next night it's a quicker,more athletic, outside-shooting player. So you're going to have to constantly adjust your defense. You have to turn around and worked at the offensive end.

"We didn't make them pay for having a lighter player, which Lewis is. We didn't make them pay for that matchup."

A couple other things:

* Rambis pointed to the team's 19 turnovers more so than the disparity in threes (15-8 Magic in makes).

* Ryan Hollins played seven minutes -- his fewest since Dec. 14 at Utah -- because Rambis turned Nathan Jawai for nearly 14 minutes to help spell Al Jefferson against Howard. Howard made four of 10 shots, but had 15 rebounds.

Here's the game story from tonight:

http://www.startribune.com/sports/wolves/80483497.html

And here's the notebook from tonight's game, in which I talked to Magic center Marcin Gortat about Ricky Rubio and Nikola Pekovic. He gives his scouting report on both players:

http://www.startribune.com/sports/wolves/80488682.html

That's all for tonight. The Wolves flew after the game to Indianapolis for tomorrow night's game vs. Pacers.

I'm headed there myself in the morning.

Talk to you tomorrow night.