The physical, hacking, and selectively dirty Magic are putting some dents in the champs.
The physical, hacking, and selectively dirty Magic are putting some dents in the champs.
The Magic beat and beat up the Celtics in Game 3 of their Eastern Conference first-round series Friday night at Orlando, their hideous-to-us, beautifully-ugly-to-them 95-93 victory serving as a precise reminder of why the defending champs need to get this rock-fight of a round over with as soon as possible.
The Celtics will end this and send the Magic to an offseason of, I assume, randomly cheap-shotting visitors to Disneyland. But the physical, hacking, and selectively dirty Magic are teaming up with the whims and grind of the postseason to put some dents in the champs, which is exactly what they don’t need from a supposedly easy first-round series.
Think the Magic, who can’t shoot but are superb open-field tacklers, are annoying to watch? Imagine what it’s like to play against them.
The Celtics do know what they have to do Sunday night to get their third win in this series and restore order. They cannot let the Magic continue to draw them into a plodding game, particularly on the offensive end.
“We just got stagnant,” said Jayson Tatum, who scored 36 points but shot just 3 of 10 in the second half and turned over the ball seven times, often with overly casual passes. “We’ve just got to play with some more pace and movement. That’s when we’re just at our best.”
Hopefully Tatum, and Jaylen Brown, too, since he has fallen into his overdribbling habit and had six turnovers of his own, heed that advice. If the Magic are taking away the 3-point line, which they do extremely well, forget fiddling around and falling into iso-ball routines, and attack.
