Have you ever heard the phrase that “the bar is the floor?” Well, it would’ve applied to what it’d take for the Boston Celtics to win Game 3 and take a 3-0 series lead over the Orlando Magic.
The bar was, in fact, the floor.
Yet, the Celtics managed to find themselves in the basement.
It wasn’t always that way, though. Boston went into halftime with a 10-point lead over the hosts. They then headed to the locker room for what one can only assume was a Space Jam-esque loss of their basketball abilities.
The first 17.5 minutes of the second half had to be the most pathetic-looking stretch of basketball this team has played all year. They were outscored 37-18 and put themselves in a hole that they just couldn’t climb out of.
Even when considering the ice age, that was the second half of the January 7 loss in Oklahoma City, this has to take the cake for the worst of the worst.
It had everything: turnovers, bad offensive possessions, and a plethora of second chances for the Magic.
Boston started the third quarter with a big three-point make from Jayson Tatum. Then, Jaylen Brown secured low-post position on Magic guard Cory Joseph, made a layup through contact, but was called for an offensive foul.
After that, things got worse.
Including that Tatum triple, the Cs made just three field goals for the entire quarter. In a vacuum, that’s bad. If you factor in the fact that they had five turnovers, two more than shots made, then it is put-your-head-in-the-microwave bad.
“You have to give them credit,” head coach Joe Mazzulla said of his team’s turnovers. “I thought it was a combination of both (Orlando’s physicality and Boston’s carelessness). They obviously upped their physicality at the point of attack. Pushed more in the half-court. They didn’t accept switching. So, I would say credit to them with their defensive physicality. We also had some ones that we have to be better at.”
Mazzulla was absolutely right. Orlando dialed up their intensity by a billion. You have to give them credit, 100%. At the same time, Boston really let it bother them.
Neither Tatum nor Kristaps Porzingis put enough “umph” on their end in the above play, and it cost Boston a possession.
For what it’s worth, this was one of the more organized-looking possessions from the Cs during this stretch. There was actually some sort of screen action being attempted by the players. For the majority of this dead stretch, Celtics players would get pushed around while going to set a screen and just kind of give up on it.
The clips won’t paint the whole picture, but there were several possessions where the ball didn’t move, the off-ball players didn’t move, and the ball-handler did not move. When there is no movement of any kind in basketball, the defense doesn’t quite have to earn their stops, now do they?
The shots below, like many others, were just way too difficult without any sort of offense being run.
When I tell you that these were both possessions with one guy dribbling and four watching, I’m not exaggerating.
Meanwhile, as the Celtics were running the Medusa offense, the Magic were also having to fight for every bucket, but they were actually looking to fight.
Up until the 6:30 mark of the fourth quarter, Orlando missed 15 of their 28 attempts from the field. They managed to rebound eight of them. Over HALF of their misses resulted in another possession.
I can sit here and complain about a lot of things in regards to Boston’s second half, but defense is not one of them. That makes the added chances for Orlando all the more frustrating, because the Cs would spend 24 seconds working their tails off to get a stop and then fail to finish the job.
That’s really what this whole rant-piece boils down to. The Celtics failed to step through the door that the Magic were holding wide open for them in the second half. If they just played a bad quarter and a half, then they would’ve won this game.
Instead, they played the absolute worst half, lost by two, and left fans feeling wronged by the officials.
There really were/are people online complaining that the referees didn’t add any time to the 0.3 seconds remaining on the final possession to bring Boston’s chances of winning from 1% to 5%.
They did it to themselves, and it’s sad.
Now, does this mean that you should take shelter because the sky is falling?
No.
The fact that THIS is what it took for the Celtics to drop a game on the road to the Magic should actually have you feeling pretty good. Maybe sit back, relax, watch some TV, play some video games, or spend time with friends/family until Sunday.
