Boston Celtics 90, Orlando Magic 80

When it became evident that the three-pointer wouldn’t be falling tonight, the Magic .. kind of panicked.

Instead of feeding Dwight the ball to see if he could get things going, Orlando played a lot of one-on-one basketball (as you said Ben). And even then .. the team could have done a better job of trying to get into the paint in those iso situations; to create some fouls and get some cheap points and/or get some easier looks at the basket. Alas, that didn’t happen.

Tough loss, but I’m sure the Magic will learn from it.

I CAN NOT STAND THE CELTICS! I rooted for them in last years finals, felt that guys like KG, Pierce and Ray had served their time with poor teams and felt their rings with Boston were well deserved…..

This year, KG has completely turned me off with his antics. I used to see his yelling, screaming, chestbeating as such a passionate thing, after seeing the way he has behaved this year, those same antics just look like bullying tactics. Pierce collects A LOT of cheap points (Like his bump-and-shoot against Hedo tonight) and seems to give ZERO respect to his opponents or their fans. the more i see him, the more i feel that he is a thug (That isn’t a racial or cultural thing at all, the guy just seems like a jerk)

That said, tonights game was so unbelieveably frustrating to watch. They obviously did their homework on us, and we had no back-up plan.
The critics are right, and if the Magic get locked up in a best of 7 against the Cavs or Celts, we need a plan B AND C incase we can’t get the ball to dwight and the 3’s refuse to go down.

…….Phew……Thanks for letting me get that one off my chest.

turkey’s flaws were evident tonight

rashard played excellently, jameer stepped up later on but they simply walked into our and punked us. they rebounded harder, fouled harder, shoved harder, took it to the bucket harder. stan van even put battie out there with dwight and they were stiiiill getting offensive rebounds..

Never was our lack of depth more evident than it was tonight. Not that the starters were lights out, but any hopes of a comeback go completely down the toilet as soon as our reserves take the floor.

This game made me miss Pietrus even more. Courtney looked completely lost tonight and JJ…well…is JJ. I still haven’t seen enough of Michael to know how effective he can be, but it couldn’t possibly get worse than what I saw tonight.

I’m not going to panic, we’re still a very good team and I hope this was a learning situation for the guys. That being said, can i haz moar depth plz?

He should help the Magic’s depth considerably. We could have used him tonight.

Like you guys said, Boston deserved the win. The Magic play Boston twice more, on March 8 and March 25th. Hopefully, the results will be different than Thursday night. This is only one loss, and we shouldn’t panic.

I didn’t watch this game (time difference etc) but from what I can gather, Hedo was horrible on both ends?

SVG will see to it, as well as the players who performed poorly. As discussed in the game thread, the short break most likely did not help the team any.

If we go into the playoffs and sweep, the team we play against could still carry a relatively large sense of confidence even if their series goes to 6 or 7 games. In that case they would be playing in rhythm, while we would be lacking. I think it is troublesome. Really. I was bothered by what I saw, but the one thing that has happened consistently this year is that SVG has changed my perceptions and previous thoughts. Maybe he can get this fixed.

We shall see. Now bring on the Cav’s, yah? haha

It’s just one game. Time to move on.

This was a pathetic show by the Magics, there was NO Magic at all.
We couldn’t even make the DANM free shoots!
Apparently, this 5 daysoff work again us!

Ps I believed the players went Howards house to practice the free trow, during the week ; )

Hopefully, we will get into playing shape in no time

Yeah, that sucked. The thing is, I thought we had good looks at the 3s but they were just not falling; especially Rashard and Jameer’s shot. SVG said later that he has to come up with a way to get ball movement when shots are not falling. It seemed like Turk was able to get in the lane in the 4th qtr and create some things but it was too late. Other observations:

-Yup, they forgot about feeding the ball to Dwight for about 2/3 of the game. Can not happen. Dwight has to do a better job of fighting for position but the team did not do a good job of getting him the ball. Some of that goes to Boston’s defense but some of that is on us.

-Ouch Courtney. Just a game to forget.

-The Rondo/Rashard jumpball was indicative of how much harder the Celts were playing. The Magic came out flat and never recovered.

-I get so mad if JJ doesn’t shoot. I want him to be Zach Randolph and never pass.

-KG has become a punk. There is passion and then there is showing people up. Kobe, Rasheed, Chris Paul all show levels of passion that do not show up their opponents. KG did do some of this in Minnesota, but not as demonstrative and dis-repectful. The biggest issue is that he doesn’t get the technicals that I think a lot of other players would get. Where is Anthony Peeler when we need him?

Thanks for recommending the Marion article. You were right, I really enjoyed the analysis. Hope you found the time to watch the Continental clip :)