| Eastern Conference Playoffs, Round One | ||
|---|---|---|
 | @ |  |
| Magic Lead First-Round Series, 1-0 | ||
| Amway Arena | ||
| 7:30 PM | ||
| NBA TV, Sun Sports | ||
| Probable starters: | ||
| T.J. Ford | PG | Jameer Nelson |
| Anthony Parker | SG | Maurice Evans |
| Jamario Moon | SF | Hedo Turkoglu |
| Chris Bosh | PF | Rashard Lewis |
| R. Nesterovic | C | Dwight Howard |
| Series Central | ||
The Magic used their three-point shot, strong defense on Chris Bosh, and Dwight Howard's overall dominance to put Game One away and win their first playoff game since 2003. Hopefully, they'll do the same tonight and head to Toronto with a 2-0 series lead. But I expect Raptors coach Sam Mitchell to have made the proper adjustments to his game-plan, namely by re-inserting Jamario Moon into the starting lineup. The Andrea Bargnani Experiment (ABETM) didn't quite work the way he planned it.
However, it's important that we not lose perspective. Keyon Dooling put it best when he said "All we did was maintain home-court advantage." Brian Schmitz talks more about it in this blog entry A loss tonight makes the series pretty juicy. A win all but assures we'll advance. That's what's at stake, and I hope Stan Van Gundy has our guys pumped up and ready to stomp the Raptors.
The poll question from yesterday's recap yielded interesting results. Rashard Lewis' defense and Jameer Nelson's strong performance were the two biggest surprises from Game One, according to 3QC readers. Kinda telling, amIrite? When a team's fanbase is surprised its $118 million free-agent addition played tough defense? Or that its point guard played an above-average game? In no way am I trying to discount what Rashard and Jameer did on Sunday. They played superbly and I give them a lot of credit for that. I just think we're kidding ourselves if we think we can expect the same things to happen the rest of the series. But if Jameer indeed continues to outplay Forderon, well, dang. Maybe we can win with him starting after all.
The last game thread had over 140 comments, easily shattering the previous 3QC record. And I do mean shattering. By my unofficial count, that's a 1900% increase in the previous high. Let's see if we can't do it once more.
Go Magic.