ORLANDO MAGIC VS BOSTON CELTICS
1.75
TOTAL POINTS (INCL OVERTIME) - UNDER 199.5
The reigning champions, The Boston Celtics, are heading down to Florida to face the Orlando Magic. The Celtics are up two to nothing in the series and the gritty Magic has to leave everything on the floor tonight. If they don’t the series will be over fast.
Orlando defeated the Celtics twice at home in the regular season and they are of course adamant that they can repeat that feat in the two upcoming games in Florida. Much will be on the shoulders of Orlando’s superstar Paolo Banchero. The power forward spoke to nba.com ahead of the match. Banchero said: “You’ve just gotta keep fighting. It’s two games down and they did what they're supposed to do at their home floor”. Now the Magic needs to step up and make a series out of this.
The Magic have missed a lot of shots in the two first games of this first round series. Orlando lost the first game up in Boston by 103-106 and the second one 100-109. As we know The Magic has a great defence. That is the biggest strength Magic has. Holding the Celtics on the road 103 and 109 points speaks to that. But the Orlando Magic lacks the same stuff on the offensive end of the floor. Their starting point guard, Jalen Suggs, is injured and that is part of the offensive problems for Orlando.
Franz Wagner made only made one out of seven shots from behind the arc in the second game of the series. Banchero only made two out of his attempted three pointers. Caldwell-Pope missed all of his six attempted three pointers. Wendell Carter Jr made all of his three shots from downtown. In total The Magic only made seven out of their 29 shots from behind the arc. That is far from being good enough. Boston made 12 out of 37 their shots from downtown. Which is a lot as far as the Celtics goes.
The Magic plays a physical brand of basketball. Orlando’s head coach Jamahl Mosley was not too happy with the officiating in the first two games up in Boston. He spoke to nba.com and said: “The fact is that all of our starters had two fouls each while they had 16 free throws to ours two”.
Jayson Tatum missed game two of the series so Jaylen Brown stepped up big time. He was very impactful. The small forward had 36 points. Brown made 12 out of his 19 shots and five out of seven from behind the arc. Jaylen also had ten rebounds, five dimes and one steal. Brown told nba.com the following after game two: “Tatum is our leader offensively. But any given night, I could rise to the occasion. I just do what the team needs me to do”. The winner of the 6t man of the year award, Payton Pritchard had 33 points. Kristaps Porzingis scored 20 points.
Tatum is the only player on the injury report for the Boston Celtics. Jayson is dealing with a right distal radius (bone bruise). Moritz Wagner and Jalen Suggs are out for the season as far as the Orlando Magic goes. Brown will play even though he has a hurting knee. Porzingis left the floor bleeding in game two but is ready to go in Orlando tonight.
