The Boston Celtics were very tired when they got to Orlando. They got to their hotel at 4:30 in the morning after an overtime win in New York, they tried to play a basketball game without their six best players, and it didn’t go well. The end.
- By John Karalis
… What do you mean that's not enough words? That's the story of the game. How many words do you need? Oh that many? And how many did I write? 48?
Yeesh, that's not close. Alright then. I got this. I padded out papers all the time in high school and no one could tell.
The Boston Celtics, the Atlantic Division Champion and second seed in the NBA’s Eastern Conference were very, very, very, very tired when they got to Orlando. They got to their hotel at 4:30 in the morning, which is very late, after an overtime win in New York which many described as thrilling, electrifying, enchanting, or sensational. I’m sure there were other words to describe it as well, as there were millions of people who watched that game in many different countries. That means there are many words in other languages that people who watched it in another country can use to describe that game.
One of those countries was Greece, where my family is from. The word for thrilling in Greek is “εντυπωσιακός.” You probably can’t read that unless you’re Greek.
Anyway, that was a very, very, very, very εντυπωσιακός game against New York. It ended very late because of the overtime and the game being on TNT. Did you know commercials are longer on TNT? They pay a lot of money for the games and the extra commercials help them get that money back.
The Celtics left New York very, very, very late and the flight to Orlando is long. It sometimes takes longer to get to Florida because planes sometimes have to fight the jet stream for part of it. The jet stream is a fast current of air that travels from west to east across the United States but it also can take a northern turn. Flying into that makes planes go slower.
So, the Celtics took a slower flight to Orlando and got to their hotel at 4:30 in the morning. WOW! They probably didn’t get enough sleep because adult humans need between seven and nine hours of sleep to be well-rested. I don’t know how much sleep they got, but I bet it wasn’t seven to nine hours!
The Celtics had a game the next night, which was Wednesday night. They usually have a lot of players they can choose from, but they had much, much less in this game. Their top six players all sat out because they were extra tired and the Celtics were being kind.
In case you don’t remember, those players are Jayson Tatum, Jaylen Brown, Kristaps Porzingis, Jrue Holiday, and Al Horford. Those guys are all very, very, very good at basketball, and having them would have helped very much.
The other guys who did play tried pretty hard, but it was tough because they were tired and they hadn't played together much. They are really good basketball players, but the other guys are better than them. I’m sure the guys who played wanted to throw the ball to each other, but Orlando is big and strong and tough and maybe a little mean sometimes because they TOOK the ball from Boston a lot. They scored many, many, many, many points because of that.
The Celtics shot the ball a lot but the ball didn’t go in very much. They missed 50 shots in this game, which is a lot of shots to miss. The goal of a basketball game is to make the baskets, so missing 50 very much hurts a team’s chances of winning. Orlando missed even more shots, though, which is crazy when you think about it. How do they miss 54 shots and win?
That's a good question.
All the times they took the ball from Boston gave them nine more shots than the Celtics, so even though they missed more shots, they made a better percentage of their shots. The dictionary defines “percentage” as a rate, number, or amount in each hundred. Also, Orlando hit nine more shots from behind that line you see on the court.
I don’t know if you noticed that line. It’s called the 3-point line, and if you make shots from behind it, you get an extra point! A lot of teams see that as an advantage, and they all really try to hit a lot of shots from there.
Orlando hit nine more of those than Boston did, probably because Boston was very, very, very tired and it’s harder to hit those shots when you’re tired.
And so the Magic won the game, but it’s okay because it literally meant nothing at all to the Celtics in any way, shape, or form. It might as well have never happened, but it did because teams are obligated to play 82 games and this was one of them.
BOOM! I told you no one would be able to tell. I’ll just sit here and wait for my sports writing awards to roll in, thank you very much.