ORLANDO -- The Orlando Magic media room felt, for a moment, like a VFW. When I walked by a table of Orlando folks and said “this is the ugliest game I’ve ever seen,” they turned into World War 2 veterans recalling far worse battles that they’ve witnessed. They spent a few minutes rattling off a game from a few weeks ago, one in October, their play-in game. All that was missing was their garrison caps.
The Magic finally broke through against the Celtics on Friday night, wearing the Celtics down under a barrage of pushes, pulls, hacks, and elbows, some of which were called and some of which were not.
“They got away with a lot,” Jaylen Brown said after the Game 3 loss. “So if you get away with it, I would do it too. That definitely affected us but we’ll be ready for Game 4.”
The Magic have hit Boston with a flagrant foul in each of their first three games. Jayson Tatum hurt his wrist after one by Kentavious Caldwell-Pope in Game 2. Kristaps Porzingis got his head split open by Goga Bitadze in Game 2. And then Brown dislocated his left index finger on an excessively hard foul in Game 3.
“I fell on it,” Brown said. “But I’ve got nine more so I’m all right.”
That's all well and good, but three different players have been hurt by three different Magic (why aren’t they called “Magicians?”) which raises the question of whether there will be a fourth on Sunday, and how the Celtics will ultimately respond.
“Just get up,” Tatum said. “Ain't that what Joe told me? Get up. Move on to the next play. Protect yourself, and just focus on the game.”
Joe Mazzulla would probably consider this style of play a sign of respect. It’s a sort of “you’re too good for us to beat straight up so all we have is these mind games,” thing. The Magic don’t have the firepower to beat the Celtics in a straight up game, so they have to try to pull the Celtics into the mud with them.
“We’re supposed to be playing basketball,” Brown said. “That’s what it’s about, playing basketball, getting up and down. The flagrant fouls is piling up, you know what I mean? It is what it is but we just got be ready for Game 4.”
The Celtics have to find a way to break free of this cycle with the Magic. Somehow, they have to find a way to impose their will more often. They have to dictate the terms of engagement. And if there are elbows thrown along the way, so be it.
“We have to accept the reality,” Porzingis said. “We get away with some stuff that they're catching, they're scratching their heads, so it's just how the game is right now. It is a pretty big difference from (the) regular season. You have to make that adjustment as a player and not expect anything. You just go out there and play through contact, play through it.”
Porzingis, right now, is having a very tough time making the adjustment to this style of basketball. If anyone needs to take his advice, it’s him. He’s been demonstrative on the court, punching at the air as makeable shots bounce off the rim.
“My shot’s feeling a little janky right now,” he said. “What else am I going to do? I’m gonna keep shooting. But it stings, man. This game, I have to take accountability. I played like shit. And we still had opportunities to win. For sure we’ll get together again and correct some of our mistakes, and we’ll bounce back.”
The loss itself isn’t some harbinger of doom for the Celtics. They've lost these kinds of games before bounced right back. They can win two in a row and we’ll all gladly move on to the next round and focus on whatever new set of challenges exist there.
But the Celtics have also gone from a 17-point win to a nine-point win, to a two-point loss in three games where they played less like themselves as the series went on. The Magic are less talented, but they are playing these games their way.
The Celtics have a choice to make. Play Orlando’s way and just do it better, or figure out how to get back to their brand of basketball.
“There might be a fight break out or something because it’s starting to feel like it’s not even basketball and the refs are not controlling their environment,” Brown said. “It is what it is. If you want to fight it out, we can do that. We can fight to see who goes to the second round.”
Sometimes a good fight is just what the doctor ordered. The Celtics can benefit from a little more scrappiness in their lives. If that's how they want to finish this thing off, then they need to start laying some wood on Sunday night. They just need to make sure they get out of this series without any more doctor’s visits.