WASHINGTON: The Boston Celtics will find themselves balancing the short- and long-term effects of going all-out for a series sweep when they attempt to get a third straight win over the Orlando Magic on Friday night as the Eastern Conference first-round series moves to Florida.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Celtics logged relatively easy 103-86 and 109-100 home wins to open the best-of-seven series, despite entering with Jaylen Brown limping on a sore right knee and Jayson Tatum sitting out in Game 2 with a bruised right wrist.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Boston\u2019s superior depth has led the way in the 2-0 start. Derrick White scored 30 points in Game 1, Kristaps Porzingis had 20 in Game 2, and recently crowned Sixth Man Award winner Payton Pritchard has almost single-handedly outscored all Magic reserves in the series, falling short by just a 34-33 count.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The teams have just one day off leading into Game 3, which brings into question how Brown\u2019s knee will respond to him having played 42 minutes during Game 2 in a leading role and how much Tatum has recovered from pain that prevented him from even warming up Wednesday night.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Brown says he\u2019s ready for another 36-point, 10-rebound effort if needed in Orlando.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cObviously, JT is the offensive leader of our team. We all kind of play off of him,\u201d Brown said. \u201cBut any given night, I could rise to the occasion. I just do what the team needs me to do. I\u2019ve taken that mentality.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Brown and Tatum were outscored 59-33 by Magic co-stars Paolo Banchero and Franz Wagner in last Sunday\u2019s series opener, and Brown and Porzingis were edged 57-56 by the Orlando duo in the rematch.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But the other three Celtics starters in those games have chipped in with a total of 81 points, while the Magic supporting cast has gone for just 36.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Orlando has more problems than limited production from players outside of their main options.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The team has been outscored 84-51 on 3-pointers, given up 51 free throws while taking just 35, and has been outrebounded 88-75.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Banchero hopes the home court, where the Magic beat the Celtics twice in the regular season after a 27-point shellacking in the only Boston contest, can flip some of those numbers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cYou\u2019ve just got to keep fighting, man,\u201d Banchero said. \u201cIt\u2019s two games down. They did what they\u2019re supposed to do: beat us twice on their home floor. Now we\u2019ve got to go protect our home floor. Simple as that.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Magic are familiar with 0-2 playoff holes. They dropped two straight at Cleveland by double-figure amounts to open last year\u2019s postseason before rebounding with two blowout wins at home.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
That series featured seven straight wins by the home team.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Orlando coach Jamahl Mosley would like to see a few more calls go his team\u2019s way at home.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cI\u2019m not one to complain,\u201d Mosley said after watching the Celtics get to the foul line 33 times in Game 2, \u201cbut there\u2019s a reality that all of our starters had two fouls at one point quickly and there was a time when it was 16-2 in the free-throw count (in Boston\u2019s favor).\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
WASHINGTON: The Boston Celtics will find themselves balancing the short- and long-term effects of going all-out for a series sweep when they attempt to get a third straight win over the Orlando Magic on Friday night as the Eastern Conference first-round series moves to Florida. The Celtics logged relatively easy 103-86 and 109-100 home wins […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4614,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"pagelayer_contact_templates":[],"_pagelayer_content":"","inline_featured_image":false,"rop_custom_images_group":[],"rop_custom_messages_group":[],"rop_publish_now":"initial","rop_publish_now_accounts":{"facebook_3859443944190656_798604363342440":""},"rop_publish_now_history":[],"rop_publish_now_status":"pending","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4613","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sports"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pakjazbo.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4613","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pakjazbo.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pakjazbo.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pakjazbo.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pakjazbo.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4613"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/pakjazbo.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4613\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4615,"href":"https:\/\/pakjazbo.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4613\/revisions\/4615"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pakjazbo.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/4614"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pakjazbo.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4613"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pakjazbo.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4613"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pakjazbo.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4613"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}