Magic Win at Home

Orlando, FL— The Magic took care of homecourt last night with a 95-93 victory over the Boston Celtics in Game 3, but at what cost?

Multiple Celtics Player Get Injured

Orlando is known for being a physical and scrappy team that likes to get underneath your skin, but through three games, things may have gone too far. 

In Game 1, Jayson Tatum suffered a bruised wrist after a hard fall on a layup attempt, and Kenta vious Caldwell-Pope went up to contest the shot. In Game 2, Goga Bitadze inadvertently elbowed Kristaps Porzingis in the head, which led to him bleeding on the court and needing five stitches. Last night, Jaylen Brown suffered a dislocated finger after a hard foul from Cole Anthony, who was assessed a flagrant foul afterward.

Jaylen Brown was on the ground in apparent pain for an extended period of time before being able to get up and walk off. 

“I fell on it. Dislocated my index finger,” Brown said. “But I got nine more.”

The Magic picked up their third flagrant foul yesterday evening in the series.

Jamahl Mosley on Orlando’s Physicality

Going back to Game 2 the Magic’s starters had gotten into some early foul trouble and there was a discrepancy in the foul calls for both Boston and Orlando. Jamahl Mosley before Game 3, was asked in the pre-game press conference if there needed to be conversations had about his team needing to scale back the physicality to prevent early foul trouble, or if that was more so the feel of the game. 

“Yeah, I thought about that…I thought about which direction to go in that route. And then you go back and look at the film and you look at the difference in calls,” Mosley said. “So it’s not necessarily that we’re changing the style of play. We’re going to stay just as physical, same aggressive.”

Jaylen Brown is Willing to Fight?

Right on cue, very similar to the first two games of this series, it was an extremely physical, chippy, and aggressive matchup on both sides of the ball in last night’s contest. 

Jaylen Brown, regardless if he was exaggerating or not, was visibly upset about Orlando’s physicality and the whistle not working in the Celtic’s favor. 

“If we can get away with it, I’d do it too,” Brown said. “I don’t have a problem with the game being physical. But it seems like when I use my physicality, it gets called in the opposite direction. That’s what my frustration was. It was a tough whistle tonight.”

Brown added: “It’s starting to feel like it’s not even basketball. The refs aren’t controlling the environment. So it is what it is. If you wanna fight it out for the right to get to the second round we can do that.”

That’s Just Playoff Basketball

Wendell Carter Jr told reporters postgame that he has embraced the physicality in the series so far.

“That’s playoff basketball — You know, it’s not many fouls called, it’s very scrappy,” Carter Jr said. “I like that when they’re allowing us to play physical and a lot of hitting and things like that going on throughout the game…So yeah, I like it.”

The Celtics on the other hand haven’t been very fond of Orlando’s physicality and it feels as if frustrations are getting close to boiling over. Not only have the Magic been imposing their will on both sides of the floor but it’s been leading to Celtics players getting hurt. 

“Keep it basketball,” Tatum said. “But, you know, just be physical, it’s the playoffs. Ya know, s*** happens sometimes.”