Celtics-Magic preview: Will Boston get an early playoff test from Orlando?
The Boston Celtics have a chance to do something special this summer, as the team looks to become the NBA's first back-to-back champions in seven years. Winning last year gave this Celtics squad some serious street cred, but winning two straight titles puts them up there with greatness.
Just don't call the Celtics defending champions. They're not thinking about last year's title run and the word "repeat" isn't in their lexicon. Boston's focus is exclusively on its first-round foe, the Orlando Magic.
"We're not defending the championship. We won last year and no one can take it from us, but last season is last season," Jayson Tatum said this week. "We're not worried about anything besides the Magic right now."
The first hurdle for the Celtics in their quest to greatness is a defensively dynamic Orlando team. The Magic are coming to Boston as the Eastern Conference's 7-seed after a blowout win over the Atlanta Hawks in the play-in tourney on Tuesday. Orlando won two of three games against the Celtics during the regular season.
Outside of Boston, last year's Celtics team was hit with endless criticism for having an "easy path" to their championship. This summer's road to the Finals should be a lot tougher with a much deeper field in the East and healthier superstars in the conference. The Magic were only a .500 team during the regular season, but should give Boston a good opening-round test this postseason.
Here are some of the storylines to follow when the Celtics-Magic first-round playoff series tips off Sunday afternoon at TD Garden.
Boston's offense vs. Orlando's defense
The Boston offense is deadly, led by Tatum, Jaylen Brown, and Kristaps Porzingis. On the rare occasion any of those three don't have it going, Derrick White and Jrue Holiday are more than capable to step up and fill the void. Off the bench, Sixth Man of the Year favorite Payton Pritchard is primed for another big postseason.
The Celtics are a tough team to contain on offense thanks to their unselfish play and three-point prowess (more on that in a bit). But if any defense will give them fits or even have success in slowing them down, it's the Orlando defense.
The Magic are a rough and aggressive defensive team that held opponents to an NBA-low 105.5 points per game during the regular season. They led the league with 6.0 blocks per game, and were sixth with 8.9 steals per contest.
It's a collective effort by the Orlando D and not just reliant on one player. Five players averaged at least one steal per contest. Their block parties were held by committee as well, as Gogo Bitadze and Jonathan Isaac averaged over a block per game off the bench, while guards Jalen Suggs (0.9 blocks per game) and Anthony Black (0.6) and star forward Paolo Banchero (0.6) each rejected their fair share of shots.
The Magic are really good at getting physical and making their opposition work for everything, which wears teams down over 48 minutes. The Celtics are expecting a real rock fight in the first round, and cannot afford to lose their cool over the physical nature of Orlando's defense.
"Expect the fouls, expect them not to call it, and just control what we can control," Tatum said of the matchup. "It's not about the fouls; it's about the physicality and being prepared for a fight."
"Obviously they're a physical team," Porzingis said of Boston's first-round foe. "They're going to be big, they're going to be handsy, and there are certain areas they're good at. So we just have to make sure we do our best on those departments."
Basically, Orlando makes every team work for everything. There are rarely any easy buckets against the Magic defense, which held opponents to 38.1 makes per game (second in the NBA) off just 81.5 attempts (fewest in the league).
The Magic are going to make life tough for the Boston offense. But it will really come down to whether or not Orlando can keep up with the Celtics.
Can Orlando's offense keep up with Boston's?
Orlando has a pair of real offensive threats in Banchero (25.9 points per game) and Franz Wagner (24.2 ppg). Both will really test Boston's wing defense this series.
"They're big, they're physical, they can handle, they can screen," Mazzulla said or Orlando's duo. "They can get to the free-throw line on you, and they can really test the mismatches. They're just versatile guys that can score in a lot of different ways; transition, half-court, handle, screen. They're very versatile."
Despite those two and their offensive abilities, plus some scoring punch from Cole Anthony off the bench, the Magic are not all that good when it comes to putting the ball in the basket. Orlando's offense was one of the worst in the NBA, ranking 27th in offensive rating (109.8) and 28th in points per game (105.1). The Magic shot just 44.5 percent for the season (27th) and were last in the NBA at three-point shooting at 31.8 percent.
As good as Orlando's defense is, are the Magic going to be able to keep up with a Celtics team that had the second-best offensive rating (119.5) and the eighth-highest scoring offense (116.3 points per game) in the NBA? With Tatum enjoying his best overall season -- and likely to elevate his game even more in the playoffs -- and a healthy Porzingis in Boston, that's going to be a huge challenge for the Magic. Especially when you mix in the three-point disparity between the two teams.
Battle of the three-ball
The Celtics taking a lot of threes is not news to anyone who has followed Mazzulla Ball the last three years. Boston drained 1,457 shots from downtown during the regular season to set a new NBA record, and the three-ball is always going to be part of the team's offensive attack whether it's falling or not.
Opponents shot 36.5 percent from downtown against Orlando, which ranked 23rd in the NBA, but that's not the full story with the Magic's three-point defense. They are great at running guys off the line, and allowed an NBA-low 31.4 three-point attempts per game. (The Celtics took an NBA-high 48.2 threes per contest.) More importantly, the Magic allowed opponents to make just 11.4 threes per game, which also led the league. The Celtics averaged 17.8 makes from downtown per game in their record-setting season.
In the two games the Celtics played their starters against the Magic, they attempted just 33 and 37 threes, which was the team's lowest and fourth-lowest totals of the season, respectively. The Celtics connected on only eight threes in the first matchup in Orlando, which they lost, 108-104. In the second matchup, the Celtics made 17 of their 37 attempts (good for a 45.9 percent clip) and won, 121-94.
Tatum said the Magic do a great job funneling opponents into the paint, so Boston's ball movement is going to have to be on point in the first round. Mazzulla wants his team to remain patient and find -- and fight -- for the best shot possible.
"The key to countering it is just take the shots that they give you and fight for the best shot," said Mazzulla. "They do a good job. They have a lot of defensive versatility, change their coverages up, and they're really physical at the point of attack. So to me, the most important thing is making sure we're just as physical on the offensive end, owning our space and fighting for the best shot we can in each possession."
And if Porzingis and Pritchard are draining threes from 40-feet out for Boston, it probably won't matter how well the Magic defend the perimeter.
Jaylen Brown's injury
The elephant in the room for Boston is Brown's lingering right knee issue, though the team sounded extremely optimistic about last year's Eastern Conference Finals and NBA Finals MVP leading up to this series. Brown last played on April 8, so he will have had nearly two weeks off when Sunday arrives. We'll see if that rest did him well.
The Celtics can probably afford a slightly off-his-game Brown in the first round, but they're going to need him to be close to his usual two-way self if they want to win another title. It will be interesting to see where he's at when the series tips off Sunday, and if the knee issue will require any sporadic nights off throughout the postseason.
Is Holiday back in Jrue form?
The Celtics should have the depth to survive if Brown is limited, and the reemergence of Jrue Holiday is a big reason why. Holiday struggled to start the season after a long summer that included Boston's title run and winning Olympic Gold for Team USA. Add in a funky finger injury in late February, and it took a while for Holiday to return to form.
But he's back to being Jrue and looks exactly like the guy who made so many key and clutch plays for Boston throughout the 2024 postseason. Holiday has a knack for doing whatever the Celtics need in a given moment, whether it's pulling down a rebound, making the extra pass, or canning a clutch three.
When Holiday plays well, it usually leads to a Celtics victory. The team was 14-2 when he scored 15 or more points, and he played his best basketball of the season over the last month. Over 15 games from March 8 until the end of the season, Holiday averaged 11.8 points off 46 percent shooting from the floor and 39 percent from downtown. Boston was 14-1 in those games.
If the Celtics finish the season atop the basketball world again, you can bet Holiday's fingerprints will be all over the championship run.
