6 Things to Watch in Magic-Celtics Playoff Series

At first, it's hard to look at this series and not see all the combined talent in these two frontcourts.

Jayson Tatum and Jaylen Brown have been the leading forces of Boston basketball for nearly a decade now. Paolo Banchero and Franz Wagner are blazing a similar path in Orlando.

Don't get it twisted: Although both teams roll with a star duo on the wings, there aren't many similarities between these two teams. That said, one of their few commonalities being centered around the series' four best players should make for interesting theater.

Tatum (26.8 points, 8.7 rebounds, 6.0 assists) will finish on MVP ballots for a fourth straight year, and Brown (22.2 points, 5.8 rebounds, 4.5 assists) was the Finals MVP a summer ago.

The weight on Banchero and Wagner's shoulders is perhaps the heaviest a star duo bears this postseason. While injuries affected them and ended the seasons of other contributors, they became the first pair of Magic teammates to each average 20 points a game since Shaquille O'Neal and Penny Hardaway 29 years ago.

Their 50.1 combined points per game was a tenth shy of O'Neal and Hardaway's all-time mark set in 1994-95 as the highest-scoring duo in franchise history.

Do Orlando's stars have enough juice to steal a game, let alone a series? That remains to be seen.

Their effort to do so will be worth watching.

Jaylen Brown's health

Speaking of Brown, he received pain management injections in his right knee in the last week of the regular season, aiming to be ready for first-round play.

At the time, ESPN reported that Brown was expected to be ready for the beginning of Boston's title defense. He'd been dealing with a right knee impingement for a couple of months and, when playing, was on a minute restriction since returning in mid-March.

On the eve of Game 1, Celtics coach Joe Mazzulla said Saturday that Brown had a great week of practice, he looks good and was able to do everything. In short, "no limitations."

Even Brown himself, while meeting with reporters following Saturday's practice, said his full focus was on Orlando and that he wouldn't be speaking about his knee. With the Celtics' injury report for Game 1 clear, all signs point to him being full-go come 3:30 p.m. on Sunday.

The possible 3-point math problem

Flashback to a chilly January night in TD Garden, when after watching Boston make 12 more threes than his Orlando team and earn a 27-point margin of victory, Banchero called overcoming such a deep-shooting discrepancy "almost impossible."

Get one thing clear: the Celtics can do that to anyone. They aim to break their opponents' spirit with death by a thousand three-pointers. No previous NBA team has ever been more willing and able to shoot from beyond the arc than this year's defending champions – their 48.2 attempts per game is a single-season record. By virtue of their increased volume, Boston also tallied the most makes of any team as well.

It's one of the many areas where the Celtics' offensive attack is historically great. Unfortunately for the Magic, it is also a historic weakness of their bottom-5 offense.

The 2024-25 Magic totaled the league's fewest made triples (921) and was the NBA's least-accurate deep-shooting team (31.8 3PT%) in nine years.

If Boston gets going and Orlando subsequently does not, it could quickly become a math problem with no solutions favoring the Magic.

Yet, the Magic's one saving grace could be its three-point defense.

Orlando surrendered the fewest total makes (938) and attempts (2,574) this year. Opponents converted on 36.5 percent of their attempted treys, which is 7th-worst. But, it hurts the Magic less when opponents can't get those shots in the first place.

In all three regular-season meetings with Orlando, Boston shot well below its average number of attempts: a season-low 33 (eight makes) in a December loss, 37 (17 makes) in the January drubbing victory and 40 (season-low seven makes) in a recent April loss with starters sitting.

Boston wants to live beyond the arc. Running the Celtics out of their residency will be atop the Magic's schematic approach defensively.

Two top-5 defenses clash

While on the topic of defense, the Boston-Orlando series is the only first-round clash that pits two top-5 defenses against one another.

The Magic's defense doesn't let itself sneak up on anyone. Instead, it slaps you in the face rudely and can drag nearly any team through the mud from opening tip to final buzzer with a physical, no-holds-barred approach. Their length lets them crawl into the ball while also playing passing lanes, eliminating airspace when connected and communicating at their best. It is Orlando's undeniable best quality for two years running.

But, the Celtics' second-ranked offense inadvertently steals shine from its fourth-ranked defense, which is plenty disruptive itself.

"The fact that most of their guys can guard 1 through 5; they have a really big lineup, especially that starting group," Magic center Wendell Carter Jr. said. "It definitely gets overshadowed by their offense, but their defense is pretty good. They switch everything. They make it difficult. They'll stall you out."

And, Boston is a great rim-protecting defense – limiting opponents to the fourth-lowest rim FG% (64.2%), the seventh-lowest rim shooting rate (25.5%), and blocking the fifth-most shots per game (5.5).

That's bad news for an Orlando offense that, when seldom thriving, aims to get into the paint and create sprayout looks and force the defense to shift. Instead, the Magic have gotten used to seeing packed lanes and zone defenses that opponents dare to be shot out of.

Now Orlando, who ranks 24th in shot quality, faces a Boston defense that's second in surrendered shot quality.

And, giving Mazzulla – an "excellent basketball mind," as Jamahl Mosley called him this past week – multiple days to gameplan on slowing down the Magic's attack means Orlando figures to have quite the code to crack in the series to score.

Slow and methodical

Among those few aforementioned similarities between the Magic and Celtics are their slowed tempos.

Orlando and Boston brought up the rear in pace during the regular season, finishing 30th and 29th, respectively. The average Magic offensive possession takes 15.6 seconds, while the usual Celtics turn with the ball takes 15.4 ticks.

That heightens the need to execute and capitalize on every possession Orlando gets.

"It's huge," Mosley said. "In a game like this with Boston, it's huge because of how many threes they take, how they crash the glass. They're not necessarily trying to play fast, so every possession matters. Can we take care of the basketball more, can you keep them off the offensive glass? All those little things are going to come down to it."

But, the identical approach could offer the Magic a chance to deviate.

"I think that also gives us the opportunity to play faster," Jonathan Isaac said. "We can tailor ourselves to how we want to play this series, and I think faster is better for us."

That may not mean getting more possessions, but rather getting across halfcourt sooner and into actions in a faster manner. The longer Orlando spends looking for a quality shot, the less time it has for error.

It'd be in the Magic's best interest to get things moving early.

Earn the freebies

This year, no team got more of its respective points from the free throw line than the Magic.

And, no team put opponents at the foul line less than the Celtics.

Orlando must do everything possible to break Boston's discipline and get freebies. It has been the Magic's most reliable source of scoring this year; simultaneously, preventing them is part of what makes the Celtics' defense so great.

Case in point, the Celtics had three games all year where their opposition attempted 30 or more free throws in a game – Orlando was one of them. In fact, the Magic shot 30-plus free throws in 15 games this year.

"That's where the details and the process of winning in the margins come into play," Mazzulla said Saturday. "If you get into a situation where you put [the Magic] at the free throw line because of your undiscipline, they're extremely difficult to guard."

Taking away free throws would be a debilitating blow to the Magic's offense. Controlling that aspect of the game could factor into whether or not Orlando controls any of the outcomes in the series.