BOSTON (AP) -The Orlando Magic were 10 points ahead with five minutes left when they simply stopped.
Stopped running, stopped scoring and ultimately stopped themselves from pushing the defending NBA champions one game away from elimination.
Leading 85-75, the Magic gave up the next 13 points and the Boston Celtics overtook them, winning 92-88 Tuesday night to take a 3-2 lead in the Eastern Conference semifinals.
“We just got out of our game,” Orlando guard J.J. Redick said. “We just kind of played stall ball and you can’t really do that with a 24-second shot clock.”
The Magic led almost the entire game and opened their biggest cushion, 77-63, with 8:49 left. They were running up the court, driving to the basket and shutting down the Celtics’ shooters. But with 4:55 remaining, starters Paul Pierce, Rajon Rondo and Kendrick Perkins returned to the game with Boston trailing 85-75.
With 8.5 seconds remaining, the Celtics were back on top, 88-85, as the Magic missed their last seven shots of the game.
,” Orlando coach Stan Van Gundy said. “Four minutes. That’s forever in an NBA game. I kept telling them we want to push the ball, but we didn’t. We walked it up.”
Little by little, the lead vanished.
And Dwight Howard, Orlando’s best player, didn’t take a shot after hitting a running hook with 6:50 left. He finished with 12 points on just 10 shots.
“I don’t think you are going to win a lot of games when your post player only gets 10 shots,” he said. “It’s tough to get yourself going and get a lot of shots without a lot of touches. We have to do a better job with that.
“I just think I have to be more aggressive.”
At least the Magic have a day off Wednesday to recover and the home court Thursday night to try and force a Game 7 back in Boston on Sunday.
Some of them think there shouldn’t even be a Game 6. They lost the fourth game 95-94 on a buzzer-beating jumper by Glen Davis. Then they coughed up a huge lead in the fifth game.
“It should be over,” Hedo Turkoglu said. “We had a lot of opportunities. We can’t really be down on ourselves right now.”
The Celtics have much more experience – and are playoff-tested with two Game 7 wins last year en route to their 17th NBA title – but Howard minimized its importance.
their effort.”
Now the Magic know they must do that, too. Or else a series in which they’ve played well most of the time will end with them being eliminated.
“With the exception of Game 2, we’ve had long stretches where we outplayed them,” Redick said. “They’re just not easy to put away.”
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