Every morning, we compile the links of the day and dump them here… highlighting the big story line. Because there’s nothing quite as satisfying as a good morning dump.
“They really had their way with us,” Celtics coach Brad Stevens told reporters in Orlando after his team endured a 103-98 loss. “They ripped the ball out of our hands on a couple occasions. They made the physical, tough plays the last three quarters that we didn’t match. That’s about it.”
No, Boston simply watched as the Magic leaned on speed, hustle and grit while scoring 12 consecutive points with less than four minutes to play to pull away.
By the time Boston got physical, Marcus Smart got ejected for a flagrant-2 foul for what looked like an inadvertent elbow to the face of fellow rookie Elfrid Payton while trying to draw contact on a drive at the basket in the final seconds.
For those members of #TeamEightSeed, this was a particularly brutal loss. Boston had erased the sting of its most lopsided loss of the season on Tuesday in Cleveland by topping the red-hot Jazz on a buzzer-beater, then starting this three-game road trip with a win in New Orleans.
If the Celtics want to make a serious run at a playoff spot, Sunday’s game should have been a romp. And early on, it looked like it was going to be just that. Boston’s 3-point shots were falling and the Celtics were up 20 after 13 minutes. The Magic dominated the next 35.
“We played one good quarter and got crushed the other three,” Stevens said.
Brad Stevens didn’t hold back when assessing his team’s play last night in Orlando. It’s deserved when you surrender 34 points in the 4th quarter of a close game.
Props to Orlando, they played extremely physical over the final 12 minutes.
But…
One team has been allowed to be aggressive. Another team is the Celtics.
— Jon Duke (@CSL_Duke) March 9, 2015
//platform.twitter.com/widgets.jsLet’s just say I didn’t think the officiating was all that even in the fourth quarter. I won’t pin the loss on the officiating, but it certainly didn’t help. And how about that flagrant-2 foul call on Marcus Smart?
A video posted by KWAPT (@kwapt) on Mar 8, 2015 at 5:39pm PDT
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“I didn’t feel I made contact; I guess I did. I was just making a basketball play to the rim. And all of a sudden, they waived their hands off for offensive foul.”
The call put a damper on what had been a solid night for Smart who finished with 16 points, five rebounds and five steals which equaled his career high.
But Smart’s numbers were an afterthought considering the Celtics lost the game and he was tossed with, according to Smart, very little explanation afterward.
“They just said, ‘flagrant-two. You’re gone. That was it,” Smart said. “I asked them. I went up to them; I didn’t scream at them. I just asked, ‘what was the call?’ And they were like ‘flagrant-two. Bye.’ That was it.”
There’s no denying Smart landed an elbow but to call that “unnecessary and excessive” is absurd.
Offensive foul? Yes. Flagrant 1? Maybe. Flagrant 2? Absolutely not.
Maybe the league will scale it back to a flagrant-1. But that would be embarrassing considering the officials got together and reviewed the play.
On Page 2, Javale McGee was in Waltham last week.
It’s still hard to see how the Celtics and JaVale McGee could have bridged their differences on the guarantee for next season, but evidently each side was confident at some point it would be getting its way.
So confident, in fact, that McGee was actually in Waltham on Thursday and could conceivably have been on the team’s flight to New Orleans that day or gone down later had things been worked out.
If McGee had signed, the Celts, with their roster at the 15-man maximum, would have had to make a move. Most likely, the club would have released Shavlik Randolph, who was actually asked to come to the team’s facility for a meeting that day. It’s not known whether that talk was related to the McGee situation, but it’s probably fair to assume that, in that the meeting was canceled when the deal fell through.
Randolph, acquired in January from the Suns in the three-team deal that got Austin Rivers to the Clippers, is certainly aware of his position on the roster. But it made for an uncertain several hours before he got on the plane.
Let’s add a chapter to the screen play for Shavlik Randolph’s life story.
Danny Ainge: Hi Shavlik, thanks for your time but we have to let you go.
[Assistant enters office]
Assistant: Danny, there’s a call for you on line 1.
DA: One second, Shav.
[Picks up phone]
DA: What’s that? Don’t they realize he’s an underachieving bonehead without a team? Ok, then. We’re out.
[Hangs up phone]
DA: Shavlik, nevermind. You’re in.
Life in the NBA.
The rest of the links:
Globe – Bradley likely to miss Mon. game vs Miami | Celtics fall to Orlando | Herald – Magic fights its way back to beat Celtics | CSNNE – Datome makes most of playing time | Bass stepping up in Sullinger’s absence
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