The Orlando Magic went 0-9 from deep in the first half against the Boston Celtics, and for a team that set the record for most three pointers in a season, that is pretty rare (in fact, they haven’t done it in more than 2 years – against the Nets 2/26/08).  Many people are praising the Celtics defense for these misses, but when looking at the attempts closer, you can see that all of these attempts were all pretty good looks that you can expect the Magic to make.

Attempt 1:

Here, Rajon Rondo sinks in trying to grab the offensive board (as we talked about in the past), and one way to make the Celtics pay for that is pushing it in transition which is exactly what the Magic do here.  Dwight Howard quickly outlets it to Jameer Nelson and with nobody picking him up, he attempts a wide open three.  A Good Look.

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The Orlando Magic were down 5 points with 49.6 seconds left, and this gives us a perfect opportunity to look at clock management and see how it should be done.

Getting A Quick Three

You are down 5 points and the time left guarantees that you will have at least two possessions (without having to foul) if you hurry.  The Magic initially did a very good job of getting a quick shot off:

The Magic curl their three shooters around Dwight Howard along the baseline.  The “mass curl” does a pretty good job of confusing the Celtics.

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For the most part, the Magic were able to keep Ray Allen off of the three point line, and going into the 4th quarter, Allen had only made 1 three.  However, a quick outlet pass by a savvy veteran led to the Magic cross-matching, and this cross-matching gave allowed the Celtics to get Ray Allen open for three.

After a Kevin Garnett miss, J.J. Redick catches the outlet and drives the ball the length of the court, and attempts the lay-in.

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