The Magic beat and beat up the Celtics in Game 3 of their Eastern Conference first-round series Friday night at Orlando, their hideous-to-us, beautifully-ugly-to-them 95-93 victory serving as a precise reminder of why the defending champs need to get this rock-fight of a round over with as soon as possible.
The Celtics will end this and send the Magic to an offseason of, I assume, randomly cheap-shotting visitors to Disneyland. But the physical, hacking, and selectively dirty Magic are teaming up with the whims and grind of the postseason to put some dents in the champs, which is exactly what they don’t need from a supposedly easy first-round series.