Cavs Or Magic? It's Complicated, So Let's Have A Look At Each Of The Celtics' Potential Second Round Matchups
David Liam Kyle. Getty Images.Now that the Celts have buried the Heat for good, it's officially OK to start thinking about their Round 2 matchup. I'm a firm believer in not counting your chickens before they hatch once you get to the playoffs, so up until last night I hadn't really put much thought into Round 2. When you're in the middle of a series, all you should be doing is focusing on the task at hand. The second you start to look ahead, the Basketball Gods kick you right in the dick and bring you back to earth.
While I think most of us are rooting for a 7 game series to give everyone even more time to rest/recover/prepare, where I think Celts fans differ is which team you would "prefer" to come out of the ORL/CLE series. In an effort to not disrespect the Basketball Gods, when I say "prefer" that is not me suggesting this opponent would be "easy". The Celts could lose to both if they play like assholes, so this isn't an exercise of disrespecting their next potential opponent. It's more of an exercise of looking at the strengths and weaknesses of both and how they match up with a KP-less Celtics roster, both talent-wise and strategy-wise. I think it's safe to assume Porzingis will miss the entire second round, so that's obviously going to factor in.
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So with that in mind, let's go through the case for each
Cleveland Cavaliers:
Season H2H: BOS won 2-1
For the last two seasons, I would best describe the Cavs as one of the more Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde teams in the entire NBA. When they are good, they can be really good on both ends of the floor. But when you get the shitty version of CLE, they look like a complete disaster. This series vs ORL is a great example of that.
It's truly hard to know who the Cavs really are, because on one hand they have great size and length in the frontcourt with Allen/Mobley, good shooting with Strus/Niang, some defensive minded wings like Okoro (who is also a much improved shooter), a proven Celtics Killer in Caris LeVert, and then two dynamic offensive guards who have both shown the ability to give the Celtics issues in the past. In theory, they have all the pieces to be a tough playoff out.
Given all their injuries during the year, it's hard to put too much stock into where the Cavs ranked during the season. For example, I think their offense is better than the 16th ranked offense when healthy, and even with their injuries the Cavs still managed to have a top 10 offense (7th).
I view the Cavs as the team that has the higher overall ceiling between ORL/CLE. They've shown flashes of being able to lock in and be legit defensively, while also having the type of offensive firepower that teams will most likely have to reach in order to keep pace with the Celts. Just like we saw against MIA, it took them making a shit ton of 3s just to stay attached, and the Cavs seem like the team that has a higher chance of catching fire like that. I also think there's something to be said for having playoff experience, which the Magic don't really have.
There's also something to the idea that the Celts' strength (perimeter point of attack defense) matches up well with the Cavs' greatest strength (point guard offense). Usually in the matchups that are close between these two teams it requires either Donovan Mitchell or Darius Garland to go crazy, and in theory, the Celts' perimeter defenders should be able to shut that water off.
In terms of how the Cavs play, you're going to have to deal with a team that is not only ready to let it fly from deep (8th in 3PA) they are also a much better shooting team than the one the Celts just faced (7th in 3PM). In the 3 meetings this season, all of the games were mostly competitive
GM1: Cs won 120-113
GM2: Cs won 116-107
GM3: Cavs won 105-104 after the Celts blew a 20+ point lead
so there is a history there of the Cavs playing the Celts tough, even dating back to last season.
A case for wanting to go against the Cavs is simply they are the team that has more weak defenders to target. While their team defense can be legit, there are holes to exploit. Attacking Strus/Niang on the wing is a problem for them in this matchup. Making Darius Garland and Donovan Mitchell defend the perimeter is a hole. If a playoff series is about finding weaknesses and then exploiting them, the Cavs definitely have more weak links defensively than the Magic.
Orlando Magic
Season H2H: BOS won 2-1
If the Magic find a way to win the next two games and advance to the second round, there's definitely the momentum factor at play. For a young team to take that first step, you never know what that can mean moving forward. We've certainly seen young/inexperienced Cs teams win a round in the playoffs and then use that to fuel a surprise ECF run.
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The appeal of the Magic is pretty simple. Their defense is legit awesome. A team with size as seemingly every position, in my opinion the provide a much tougher defensive matchup. Jalen Suggs is an All NBA caliber defender, Jonathan Isaac when healthy has the look of a DPOY candidate, Wendall Carter Jr is a good defender, Paolo and Franz have good size, and their 3rd ranked defense in the NBA this season was a huge reason why they had a breakout year.
Their issue of course is on the other end. Offensively, things can get really gross. Just the 22nd ranked offense during the year and the 13th ranked offense so far in these playoffs, the angle here is that the Magic would have a tough time putting up enough consistent offense to beat the Celts 4 out of 7 times. In their 3 matchups during the year, it wasn't always pretty
GM1: Magic won 113-96
GM2: Cs won 128-111
GM3: Cs won 114-97
and overall ORL had just a 108 ORTG vs BOS this season, which isn't going to cut it. This is a team that was dead last in 3PM a game, 29th in 3PA, and 24th in 3P%. I'm just not sure how effective you can be against the Celtics unless you take and make 3s, regardless of how good your defense is. Take MIA for example. They were a top 5 defense even without Jimmy Butler, but it didn't really matter because, at the end of the day, they couldn't consistently make enough 3s. It's not crazy to think something similar might happen against ORL.
That doesn't mean they can't have guys go off though. Paolo is proving to be more legit by the game, Franz Wagner has killed the Celts before, and for some reason, Mo Wagner is hell-bent on murdering the Celtics every time they play. Anyone can get beat on any given night, but the playoffs are about repeating that performance 4 times. If you had a pick an offense between CLE and ORL that was more likely to do that, I'm not sure you'd pick the Magic offense.
The worry for playing ORL would mostly be dealing with their size, and falling into bad offensive habits against an elite defense. You're not going to get the same type of reliance on the 2-3 zone as we saw against MIA where the Celts could mostly feast on open C&S 3PA, so I do worry about them falling into bad isolation habits against the length of the Magic. There are not the same type of weak link defenders on ORL that you would see with CLE, so it's a tradeoff. Their defensive ceiling is higher than CLE, but I'm not sure their offense can get there.
So when you add it all up, both options provide their own set of challenges. The Celts are going to have to play to their potential to advance, especially missing the 7'2 unicorn/matchup problem. But if I had to choose, at the moment I'm leaning ORL. The inexperience combined with the lack of consistent offense and lack of 3P production outweighs the issues they provide defensively for me. They also went 19-28 during the year vs teams .500 or better (CLE was 21-27), and if you include the postseason that number is 21-31. I can't sit here and ignore that, especially when the last time I checked the Celts were well above .500 as a team.
Ultimately, who knows. A lot can happen still in this CLE/ORL series. Guys can get hurt, guys can catch a rhythm, and a team can figure stuff out and ride the momentum wave. But if right this second I had to choose? I'm going to go with the team that has trouble scoring, because as we've seen once you get to this time of year you HAVE to score consistently, regardless of how good your defense is.