Stan Van Gundy needed to know. Who were these guys?
Were they quitters, or were they fighters? Were they going to allow the entire nation to think they had somehow gotten lost en route to the Westminster Dog Show?
“The question will come,’’ he said before last night’s game. “The question will come, either early or late in the game, especially when you’re down. That’s the question, not the mentality going into the game.’’
The question came at least five times. It came in the second quarter. It came in the third quarter. It came in the fourth quarter, perhaps twice. And it came in overtime. Each time the Celtics, who were swimming upstream all night, seemed to be on the verge of imposing their will on the Magic, the men from Orlando had the proper response. They pulled out a 96-92 overtime win in Game 4, and thus live to fight another day.
“We kept fighting and fighting and fighting,’’ said Van Gundy. “That’s what it took to get an overtime win.’’
The will was there, and so was the way. The Magic deserved this game because they played a far better game of basketball, at both ends of the floor, than they had as they fell into that 0-3 abyss from which no NBA team has yet to return. On offense, they spaced the floor, moved the basketball and attacked the basket, and when all else failed, they had a reliable weapon in the missed-shot department with 17 second-chance points, especially if Dwight Howard was anywhere in the vicinity. He had 32 points and 16 rebounds, five on the offensive backboard. He was an immense problem for the Celtics all night.
Defensively, the Magic held the Celtics to 39 points in the second half on their own floor and they shut them out for the first 3:14 of a strange OT in which there was only one 2-point basket, that being, appropriately, a Howard follow of a Jameer Nelson miss that created the final score with 52.7 seconds to go.
Any fan of true hoop justice knew which team deserved to win. Orlando responded to its 0-3 crisis by playing by far its most intense and intelligent game of the series. Boston responded to its opportunity for a dramatic sweep by playing a bone-headed game marked by head-scratchingly inefficient offense and a defense which, at times, the Golden State Warriors would have recognized.
“I thought our execution was poor throughout the game,’’ declared Doc Rivers. “We didn’t make our rotations. We didn’t make our passes. It’s amazing how poorly we played and yet were still in the game.’’
The Magic led from 7-5 to 67-66, and again from 70-68 to 86-all, with the exception of a 76-74 Boston lead. But they could not deliver the knockout blow, which is where the aforementioned Van Gundy Moments come in.
