BOSTON — You can find out everything you need to know about the Orlando Magic's loss to Boston Celtics on Monday by looking the game's final score.
87-56.
The Magic were so bad Monday at TD Garden, that head coach Stan Van Gundy — a man who's usually quite adept at pinpointing his team's weaknesses — couldn't even put a finger on what exactly went wrong.
That was because everything went wrong.
"It's the first game in my career I've been through where not one guy played well," Van Gundy said. "We didn't have one guy. There's no finger pointing. That's why you get dominated. Not one guy had a good night, and I am foremost among them. That was an absolute beat-down, and that was actually, in a lot of ways, much worse than the score indicated."
It was the kind of loss that the Magic couldn't even make excuses for, because there were no excuses that could possibly suffice. Boston simply outplayed Orlando in every facet of the game — and the Celtics did it without two of their best players — and there wasn't a thing in the world the Magic could do about it.
"It's just embarrassing," shooting guard J.J. Redick said. "Nights like this happen, and they have happened to a lot of teams already this year, but I'm embarrassed. It's certainly not good enough, and especially not against a team like that, as hard as they play."
Before the loss, a prophetic Van Gundy sent out a warning that his team should not overlook the struggling Celtics. Unfortunately his team didn't heed his call.
"You've got Hall of Famers you're playing against, surefire, first-ballot Hall of Famers," Van Gundy said. "So any time people talk about the Celtics struggling, I just sort of laugh to myself. I mean, this is an outstanding team with a lot of weapons, and they're never easy to play against."
What Van Gundy didn't mention, of course, was that one of those Hall of Famers, shooting guard Ray Allen, was out Monday night, as was starting point guard and perennial All-Star Rajon Rondo. And even without two of their best players in uniform, the Celtics still managed to embarrass the Magic, wiping the floor with a squad that hardly looked like the championship contender some purport them to be.
But make no mistake, the blowout win was hardly a sign that the 7-9 Celtics have righted their suddenly unsteady ship.
Sure, their defense was on point — C's coach Doc Rivers called it a "blueprint" for stopping the Magic, and it undoubtedly was, at least on Monday — and in rendering Orlando's gameplan useless, they held Orlando to the second-lowest field goal percentage allowed by a Celtics team in the shot clock era.
But this one wasn't about the Celtics at all, and as much as Boston's smothering defense kept the Magic in check, the Magic played their way right out of the game with rushed shots, selfish ball handling and an overall refusal to adjust to Boston's attack.
"Their defensive game plan was on point," said Magic forward Glen Davis, who had six points on 2 of 9 shooting in his not-so-triumphant return to Boston. "We didn't adjust. We didn't change anything. We kept running it, doing the same thing."
This loss was the product of a Magic team that couldn't do anything right and lost its patience trying, a frustration that reared its ugly head in the third quarter when Orlando center Dwight Howard got into a scuffle with Boston big man Jermaine O'Neal, resulting in technical fouls for both players.
Boston outscored Orlando 33-17 over the final 19 minutes after the infraction, turning a manageable 15-point deficit into a 31-point runaway.
"We can't let a team beat us mentally, and that's what they did," Howard said of the loss. "It wasn't like they were doing anything special. They just played regular basketball, and they beat us."
For Orlando, Monday's travesty was a record-breaking performance in all the wrong ways.
The Magic set a franchise-low by shooting just 24.6 percent from the field for the game. They scored a franchise-low 20 points in second-half points on just five field goals and 18.5 percent shooting. The 56 total points were the fewest ever by a Magic team.
If you didn't know better, you'd think the Magic got down and just gave up when the going got tough. But Van Gundy had a different explanation.
"I'm not sure we gave up," Van Gundy said. "I just think we continued to get our ass kicked."
Best-case scenario, that's exactly what happened. The Magic laid an egg, they'll get past it, and everything will be fine.
Worst-case scenario, this Boston massacre is a sign that Orlando, which fell to 11-5 with the loss, has been playing out of its league through the season's first quarter, and that they're due to fizzle out.
Certainly, one loss shouldn't be over-dramatized, and Orlando has a chance Tuesday night in Indiana to put this one behind them. During the past few weeks, many around the NBA have painted the Magic as contenders, and there are still 50 games left in the season to prove that they are.
But without Rondo and Allen, the Celtics plastered the Magic, and while the seconds ticked down on a game that seemingly just wouldn't end, you had to wonder what a team like the Bulls or the Heat might do to them come May.
"We're better than that, and I know we will play better," Nelson said. "We'll make some adjustments, and as long as we play hard and stick together, I think we'll be fine."
Orlando showed a side of itself Monday that few had seen yet this season, and now we'll have to wait and see if it was simply an abomination or an early sign of bad things to come.
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