Following Saturday’s surprisingly one-sided 120-88 loss to the Boston Celtics, Orlando still hasn’t won back-to-back games since Dec. 19. For memory’s sake, that’s the night power forward Glen ``Big Baby’’ Davis hit the floor with a dislocated left shoulder and the Magic had just put the finishing touches on a promising four-game winning streak.
But since then a steady stream of unfortunate events to Jameer Nelson (ankle sprain), Arron Afflalo (hamstring tear), Hedo Turkoglu (NBA suspension), Al Harrington (sore knee) and Davis (broken foot) have ruined any chance the Magic have had of putting together any sort of consistency. Orlando’s gaggle of young players have acted like, well, young players, playing well and looking promising one night and struggling the next.
Orlando (20-60) played especially well in Wednesday’s 113-103 defeat of Milwaukee and hoped to carry over the solid play to Saturday against Boston (41-39), which still needed to win to lock up the No. 7 seed for the upcoming playoffs. Any hopes of that ended early when the Magic fell behind 9-0 at the start and the energy went out of the Amway Center like the air rushing out of a popped balloon.
``It’s very disappointing to come out there and play a great team like the Celtics and not live up to the opportunity,’’ Magic forward Tobias Harris said. ``We have to be able to take their first punch and keep playing. We have to take notes from a (Boston) team like that that comes out and imposes their will and lets us know that we’re not going to run in here and have it easy.
``They gave us the first punch, they kept going with it and we didn’t respond,’’ Harris somberly continued. ``We have to learn from this. When we get to where we need to be we have to do this to other teams.’’
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