Fresh off a huge win over the Toronto Raptors on Friday, the Boston Celtics will face the Orlando Magic on Sunday evening looking to improve to 4-2 inside the Disney World bubble.
Here are four things to watch.
1. The Magic are super short-handed.
The Celtics don’t always take advantage against short-handed teams, but the Magic are particularly weakened by the injury bug. Jonathan Isaac is done for the season after tearing his ACL earlier in the bubble. Aaron Gordon will miss Sunday’s game with a strained left hamstring. Michael Carter-Williams is out with a left foot injury. Evan Fournier has a non-COVID illness and will sit as well.
In fairness to Orlando’s chances, Nikola Vucevic has always hurt the Celtics offensively, and he remains available. The rest of the starting lineup, however, is less formidable.
2. Kemba Walker’s minutes limit has indeed increased.
Per Brad Stevens, Kemba Walker can play 30-32 minutes vs. Orlando. Stevens said he likes where the Celtics are at physically, and he hopes to keep building it into the postseason.
“I feel good about our shape now, but you have to keep it up,” Stevens said. “As long as guys feel good, they’ll play for now, because I do think rhythm and conditioning are important. It’s not like we’ve played 80 games and now it’s the playoffs. We’ve played five, so we have to continue to get our feel for each other and that level we need. I’m encouraged because we came in saying we’d play our best as we go along. That’s been the case in the last couple, but we’ll see if we can keep it up.”
3. The lack of home games is taxing.
Teams in the bubble don’t have to travel, which is a nice benefit of playing in a contained space. But the downside is obvious: Players don’t get to sleep in their own beds, and they don’t get to play on their home floor.
“I think this is as unbelievable setup by the NBA,” Stevens said. “The basketball is special and the opportunity to be on the court is special, the inability to be home is tough. I understand your question from a travel perspective but just as traveling hotel-to-hotel and going back home for a week and being around your family -- as much as that travel is difficult, there are other challenges that come with not traveling.”
4. The Celtics hope to build good habits over the next three games.
Stevens was asked how much experimentation he plans to do this week.
“We just want to play to your standards as well as we can,” Stevens said. “I think I know our team, I know what we’re good at and I know what we need to do better. It’s just a matter of playing as well as we can and building that make the right next play mentality here over however long we get to be here. We made good strides thus far, I’m encouraged. This schedule has been very hard and that continues today. I think Steve (Clifford) does a great job and we played them right before the playoffs last year. andI thought they came and prepared us for playoff basketball. I’m expecting a physical tough game today and that should only benefit us as we move forward.”
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Boston Celtics’ Kemba Walker can play 30-32 minutes for the next two games