A national television audience, to some degree, got a false impression of the Orlando Magic.
The Magic’s strengths are typically defense and protecting the ball, and they did neither very well in their 116-100 loss to the Celtics while playing on ESPN in their lone nationally televised game of the season.
To be fair to the Orlando defense, while Jayson Tatum scored 33 points, he did hit many contested shots. Overall, though, the Magic allowed a Celtics team playing without notorious Magic killer, Kemba Walker, to shoot better than 50 percent from the field and from three.