The NBA playoffs continue Wednesday with three Game 2s, including the Celtics taking on the Magic without Jayson Tatum and the Warriors trying to take a 2-0 lead against the Houston Rockets.
Check out Yahoo Sports’ predictions for each first-round series, in addition to Kevin O’Connor’s ranking of the top 40 players in the NBA postseason.
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Here are the results and key takeaways from Wednesday’s games:
Celtics 109, Magic 100
The Celtics ruled Tatum out for Game 2 hours before tip-off, and their back-up plan was a big night for Jaylen Brown.
As Tatum watched from the bench in a golf shirt and wrist brace, his longtime co-star led Boston to another runaway win to move up 2-0 in their series against the Magic. Brown finished the game with 36 points on 12-of-19 shooting, 10 rebounds and five assists.
It wasn’t the Celtics’ most dominant night, but it certainly showed they can push teams around without Tatum in the first missed playoff game of his career.
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Game 3 is scheduled for Friday at 7 p.m. ET in Orlando (ESPN).
Kristaps Porzingis exits, immediately returns after bloody gash to head
Goga Bitadze made Porzingis bleed his own blood, to put it mildly.
A wild elbow from the Magic center in the third quarter left the Celtics big man with a massive, bloody gash on his forehead. Porzingis immediately ran for the locker room, and soon returned with an enormous bandage on his head, and a smile.
The play was reviewed and deemed a Flagrant 1 on Bitadze. Porzingis had to shoot the free throws or miss the rest of the game, so he rushed back to attempt them and was immediately subbed out after.
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Porzingis went back to the locker room after that, and returned in the fourth with a smaller bandage, to big cheers from the crowd. He finished the game with 20 points, 10 rebounds and two blocks.
Take Kentavious Caldwell-Pope off Boston’s Christmas card list
Magic wing Kentavious Caldwell-Pope entered the court to a chorus of boos from the TD Garden crowd after his foul in Game 1 knocked Tatum out for Wednesday. He didn’t bother trying to endear himself to the masses over the next 48 minutes.
Caldwell-Pope further antagonized the crowd early in the game and later sparked a confrontation when he ran into Al Horford in transition. Jaylen Brown had some words for him in the aftermath.
Of course, KCP didn’t do much to endear himself to Magic fans either. He finished with three points on 1-of-9 shooting.
One call had a big impact on the game
We’re just checking, when a player reaches over an opponent’s with enough weight that the opponent bends over at the waist, then gets the ball and throws up a shot with one of his arms tangle with the opponent, is it a foul on that player or the opponent?
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In the case of Porzingis and Wendell Carter, it was a foul on Carter, a.k.a. the player who didn’t obviously go over the back. We’re not sure what the officials saw here and neither was Carter.
That foul wound up being rather significant. It was Carter’s third of the game, when the Magic were behind only two right before halftime. Carter was back out there to open the second half, but recorded only two rebounds and a turnover in the entire third quarter.
The Celtics expanded their lead to double digits during that quarter.
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