The Celtics entered Sunday’s season finale against the Magic with all of eight healthy and active players.
The entire starting lineup of Jaylen Brown, Jayson Tatum, Derrick White, Sam Hauser and Neemias Queta were ruled out well before the game. Key rotation players Payton Pritchard and Nikola Vučević joined them on the injury report; standout rookie Hugo González was a late scratch with a foot issue. That left Baylor Scheierman, Jordan Walsh and Luka Garza as the only active players who had gotten any sort of run this season. The rest of the lineup was filled out by Boston’s two-way players and G-League mainstays who signed full deals late in the season for financial maneuvering purposes, such as Ron Harper Jr., John Tonje and Max Shulga. It wasn’t a surprise given the C’s had locked up their playoff spot on Friday and thus had nothing to play for.
Orlando, conversely, did have something to play for and so the Magic’s entire rotation was active for the game. With a victory the team would secure its spot as the seventh seed as well as homecourt advantage in their play-in tournament matchup against the 76ers. As such it figured to be an easy win for a fully-loaded and talented, if underperforming, Magic team. Surely Paolo Banchero, Franz Wagner and Desmond Bane wouldn’t lose to the backups of the Celtics’ backups with playoff seeding on the line.
As you’ve guessed by now, that is exactly what happened! Orlando belly-flopped in Boston to wrap up the 2025–26 campaign. Scheierman, Garza and Harper Jr. combined to score 84 points in the 113-108 win. It was an utterly terrible and (worse) demoralizing loss for the Magic as they hit the postseason.
It also shook up the Eastern Conference playoff picture even beyond Orlando dropping to the No. 8 seed and gifting Philadelphia the No. 7 seed. Rather dramatically, as it turns out.
How Magic’s loss to Celtics changed East playoff picture
As explained above, the outcome of this game directly determined the first play-in tournament game in the East. By losing, the Magic cemented themselves as the eighth seed and will have to travel to Philadelphia to play the 76ers; the winner will move on to play the No. 2 seed Celtics in the first round.
But that wasn’t the only ripple effect.
Orlando’s loss changed the playoff seeding of two other teams as well. The Magic’s loss paved the way for the Raptors to finish with the No. 5 seed; a win would have slotted Toronto into the sixth seed. Consequentially the Hawks, despite winning on Sunday, dropped to the sixth seed because they lose out on a tiebreaker. If Orlando had won, all three teams would have finished with identical records, and tiebreakers meant Atlanta would have been the fifth seed and Toronto the sixth.
In essence the Magic’s inability to beat what was effectively a G League roster flipped the Raptors and Hawks in the standings. The Knicks will now play Atlanta while the Cavaliers will play Toronto after entering the day expecting the opposite.
It very well could end up not making a bit of difference. But if either the Raptors or Hawks manage a first-round upset over their higher-seeded opponents, this Magic loss will be remembered.
Magic’s brutal defeat continues trend of deeply disappointing season
It would be fair to say the Magic are the most disappointing team in the NBA relative to expectations back when the season first kicked off.
With several East superstars down for the count due to injury there appeared a power vacuum at the top of the conference, and no young team seemed better suited to take advantage than Orlando. Banchero and Wagner profiled to be a great tandem on the wing with overlapping skillsets, Jalen Suggs’s reputation as a defensive disruptor was already in place and the front office tried to fix the roster’s lack of shooting in one fell swoop by trading for Desmond Bane. The talent and makeup was there; paired with the Magic’s strong defensive reputation under coach Jamahl Mosley and it seemed Orlando’s time was now.
Eighty-two games later and that proved false outside of one decent surge in March. Injuries once again slammed the roster and Wagner’s season in particular was completely derailed by extended absences. Banchero wound up slumping instead of breaking out and the team’s defense was unusually porous throughout the year. Beyond all that the Magic revealed a penchant for losing truly head-puzzling games—this Celtics loss is just the capper on a season full of such defeats. It’s a tough pill to swallow given how high the NBA universally was on Orlando before the year, but especially so after the front office traded three first-rounders to bring Bane to town.
The year isn’t lost yet, technically. The Magic can still qualify for the playoffs by winning one of their next two games. But that doesn’t change the deep disappointment that will be felt throughout the organization after beginning the season with expectations of homecourt advantage in the first round of the playoffs with hopes even higher than that.
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This article was originally published on www.si.com as How Magic’s Awful Loss to Celtics Completely Shook Up Eastern Conference Playoff Picture.
