1st of 3 'Win or Go Home" games vs. Long Island at 7:30pm
Here we are again, at the dawn of April, with the Osceola Magic in a spot to win, or dictate who wins, the NBA G League championship.
For the third year in a row -- each of the three years they've played at the Silver Spurs Arena -- have clinched the No. 1 seed in the Eastern Conference, earning home-court advantage through the playoffs. In 2024 Osceola fell in the Eastern Conference final, and last season the Magic were a win away from winning it all before the Stockton Kings won the last two games of the best-of-3 championship series.
This year a 26-10 regular season record, the team's best yet in Osceola and tied for the best in the entire league with the South Bay Lakers, helped them win the East by two games.
They've won seven of their last 10 games, but to win a title they'll have to win the next three, starting with Wednesday's Eastern Conference quarterfinal against the Long Island Nets (18-18) at 7 p.m. With the conference playoffs a single-elimination affair, a la the NCAA tournament, what's been done can't help the Magic, so they'll need to play their best basketball of the year, and Coach Dylan Murphy feels good about that happening.
"We've been playing well recently. Our guys are in a good place, but, we understand the competitiveness of this league,": Murphy said. "The guys understand it's going to be a challenge every single playoff game, starting with Long Island. They played us tough twice. Obviously, there's a lot of tape to watch both ways. This is kind of a league where anybody can beat anybody."
E.J. Liddell (17.6 points per game) and Tyson Etienne (15.8) are the tops of a scoring-by-committee group for Long Island, which enters the playoffs having lost seven straight games. But they move the ball well, ranking third as a team in assists per game.
While acknowledging that "survive and advance" is something rarely seen in the pro game, a number of players have college experience in conference or NCAA tournament games in which a loss is the last game of the season -- essentially like, in this case, playing a Game 7 three times in five days just to get to a best-of-3 championship finale.
"I think a lot of our guys, have been around enough and played a lot of high-leverage games either in college or the pros, and understand what it takes when the stakes are higher," Murphy said. "And right now we're focused on one, and that's Long Island."
Osceola players like Colin Castleton (Michigan and Florida), Reece Beekman (Virginia), Javonte Smart (LSU) and Lester Quinones (Memphis) are all among the Magic's scoring leaders, and all played in the NCAA tournament. Guys like Smart, one of five Magic players to average over 14 points game (and he generally did it off the bench), said winning in do-or-die situations is about five guys executing on the floor.
"We just need to be ourselves," he said. "We've got guys who know what we need to do. It's kind of exciting for me to be back after being one game short last year."
Alex Morales, a former Northeast Conference Defensive Player of the Year at Wagner University, has been with Osceola all three seasons here and been part of all three playoff runs, pointed to what the Magic's edge would be this week at Monday's practice.
"I think it's how we execute on defense," he said. "Guys know what to do to execute, know what to do to win."
A win over Long Island puts the Magic back at Silver Spurs Arena Friday against Tuesday's Motor City Cruise-Toronto Raptors 905 winner. Osceola would also host the winner-take-all Eastern Conference final and earn a spot in next week's G League three-game championship series against the Western Conference champion.
