Magic Johnson Absolutely Buried The Celtics For Quitting In Game 3 And He's 100% Right
Here's the deal. When you have a showing like what we've seen from the Celtics in the ECF, everything is fair game. The hot takes, the Jimmy Butler trolling, Magic weighing in like this, all of it. They deserve every last bit.
If you don't like it, stop playing the worst basketball of your season. Stop playing like bitches. Most importantly, stop quitting.
Nothing Magic said in that tweet is wrong. It was very apparent midway through the 3rd quarter that the Celtics quit. Anyone with eyes could see it. He's also not wrong that Celtics fans are disgusted and devastated. I know I am. I'm not sure how any Celts fan couldn't be. It's one thing to go down swinging, it's another thing to do what we witnessed in Game 3.
It doesn't even matter to me that Magic's own Lakers are also down 0-3. I wouldn't say the Lakers quit in their series the way we saw the Celts quit last night. They're just having a similar stretch of sort of poor shooting/talent regression.
But they didn't throw in the towel in their Game 3, the Nuggets and Jokic just went nuts in the 4th quarter to pull away. That was a 2 point game entering the final 12 minutes, something that can most certainly not be said about last night.
Now the only thing I would suggest to Magic is this isn't really the first time the Celtics have quit. They did lose 18 games in a row for example. Maybe he meant in the playoffs and ECF with the Finals on the line, and I guess in that regard maybe that's true. Even in the 2012 Game 7 vs MIA where the Celts lost 101-88, there wasn't really a "quit" factor there. It was tied heading into the 4th, the Celts just sucked in those 12 minutes and scored 15 points. I didn't have the same quitting feeling with that as I did last night.
I know people like to make fun of Magic's tweets because they have a certain "no duh" feel to them, but when he's right he's right. It sucks, it's embarrassing, it's annoying, but you read that tweet and you cannot spot the lie.
Magic says he couldn't imagine in 44 years being associated in the NBA that the Celts would quit like this and I know how he feels. I couldn't imagine seeing it in my 36 years of being alive, yet here we are.