BOSTON — With roughly 18 seconds left in Game 3, the Orlando Magic had the ball up by two points. There was around a three-second difference between the shot clock and the game clock. Franz Wagner got up a three at the very end of the shot clock, but it bounced off the rim and all the way out to near the three-point line. Everyone on the Boston Celtics frantically called for a timeout, and it was granted…
…with 0.3 seconds left on the clock.
On the ensuing possession, Derrick White threw a prayer towards the rim, and nobody on the Celtics managed to get a hand on it. Time expired, and the Magic’s win brought the series to 2-1.
Immediately, social media went wild.
Screenshots of the game clock as the Celtics were calling timeout flooded the timeline, showing that there should have been more than 0.3 seconds remaining in the game. More time would have meant more options for the Celtics to go to on offense. But that didn’t happen, and the game ended in a 95-93 Magic win.
“I do think you should go back to review the certain time,” Joe Mazzulla said post-game. “I think there was more time than 0.3 on the clock, but what are you gonna do?”
Mazzulla wasn’t overly-angry at the decision. He was calm at the podium, answering queries about what went wrong for the Celtics, from their turnover issues to their offense sputtering in the second half.
When it came time to find a shot in those last 0.3 seconds, they knew what they had to do. They’d practiced it before. It just didn’t pan out the way it had in practice.
“We knew it was 0.3,” Mazzulla said. “You can probably get a catch-and-shoot off of it, and we had our bigger lineup in. It's a play we've practiced, we just, it wasn't a perfect pass, we just didn't execute it.”
Boston scored just 11 points in the third quarter, their fewest in a frame since November of 2021. Orlando’s physical defense slowed them to a halt, and by the time they found some juice to make a run, they just couldn’t get over the hump.
Those final 0.3 seconds are going to be the star of the show for the day and a half leading into Game 4, which is now a pivotal one for both teams involved.
The Celtics, fighting to take a commanding 3-1 series lead back to Boston, and the Magic, hoping to even out a series many declared a potential sweep.
All thanks to those 0.3 seconds.