Playoffs G1: Orlando Magic (7) @ Toronto Raptors (2) - The Second Dinosaur Extinction

[BadMofoPimp]

I predict that T-Ross will be the best magic player in this series. D-Scott tends to agree on NBA TV. Isiah Thomas thinks that Gordon will be the difference maker.

I think if Slim plays Kawhi and Gordon plays Siakam, then AG can feast. If Kawhi guards AG, then AG will get dominated.

[PrimeThyme]

Spoiler:

- Saturday, April 13th, 5:00 PM EST -- Scotiabank Arena, Toronto, Canada

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God of Fire and Flame, Terrence Ross, sat alone in the middle of Planet Coin Flip in Messier 31. "AAAAAAAAAAAGH!" he let out a massive scream, reverberating off of the other stars in sight. "I have nothing to do here. Lisa Ann went back to the Milky Way, Amber Rose got lost out in orbit somewhere, I'm all alone." he said, XBox controller in hand. He decided to log on RealGM, which still had ads even in another galaxy somehow, and read what was happening on the forums with his two teams.

Detective posted: “Ross is good now? Yo guy, I’m hella cheesed bro. He had bare opportunities here and kept bricking in the playoffs. There’s no way he went from a wasteman to 6th man… oh, hey, nice OVO jacket, you want to link up fam??” the poster suddenly switching topics as if he had the attention span of a squirrel.

“What the **** is this garbage?” Ross angrily stood up and grabbed a basketball, shooting it 10,000 times. The last shot swished through the net, and he winked to an invisible camera, as if he knew what would happen next. It rolled and rolled and rolled…



It rolled off the planet. Imagine that! Kyrie was right after all. The ball traveled for light years to get to Earth, collecting all sorts of iron and nickel and ice along the way. "HUAA HUAAAAA HUAAAAAAA!" Ross cackled from Planet Coin Flip, imitating the the Kawhi laugh transmissions he received from Earth. He knew something. He knew this meteor would wreak havoc, but he didn’t know where it would land, or what cause and effect it would have. He just hoped it would get close enough to Toronto to spill Tim Hortons coffee on all the hypebeasts walking past Dundas Square in Supreme.



”Oh my god, what is that?” Kyle Lowry muttered, taking off his sneakers after practice, soaked in sweat. “It looks like a giant meatball. Buh. The sun moves now?” Danny Green slapped the back of his head. “Stop thinking about food for once, idiot. That’s not the sun. It actually looks like a meteor... My boy Jeremy Lin taught me about meteors, since Popovich wouldn’t let me out of the doghouse he had in his backy...” Danny trailed off, rubbing the deep scars on his neck as his eyes started to well up.

Lin's eyes grew wide, and he stood up in the middle of the locker room, alerting the rest of the team.

“RUUUUUUUUUN!”




Matt Devlin was broadcasting to the entire city. He cleared his throat.“OVERTIME! No, Raptors win!” Leo Rautins was visibly frustrated and grabbed the microphone. “This is an emergency. Get out of Toronto, there is a meteor heading straight for us. I repeat, this is an emergency..” a bigger hand suddenly engulfed the area where Leo’s hand previously was. Khem Birch had a warm smile, but his intentions were not pure. Wes Iwundu began snickering in the background, his hand clasped over Matt Devlin’s mouth. With his free hand, he plugged in a USB to their laptop and looped a different audio and video to the city.

“ONIONS, BABY, ONIONS! ONIONS, BABY, ONIONS! ONIONS, BABY, ONIONS! ONIONS, BABY, ONIONS! ONIONS, BABY, ONIONS! ONIONS, BABY, ONIONS!” the voice of Chuck Swirsky over a Max Headroom video kept repeating loudly among the civil defense sirens, and the Magic were officially infiltrating the city and creating all the chaos it could muster up.




Ross’s master plan had worked. The flaming meteor ball contained the entire starting lineup of the Orlando Magic, sent to exterminate the Raptors once again.

Jonathan Isaac had a white mask on, similar to that little kid in “Us”, except with his poofy hair sticking out. Pascal Siakam couldn't move without Jonathan Isaac making the same exact movements. “THIS ISN’T FAIR! YOU’RE MY SHADOW!” Pascal could be heard yelling fearfully, falling backwards into the pooled up lava. Jonathan Isaac sat there, still mute, with a bible in his hands, as Siakam’s hand sunk lower and lower into molten depths.

Gordon was battling Ibaka, who provided to be a tougher physical foe, but was ultimately defeated by the mental game, in this case, the Congolese food AG had prepared prior to their battle. “HOW HUNGRY ARE YOU?!” Aaron Gordon questioned Ibaka with a spoon in his hand and smirked. He heard how loudly Ibaka’s stomach was rumbling and timed his question perfectly. Ibaka opened his mouth and pointed to it, and Gordon happily obliged, even making airplane noises as his spoon entered Ibaka’s mouth to feed him. Ibaka let his guard down, comforted from the Congolese food, but suddenly grabbed his throat as if it was on fire, and ran away as fast as a Mafuzzy could. AG shrugged. “Huh. That was easier than I thought it would be. It was only lactic acid...” Aaron remarked, spritzing all of Ibaka’s colognes on his body from the cologne bag he dropped in fear.

Vucevic and Fournier, the Buddy Ball tandem decided to take on Marc Gasol and Jeremy Lin. “Wait, why am I involved in this?” Lin asked quizzically. “It’s the foreigners versus the foreigners.” Fournier said matter of factly. “But I’m from Palo Al--” Lin was interrupted. “Eh, eh, eh, I do not care!” Fournier whipped out two sabres from his belt, throwing one to his buddy Vucevic. They danced, swords clanging, but Gasol was clearly running out of breath while Vooch had barely broken a sweat. “Come on, man! Why’d you have to eat all that paella!” Lin nervously yelled at Gasol, who was already defeated with Vucevic using his body as a resting stump. Fournier was about to finish Lin off with a sabre strike when Lowry jumped out of nowhere. “No! I can’t let you do that! I’m the starting PG, take me instead!” Fournier looked at Lowry in his soul, then at his gut, then back to his soul, and asked… “Do you want to come to Guy Savoy's restaurant with me in Paris?” Lowry’s eyebrows raised out of his skull. “I thought you’d never ask!” Lowry skipped alongside Fournier, leaving Lin behind who was in disbelief. “Un - **** - believable.” Vuc, still sitting on top of an exhausted Gasol, extended a plate out to Lin. “Paella?”

Ross landed not too long after the meteor, right in front of Kawhi Leonard, the final boss. Kawhi was foaming at the mouth. He saw what happened to his city, to his teammates. He clearly wanted blood in retaliation. Somebody had to pay for these atrocities.

“I’m going to be real with you, Kawhi. I already made all the shots I could possibly make when I got them up earlier today on my home planet. I can’t shoot over 50%, you know this. I’m powerless now. I don’t want to do any more damage than I already have.”

Kawhi didn’t care what he was saying... he was focused on one thing, revenge. He rushed Ross with his outstretched hands, grasping him tightly around the neck, his fingernails digging into his skin like actual raptor claws. Ross was clearly losing breath and was on the verge of being strangled to death, his face turning blue.

“You’re going to Los Angeles anyway!” he gurgled with a raspy whisper in Kawhi’s ear, the last words he thought he would ever mutter in his life.

Kawhi immediately let go. “Wow. You know what? You’re right.” Kawhi turned around almost robot-like in his motion, and started walking down the 403.

Ross smiled.

Toronto would never be the same after 4/13/19.

This is Legendary.

[AdamTheGreek]

Dropped our Penny & Pops playoff preview podcast episode:
https://open.spotify.com/episode/7pacWabmQHKESCRL1sK0TZ
https://soundcloud.com/137665379/2019-southeast-division-champs-magic-raptors-playoff-preview-episode-25-april-11-2019
(It's on iTunes and other platforms as well).

Our lack of free throw attempts will probably cost us a game or two. I think our bench will win us a game. I think Ross will win us at least 1 game. From there it gets interesting. Siakam v. Isaac is fascinating. The guy who probably will be MIP v. the guy who has been playing super aggressively since not making the rookie-soph All-Star game. AG has played solid defense against Kawhi. Will that continue? Is Kawhi already thinking about the summer? Will Lowry continue to underperform in the postseason? Which Magic guys can elevate their level of play? We're the least experienced team in the playoffs. I think Clifford's staff can out-coach Nurse's staff. We'll see. Maybe SVG helps out with film in his free time.

1 playoff win would be great, but like Clifford said, we want more, and although I view Toronto as the toughest matchup we could've gotten when factoring in Milwaukee and Philly.

Can't wait for the return of Raptors-Magic RealGM playoff exchanges circa 2008.

[Detective]

I feel a lot of AND1's coming

I think that prediction is a bit too bold.

[SOUL]

JI tweeted that he was cleared but I think deleted it. Maybe they want to make an official announcement?

[SOUL]

Read on Twitter

[Detective]

JI tweeted that he was cleared but I think deleted it. Maybe they want to make an official announcement?

Read on Twitter

[Howard Mass]

He made the playoffs with Philly his rookie season.

Oh really? Hmmm.. did he play?

3minutes

Missed a shot, grabbed a board and split a couple of free throws... But he was there

It's great to see you around here.

[shadrock]

Hoping to steal a game or two, if it was any other coach than nick nurse I would've been more confident. Can't talk too much since no games have been played yet. When playoffs start its back to 0-0, everyone resets.... Just have to come with that mindset that you can beat anybody. Guys we've come along way.... From Gustavo ayon to the playoffs

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No offense, but the only way you STEAL a game or "two" is if our entire starting lineup gets injured in the first 5 minutes of game 1. While i appreciate blind optimism, the talent difference between the two teams is so massive (not to mention depth and playoff experience), that it would take a meltdown of unparalleled proportions for the Raptors to lose more than 1 game in this series.

Would have thought the Raps fans would be a touch more humble given their recent history of falling flat on their face in the playoffs. Cant say im surprised though. Theres a good reason im perma-banned from their forum and not a single other one.

[shadrock]

Let's not fool ourselfs, Raptors are massive favorites.
Leonard ( 87) and Ibaka ( 109 ) played more playoff games than whole Orlando Magic current roster, inluding GM Hammond combined. And that's not even joke,as you can see below:
Hammond never passed first round.
Ross played 31 games in PO
Mozgov played 40 PO games.
DJ 28.

Half of roster never played single min.

We can hope to maybe steal game 1 as game ones are always shaky ones for favorites and make series interesting, but it's hard to imagine knocking them down. That's why upsets are so rare. Actually most of upsets through history happend during best of 5 format and since best of 7 series started, almost all upsets had some major injury as key factor Bulls- Philly ( Rose ACL) , Spurs- Memphis ( Ginobli ) . Well there is always Dallas- Golden State thing, however, for whatever reason, Dallas prior to playing them in playoffs, lost to Warriors 5 times in a row.

Exstending series to 6 or even 7 games would be amzing.

Thanks for the reality check that no one needed.

Yeah, may as well just forfeit...

[KillMonger]

Don't see the point of chit talking until games are played though.... So many things are in the air at least on our side. I mean at face value you look at our record and think "aww, that's cute" however if you look past the surface the truth is we're better than our record. How much better? That is the question, not saying we're going to win the series but we could make it interesting.

Sent from my SM-G960U using RealGM mobile app

[basketballRob]

From watching the pundits we are the ones least likely to reach the second round. On NBA TV 3D said Detroit was the most likely to upset and Isaiah Thomas went with Brooklyn.

I think most have the Raptors making the Finals.

Sent from my SM-G965U using RealGM mobile app

[OrlandoMagic]

MCW will be the difference maker. They way he runs our second unit is pretty amazing honestly. Plus he should be able to contain VanFleet which has been pretty hot later in this season

[TheGlyde]

Oh really? Hmmm.. did he play?

3minutes

Missed a shot, grabbed a board and split a couple of free throws... But he was there

It's great to see you around here.

I had to come back and read the 79 PM's you left me

[NEM]

Wake me up when we’re in the finals...

JK LETS **** GOOOOOOO

[drsd]

From 538.

How Orlando got to the playoffs:






How Toronto go to the playoffs:

[MagicFrenchie]

Looks like the game you play on magazines when you have to find the good path .

Anyway , great news Isaac is available, was worrying as days passed and no news about it.

The anti-Siakam weapon is ready !

[bon]

One thing I know for sure is Gasol will be huge.

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Literally. Does Vuc have a problem matching up with Gasol?

http://bkref.com/tiny/VXCZI

[MagicFrenchie]

One thing I know for sure is Gasol will be huge.

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Literally. Does Vuc have a problem matching up with Gasol?

http://bkref.com/tiny/VXCZI

Well Memphis Gasol is dead for me. His body is aging bad , and I think Vuc is on the rise.

[BadMofoPimp]

One thing I know for sure is Gasol will be huge.

Sent from my SM-G965U using RealGM mobile app

Literally. Does Vuc have a problem matching up with Gasol?

http://bkref.com/tiny/VXCZI

Vooch has owned him in 2019