In most of their games since the NBA All-Star break, the Celtics have been missing at least one of their top players.
On Wednesday, they were missing all of them.
After beating the New York Knicks in overtime one night earlier, Boston sat Jayson Tatum, Jaylen Brown, Derrick White, Jrue Holiday, Kristaps Porzingis and Al Horford for its road matchup with the Orlando Magic. The wave of DNPs was a calculated decision by head coach Joe Mazzulla, who opted to rest all of his key veterans with the Celtics’ playoff seeding already set.
Boston’s JV squad showed fight but couldn’t muster nearly enough offensive production against one of the NBA’s top defenses. The Celtics went 7-for-40 from 3-point range and set a new season low for points scored in a 96-76 loss at the Kia Center.
Payton Pritchard and rookie Baylor Scheierman led the Celtics with 15 points apiece but went a combined 2-for-14 from deep. Pritchard also added a game-high 10 assists.
The Magic, who are the NBA’s least prolific 3-point shooting team, outscored Boston by 27 points from beyond the arc. Franz Wagner scored 23 points for Orlando, with Paolo Banchero adding 15 points and Cole Anthony hitting five threes off the bench.
Had the Celtics won, they would have tied the 2015-16 Golden State Warriors for the best road record in NBA history. They finished a league-best 33-8 away from TD Garden. Just two games remain on Boston’s regular-season schedule: home dates against the lottery-bound Charlotte Hornets this Friday and Sunday.
Orlando’s victory locked the Magic into the No. 7 seed in the Eastern Conference, setting up a possible first-round matchup with the second-seeded Celtics. Boston will play the winner of the 7-vs.-8 play-in game between Orlando and either the Atlanta Hawks, Chicago Bulls or Miami Heat, all of whom still were alive for the No. 8 seed as of Wednesday.
The Celtics’ starting lineup for this one featured Pritchard, Scheierman, Sam Hauser, Torrey Craig and Luke Kornet. It was just the second start of the season for Pritchard, the heavy favorite to win NBA Sixth Man of the Year, and the first of Scheierman’s young NBA career.
The biggest problem for that group and its understudies: turnovers. Boston coughed the ball up nine times in the first quarter, leading to 13 Orlando points. Three of those turnovers came from Pritchard, and six Celtics players committed at least one. In one especially rough sequence, Drew Peterson and JD Davison — two-way players who spent most of this season in the G League — turned the ball over on back-to-back possessions, helping the Magic drain consecutive 3-pointers.
Those threes gave Orlando a seven-point lead late in the first quarter. It ballooned to 19 in the second as the Magic, led by Wagner’s 14 first-half points, threatened to race away from Boston’s reserves. But the Celtics responded. They held the Magic to two points in the final six minutes before halftime (and zero in the final 4:30) and closed the half with an 11-0 run.
Pritchard fueled that push by scoring or assisting on all but one of Boston’s second-quarter field goals, including a massive driving dunk by Neemias Queta. The lone outlier was a quick-draw 22-footer by Scheierman, who exploited an unsettled Orlando defense after a Davison rebound. The rookie scored nine points on five shots in the first half, and the Celtics went into halftime down 49-41.
The Celtics were bulldozed in the third quarter, however, falling behind by as many as 26 points. They trailed 88-67 with 7:23 remaining when head coach Joe Mazzulla pulled his few remaining regulars, closing the game with Davison, Scheierman, Peterson, Miles Norris and Xavier Tillman.
Boston was able to get its first extended look at Norris, the team’s newest two-way player. After logging just four total minutes for the big club since signing on March 4, Norris played the final 1 1/2 quarters Wednesday night, hitting two of his three 3-pointers and adding three rebounds and a steal.
The lanky 24-year-old wing showed off impressive perimeter shooting during his time with the Maine Celtics, making 45.8% of his 83 3-point attempts. He and Hauser were the only Celtics players to make multiple threes against Orlando.
Davison went 0-for-6 (0-for-5 from three) in 15 minutes, finishing with four rebounds, two assists and one turnover. Peterson scored three points on 1-of-4 shooting with four rebounds, one assist and one turnover in 13 minutes.
The Celtics have one open spot on their 15-man roster and could fill it by converting the contract of one of their two-ways, as they did with Queta late last season. They must have their playoff roster finalized by next Monday.