Yes, the headline is that they avoided elimination and live to fight another day. Orlando’s odds of advancing have obviously gone up, but just how much? John Hollinger explains…
The good news, however, is that they already accomplished the hardest part by winning Game 4. Teams down 3-0 have struggled mightily in that contest, but those with a home Game 5 haven’t faced as many problems. Historically, home-court advantage teams trailing 3-1 are 43-17 in Game 5, a 71.7 percent success rate.
Should they survive Game 5, 36.7 percent of the home-court-advantage teams facing Game 6 elimination have prevailed. Combine the two probabilities and you get about a 1-in-4 shot for the Magic to become the fourth team in league history to force a seventh game after being down 3-0.
The interesting thing about the Orlando/Boston series is that the Magic have two of the next three games at home. Most teams that fall down 0-3 are inferior to their opponents and probably don’t have home court advantage. But Orlando does have home court advantage and is arguably as talented as Boston. It’s a matter of effort and execution.
Can the Magic come back? Absolutely. If I’m Stan Van Gundy, I tell my team that while it’s true no team has ever come back from an 0-3 deficit, it’s going to happen someday, so why not today? It’s a cliche, but cliches exist for a reason — Orlando has to take this series one game at a time.
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