Magic Gaming Eliminated from THE TURN by Gen.G

ORLANDO – Magic Gaming hoped to carry their momentum from a series sweep over Sunshine State rivals Heat Check Gaming into THE TURN and capture at least part of the biggest prize pool an NBA 2K League tournament has to offer this season.

Unfortunately for Orlando those aspirations came to a swift end on Wednesday.

The 16th seeded Gen.G Tigers of Shanghai swept 17th seeded Magic Gaming, 2-0, eliminating Orlando in the opening round of the tournament and ending its opportunity to claim a portion of the $260,000 prize pool.

For the second straight year, the NBA 2K League implemented an “Archetype Ban” in THE TURN. Each team was able to deactivate two archetypes in the first game of the series and an additional archetype in Game 2. For reference, each position has eight Archetype offerings for a total of 40 overall.

Magic Gaming opted to ban the 3-Level Scorer (SF) and 2-Way Athletic Finisher (C) archetypes in the first contest followed by the 2-Way Sharpshooter (SG). Gen.G chose to eliminate the Slashing Sharpshooter (PG) and Glass Cleaner (PF) in the series opener and then the Shot-Creating Sharpshooter (SG) in Game 2.

Game 1: First-half turnovers and an early 3-point disparity ultimately put Magic Gaming in a hole they were unable to climb out of in a 70-65 loss to Gen.G.

Orlando coughed it up eight times in the first half and was unable to knock down a single 3-pointer, going 0-for-2 from distance, which all factored in to a 12-point deficit at the half.

“When you’re turning it over like that against Gen G., they’re able to get free points on the other end,” Magic Gaming Head Coach Jonah Edwards explained. “They’re four-point swings every single time we do it.”

Point guard Dhwan “Shiftykaii” White also did his share of damage, carrying Gen G.’s offensive attack with a game-high 34 points.

“He’s a havoc on defense too, his defense is super underrated,” Edwards said. “I think his impact is large. He caused us to be put in bad situations consistently.”

Floor general Brendan “Reizey” Hill led Magic Gaming with 25 points, center Daniel “DT” Tlais tallied 14 points, 13 rebounds and four assists, and small forward Brandon “ToXsiK” Raudenbush posted 11 points and six steals.

Game 2: Reizey erupted for a game-high 34 points, but it was not enough as Magic Gaming dropped a 69-61 back-and-forth battle with Gen. G.

“We really blew a couple of chances to run away with it,” Edwards said. “We had a lot of opportunity in that game, we just didn’t take advantage of it, and because of that, we’re on the outside looking in here.”

ToXsiK scored 15 and DT notched another double-double with 10 points and 10 rebounds.

Shiftykaii had another stellar showing for Gen G., amassing 30 points and 10 assists, while Christopher “TURNUPDEFENSE” Anderson scored 15.

Quote of the Night: “We’re going to take some time off on this bye week, then come back in here (to work) and hopefully grab a couple wins to gain some momentum going into THE TICKET. We really have to work on that we play up and down to our opponent way too much.”

Up Next: Magic Gaming has a bye week before returning to action against Pacers Gaming on August 4 at 7 p.m. ET. That matchup will be broadcasted on the NBA 2K League’s Twitch (@NBA2kLeague) and YouTube (@NBA2kLeague) channels.