Magic Gaming Stumbles in Fourth Quarter in Loss to Raptors Uprising GC to Complete TIPOFF Group Play

ORLANDO – All six of Magic Gaming’s contests in the TIPOFF came down to fourth-quarter play. In two of them, Orlando tightened up its defense down the stretch and made clutch shots. In the other four, including Friday’s against Raptors Uprising GC, it was their opponent that stepped up in those final minutes.

Down only two going into the final frame, Orlando struggled to hit perimeter shots and contain Toronto’s dynamic offense in the late stages of its 74-61 defeat.

“We had made a defensive adjustment in the third quarter, which led to our best defensive quarter tonight,” Magic Gaming general manager and head coach Jonah Edwards said. “They just came out and ran a specific set that manipulated us and really shouldn’t be getting open the way that they were, but we just don’t communicate at a high enough level to be able to play the defense that we (needed to). Essentially, they just broke us down.”

Toronto, which opened the fourth with eight unanswered points, punched its ticket to Washington, D.C. next week for TIPOFF bracket play. Joining them from this group will be the hometown team, Wizards District Gaming.

Raptors center Waseem “BallLikeSeem” Talbert went a perfect 13-of-13 from the field in Friday’s game and finished with a game-high 30 points to go along with grabbing 10 rebounds, while point guard Antoine “Antoinelove” Times, acquired by Toronto in the offseason in a blockbuster trade, posted 27 points and 14 assists.

Aside from their defensive breakdowns in the fourth, the Magic struggled mightily with their perimeter shooting. They knocked down only four of their 15 3-point attempts (26.7 percent), with some of them being open looks.

“To be honest, I felt like tonight, and in general, we’ve been getting open looks and enough volume from the three-point line,” Edwards said. “I just don’t think we’ve been executing and hitting our open shots. I don’t see many teams in the league miss a lot of open threes, and for whatever reason we are…I don’t look at that game and say we have to get better quality threes. I think we got quality threes. We just didn’t hit them in the moments we needed to hit them.”

Joshua “unguardable” Hunter led the Magic with 21 points and 10 assists, while Darjean “ReturnOfDJ” Henderson had 14 points and four assists.

UP NEXT: Magic Gaming will return to action on Wednesday, May 29 when they take on Celtics Crossover Gaming at 7 p.m. to start the TURN group play. The other teams in Orlando’s group in that tournament will be the Raptors, Hawks Talon TC, NetsGC, Gen.G and 76ers GC.

HOW TO WATCH: Fans can watch games live on the NBA 2K League’s Twitch and YouTube channels.