The Celtics have the momentum fully in their hands at this point. In the last 6 quarters of play (1.5 games) Boston has outscored Orlando 166 to 135. (Update: Third Quarter Collapse has more fun stats on the contrast between the first 2 quarters and the next 6) The Magic just lost their starting point guard to suspension and even when he was in the game he had no hope of staying in front of Rondo. The Celtics have already won on the road in this year's playoffs and there's no reason to believe they can't do it again.
However (and you knew that was coming didn't you?), that doesn't mean that the rest of this series will be a cakewalk by any means. We still need to win at least one game on the road to win the series and if they don't capitalize on the momentum tonight, that might be a tall order.
The Magic have very good shooters and adding Courtney Lee to the lineup will only help. Shooting at home on familiar baskets tends to help as well. They will have the crowd in their corner and they'll be eager to wipe the memory of game 2 out of their minds. Oh yeah, and we probably haven't seen the best from Dwight Howard yet either.
The bottom line is that the Magic will come out of the gates fired up and if they start hitting shots, they'll could pull out to an early lead. If that happens it puts the onus on the bench to help us keep pace or come back from a deficit. I'm not sure the bench is going to be quite as effective on the road.
The Magic took home court away from us by dominating the first half of game 1. Can the Celtics take it back by keeping the momentum going? Or will it swing back the other way tonight?