There are bad halves of basketball, and then there is whatever the Orlando Magic just did. Up 25 with the series in their hand, they proceeded to file one of the most embarrassing offensive stretches you will ever see in a playoff game. Pistons fans were left staring in disbelief. Magic fans were left filing for emotional damages.
It started as a cold stretch. Then it kept going. Then it became historic. Seventeen straight misses turned into nineteen, then twenty-three, the kind of number you only see when a team is actively trying to lose. Hubbs nailed the vibe in real time — there is no worse feeling in sports than watching your team brick its way out of a closeout.
Detroit, meanwhile, just kept defending and kept feeding Cade. Cheah was already crowning it a legacy game while it was happening, and honestly, fair. You don't crawl back from down 25 in a hostile building because the other team got tired — you do it because somebody on your side decided the game wasn't going to end. That was Cade.
And then there's the BigCat arc, which might be the most relatable part of the whole thing. Become a believer, watch them submit possibly the worst half of basketball ever played by a professional team. The Magic-believer-to-Magic-skeptic pipeline took roughly one quarter.
Whatever happens from here, the 23-misses-in-a-row stat is going to live forever. You can blow a lead a hundred different ways in the playoffs. Forgetting how to make a basket for an entire half on your home floor with a series on the line? That is a new one, and it is going to follow this team around until they make it stop.