Orlando's 95-90 Game 1 win wasn't really secured until J.J. Redick finally put a sleeper hold on the Celtics' second-half rush by drilling four free throws in the final 13 seconds. But, honestly, if he could have drilled 23 more of them, he would have been glad to.
"I would have liked to have won by 28 and not to have let it come down to that," he said.
For a second it looked like that's how things would play out.
Orlando was abusing the Celtics in the paint, outscoring them, 30-16, down low in the first half. The Magic were shooting 52.4 percent from the floor. Dwight Howard nearly had a double-double by the half (9 of his 16 points and 10 of his 22 rebounds).
Orlando was practically shoveling dirt on the Celtics in the third quarter, when a 3-ball from Redick put the Magic up by a cushy 28 with 8:58 left in the period.
Point-by-point, though, that lead started to unravel.
Between letting Boston get to the free throw line (the Celtics shot all 26 freebies in the second half) and committing turnovers (the Magic had nine in the second half compared to just three in the first), all Magic coach Stan Van Gundy could say was, "the last 16 minutes was a debacle."
Orlando let an essentially stamped-and-mailed win turn into a two-possession game with less than a minute left, and the only thing that saved them were two defensive stops and Redick's federally secured free throw shooting.
"Obviously, in a series like this it's going to be a battle every game," Redick said. "To get a win is great, and that's the goal."
Hedo Turkoglu seconded that notion.
"A win is a win," said Turkoglu, who finished with 15 points on 6-of-16 shooting. "By 20, by 1, we came here to win the game. We know we've got a lot to learn, especially from the second half, but still in the end we accomplished what we came for."
That's one of the ways Van Gundy looked at it. But after seeing a big lead slip again - a problem during the Magic's advancement in six games over the Sixers in the first round - he also said it was food for thought. Food for thought, he said, is easier, of course, when you have a win to show for it.
"Hopefully we can go back and learn something from that," Van Gundy said. "I think the biggest positive in this league is any time you get a great opportunity to learn and get better without losing. As bad as the last 16 minutes felt, we come out winning Game 1."
The lesson for Rashard Lewis, who finished with 18 points and seven rebounds, was simple.
"We've just got to learn how to keep a lead and win," he said.
Van Gundy was more complex.
"We've obviously got to go to school on how their pressure flattened us out and what we need to do better offensively and where they hurt us and where we made mistakes defensively," he said. "We can't have them shooting 26 free throws in a half. I thought they got a good run. They got the emotion of the building going. Everything was rolling in their favor and we did not handle any of that very well."
But what Van Gundy doesn't want to do is forget the fact that his team was actually up 28 at one point.
"I thought for the first 30-32 minutes we probably played the best we've played all year," Van Gundy said. "And then for the last 16 minutes we played as poorly as we possibly could at both ends of the floor."
"Still a much better night for us than them. You play these games to win and that's it. We won. They were fantastic in the last 16 minutes of the game and if we don't adjust and play better then we'll have problem Wednesday, but right now the series is 1-0."
Julian Benbow can be reached at jbenbow@globe.com. 
