Marcin Gortat dunks down 2 of his career-high 12 points in the Orlando Magic's 103-83 win over the Washington Wizards.
Photo by Fernando Medina, NBAE/Getty Images

The regular-season finale was everything it was cracked-up to be.

Washington benched its stars, and I get the sense the only reason DeShawn Stevenson played was to keep his consecutive games played streak alive. Meanwhile, we rested our best players: Dwight Howard didn't play after the first quarter; Rashard Lewis and Hedo Turkoglu didn't play after halftime; and Jameer Nelson didn't play at all due to a sore thumb. The result?

18 points for J.J. Redick. 12 points and 11 boards for Marcin Gortat. 8 points and 5 rebounds for James Augustine. A 20-point victory. A 52-win season.

An unmitigated success.

If anything else, this game showed two things: first, that J.J. can shoot his way out of a funk, something I wasn't sure he could do. His final total of 18 points on 14 shots isn't all that impressive, sure, but he made 7 of his last 9 shots after missing his first 5. That's a good sign. But even more encouraging is the hustle and skill Marcin Gortat displayed. The Polish rookie had 5 offensive boards, and although he missed plenty of the gimme put-backs, he showed that he might belong in the rotation someday, perhaps even as a 5-to-8 minute player next season when Howard and Adonal Foyle both need breathers.

For more on the game, check out Truth About It's liveblog over at Bullets Forever; The Orlando Sentinel's recap; and PopcornMachine's GameFlow.

Now? It's playoff time. Bring on the Raptors.

	vs.
51-30		43-38
Amway Arena
7:00 PM
Sun Sports
Probable starters:
Jameer Nelson	PG	Antonio Daniels
Maurice Evans	SG	D. Stevenson
Hedo Turkoglu	SF	Darius Songaila
Rashard Lewis	PF	Antawn Jamison
Dwight Howard	C	Brendan Haywood
Season series:
3 Nov 2007: Magic 94, Wizards 82
5 Mar 2008: Magic 112, Wizards 92
19 Mar 2008: Wizards 87, Magic 86

Neither team has anything to play for except pride. I don't expect to see too much of Dwight, Hedo, or Rashard tonight. Granted, Stan Van Gundy said after the game last night that he always prefers to be on the winning side of the scoreboard, but I don't think he'll mind losing tonight, if that is indeed the result.

Hopefully, the inconsequentiality of this game will result in PLENTY of minutes for J.J. Redick, James Augustine, and Marcin Gortat. Yes, the fans pay to see the Big Guys, but the end-of-the-bench players are easy to root for, too. Especially J.J. Let me go ahead and start the chant:

J!-J!-RED!-ICK! clap, clap, clap-clap-clap.

J!-J!-RED!-ICK! clap, clap, clap-clap-clap.

Check out SB Nation's Wizards blog, Bullets Forever, for their P.O.V. and to get another look at the SBN 2.0 platform. We make the switch this Friday.

Tip's at 7 on Sun Sports. If you're going to the game, give the guys a huge ovation. And say hi to the guy in the lower bowl who always wears a Brian Cook jersey.

Go Magic.

The Dream Shake posted its predictions for how the rest of the Rockets' season would play out. I shamelessly ripped-off was inspired by that post, and now submit a Magic-oriented version of it, with a mathematic twist. The "Prediction" column shows how I think we'll do. The "Worst Case" column shows what we'll do if Murphy's Law rears its ugly head. The "Pythagorean Odds" column shows our chances of winning, based on point differential. I'll explain more after the table.

Date	Opponent	Prediction		Worst Case		Pyth. Odds
21 March	vs. Philadelphia	W	46-25	L	45-26	.721
22 March	@ Atlanta	W	47-25	W	46-26	.641
25 March	vs. San Antonio	W	48-25	L	46-27	.611
28 March	@ Milwaukee	L	48-26	L	46-28	.769
1 April	vs. New Orleans	L	48-27	L	46-29	.576
5 April	@ Cleveland	W	49-27	L	46-30	.572
6 April	@ New York	W	50-27	L	46-31	.770
9 April	vs. Chicago	W	51-27	W	47-31	.803
11 April	vs. Minnesota	W	52-27	W	48-31	.886
13 April	@ Chicago	W	53-27	L	48-32	.645
15 April	@ Atlanta	L	53-28	L	48-33	.641
16 April	vs. Washington	W	54-28	L	48-34	.750
		9-3		3-9		12-0 (!)

I'm not sure how much stock you put into this metric, but if its predictions hold true -- that is, if the team that's predicted to win actually does win -- the Magic will run the table the rest of the way and finish with a record of 57-25. Likely? No. Possible? Practically and mathematically speaking, absolutely.

There are some caveats here, obviously. For one thing, I did not calculate the splits for home and road teams; that is, I considered only a team's overall point differential, not its respective home and road differentials. For another, the Cavaliers actually have a sub-.500 Pythagorean win percentage, mostly because of the games LeBron James missed. As a result of that discrepancy, the formula exaggerates our chances of winning that game. Considering that it's already the most difficult one on the schedule, I was pretty hesitant to predict a victory. But I did.

In the interest of full disclosure, the last time I used this formula on this site, it predicted we would go 4-2 over a 6-game stretch. The predictions held true in 4 of the 6 games. Another time I used the formula in my notebook, and the predictions held true in again in 4 of the 6 games. So it's certainly not infallible.

As you can see from my predictions -- which are far less interesting than the Pythagorean ones -- I believe there are only three games we are guaranteed to win: Saturday against Atlanta, April 9th versus Chicago, and April 11th versus Minnesota. Every other game could go either way, even the road games at Milwaukee and at New York. In fact, I guarantee a loss at Milwaukee next Friday. We're going to come out soft and complacent after several days of rest, and one unheralded Buck, possibly Royal Ivey, will post a career-high. Write it down.

So, just to prompt some discussion: what are your predictions for the rest of the season? Do you think we'll sweep the remaining 12 games, as the formula suggests we might? What's the biggest "trap game" left on our schedule?