Everything is coming easy for the Philadelphia 76ers.
And everything is coming hard for the Boston Celtics.
That is it. Two nights after an embarrassing second-half performance, the second-seeded Celtics submitted one of their worst efforts of the season, losing to the Sixers, 106-93, in Game 6 of their first-round playoff series, and now they face a Game 7 — and the possibility that they can blow a 3-1 lead — at home on Saturday.
A reminder: Jayson Tatum and Jaylen Brown have never lost a first-round series as a tandem. They have never blown a 3-1 lead. None of this has ever happened to them.
Everything that can go wrong has gone wrong for the Celtics. They are getting run off the 3-point line, shooting far fewer wide-open looks and converting them less often. As is custom in the playoffs, they are relying more on isolation on offense as a result, forcing a ton of tough shots and turning the ball over with greater frequency.
“They’ve made an adjustment on some of their stuff defensively,” said Celtics coach Joe Mazzulla, whose team isn’t rebounding its own misses, either, “and we have to find different ways to create against different coverages. They’ve changed their coverages throughout the series and done a good job of it. Sometimes it’s harder to create, so we have to do it faster against different coverages and execute that.”
They are, in a word, hesitant, and that is a bad place to be when they have been playing freely in that space all season, taking the most 3s of any team left in the playoffs and converting them at a top-10 rate during the regular season. Credit Paul George and Kelly Oubre Jr., in particular, for their work opposite Tatum and Brown.
“I think in tandem me and him have been phenomenal on the wings,” said George.
Defensively, Boston’s drop coverage against Tyrese Maxey’s pick-and-roll operation has been a disaster, as he has operated in space provided by Boston’s big combination of Neemias Queta, Nikola Vučević and Luka Garza. Only Detroit’s Cade Cunningham has run more PNRs in the playoffs, and no one has scored more than Maxey on them.
Likewise, already nobody has posted up more often or scored more often out of those post-ups than Embiid, and he has only played three games of the first round. Boston’s bigs are getting worked, and there is no replacement coming to spare them.
“It sounds cliche,” said Tatum. “We’ve just got to do everything tougher. Just screen tougher. Catch the ball with more pace. Just have a little bit more intention with things we want to do, not getting knocked off our spots and things like that.”
When last these two teams met in a Game 7, Tatum scored a record 50 points against Joel Embiid and James Harden’s Sixers. Except, these are not those Celtics.
Tatum is 11 months removed from a ruptured right Achilles tendon. He has eclipsed 30 points twice in 21 games since his return. He suffered from left calf tightness in Game 6 of this series, though he and his coach both downplayed its seriousness.
“He just went in the back, got stretched, got some treatment,” said Mazzulla, who did not sound fazed with another potential injury to his superstar. “That was about it.”
Neither are these those Sixers. Maxey is not Harden. He is unafraid in these moments.
And what is there to be afraid of? The Sixers have nothing to lose. They are the seventh seeds, after all. And it is not like Philadelphia could fare any worse than it has already in this rivalry. The Celtics and 76ers have played each other eight times in a Game 7, and Boston has won all but two of them, including a win in 2023. There is no shame in losing to the Celtics two years removed from their most recent title.
“We’re a confident group,” said Oubre. “We’re not a normal seventh seed, obviously. … The pressure is on the other team. They’re supposed to be where they are, but we want to come and show people for the future where we are supposed to be at, too.”
Can Jayson Tatum and Jaylen Brown hold off the 76ers? (David Butler II-Imagn Images)
(IMAGN IMAGES via Reuters Connect / REUTERS)
The same could not be said about these Celtics. This would be an embarrassing defeat. The franchise has never before blown a 3-1 lead. On only 13 occasions in NBA history has a team blown a 3-1 lead, and one of them was the Sixers, who ultimately lost the 1981 Eastern Conference finals to Larry Bird’s eventual champion Celtics.
Losses as favorites in the playoffs are mounting for Boston. The Celtics blew a pair of 20-point leads to New York in Games 1 and 2 of a second-round series they lost in six games last season, as Tatum tore his Achilles. They fell behind 3-0 to the eighth-seeded Miami Heat in the 2023 Eastern Conference finals, ultimately losing Game 7 at home, as Tatum rolled his ankle. This would mark a third devastating loss in four seasons, not to mention the 2022 NBA Finals and 2020 and 2018 conference finals.
If not for the championship in 2024, this group has actually underwhelmed against the highest of expectations. And, for the record, they are heavy favorites on Saturday.
Meanwhile, the Sixers were not expected to be here, in a Game 7, let alone win one. Three times Embiid’s Sixers have taken on Tatum and Brown’s Celtics, and three times he has lost, losing in five games in 2018, in four in 2020 and in seven in 2023.
“I’m tired of losing to this team,” said Embiid, who totaled 19 points, 10 rebounds and 8 assists in the Game 6 victory. “We have a chance to accomplish something special.”
Embiid wasn’t supposed to be here, either. He underwent an appendectomy three weeks ago, and he has looked like the best player in the series in the last two games.
Then again, Tatum wasn’t supposed be here, either. His recovery from the Achilles is unprecedented. He has, for the better part of a playoff series, been the most impactful player on the court, and nobody thought that possible two months ago.
Take it a step further: These Celtics weren’t supposed to be here, either. They weren’t supposed to win 56 games, not with Tatum sidelined. Not with Jrue Holiday, Kristaps Porziņģis, Al Horford and Luke Kornet gone. They have outperformed expectations all season, playing above their means, mostly because they have been the harder-playing team all season. They have not been that the past two games.
“They just played harder,” said Brown. “We didn’t play hard enough.”
Meanwhile, the Sixers have underperformed expectations all season, mostly because Embiid missed half the season to injury, and George missed 25 games to a violation of the league’s anti-drug policy. They never had much continuity, vacillating between an old team (led by Embiid and George) and a young one (led by Maxey and VJ Edgecombe), only they are meshing the two at just the right time.
As Sixers coach Nick Nurse said, “A lot of dominoes had to fall right.”
“I believe in us whoever we play,” said Maxey. “I believe in this group. We’ve been through a lot of adversity this year and last year. This is a tough group, man.”
So, maybe these teams are evenly matched, after all. And we get Game 7 from them. Sixers-Celtics, as old school as it gets, and it’s all on the line, once again. What a treat.
“Two best words in sports,” said Oubre, “Game 7.”
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