Well, they were bound to win one. Sweeps are not exactly the most common result of playoff series, especially when the team avoiding said sweep, the Philadelphia 76ers, was favored to win from jump over the Boston Celtics.
But man was this an ugly game all around. Both teams played hard and not that great, but only the Sixers, to their credit, played well for long enough stretches to establish a measure of control over the game. Combined with some truly, uh, inspired officiating—more on that below—it was enough to guarantee a 103-92 Philly win and send the series back to Boston.
THE GAME FLOW
By the looks of the first few minutes, we were primed for some smash-and-grab basketball. Neither team’s offense looked good. Philly’s was less bad, however, and that was enough to establish a narrow lead during the first half of the opening frame. Joel Embiid led the way as he has for the Sixers all series (except when he’s failed them miserably, of course, but that’s another matter). It didn’t take Brad Stevens and the Celtics that long to piece together a reasonable response. Two smart plays culminated in fairly wide-open threes and cut Philly’s seven-point lead to just one.
Then the play for both teams devolved back into a brand of NBA ball that I called “smash-and-grab” earlier but is more precisely described as “two blackout-drunk guys beating the s**t out of each other.” (The great Sam Jam Packard used similar words to describe the Milwaukee Bucks series.) Mook Morris rebuilt the lead with a successful rim-driving three-point play, and getting into the bonus helped produce points despite a somewhat shaky offense. Even with defensive breakdowns that allowed two open shots for suspected Russian spy J.J. Redick, they held tight to maintain their own narrow lead at Q1’s end, 22-21.
That thing I said about Simmons’ shooting in my last recap? Well, he started shooting a bit more here; he just happened to miss horribly aside from one sweet-looking dunk. It was the rest of Philly’s offense that turned into putrid jelly for much of the second quarter – 30.6 percent at the 6:40 mark. Boston wasn’t much better – 34.5 percent – but that came mostly from the first-quarter sloppiness; Q2 was definitely better for our heroes. Jayson Tatum and Marcus Smart did most of the Cs offensive work.
To the Sixers’ credit, they recovered in the last-minute stretch to halftime, forcing the Celtics into inefficient shots with stout defense and getting themselves to the rim. But then, in an inspired bit of Joel Embiid theater, he decided to bait Rozier into a foul when Rozier had already fouled by whacking Redick on a drive, leading to an inevitable shoving match that erased my ability to objectively praise Philly. Yet despite the presence of Scott Foster and Tony Brothers in the officiating crew, it only led to a fairly standard double technical that any refs would’ve called in their sleep. (That said, the Celtics having 11 fouls to Philly’s one, not counting Embiid’s tech, is…pretty hard evidence to ignore even for those who don’t consider Brothers a Celtics disliker. Foster, for his part, is probably not biased against the Cs directly but is absolutely a disingenuous and pompously preening ass. Like roundly hated refs Joey Crawford and Steve Javie before him, Foster craves attention from a crowd who came to watch basketball and doesn’t give a shit about him, knows that on at least some level, doesn’t particularly care and will work to get attention at nearly any cost.)
ANYWAY. All that crap galvanized a desperate Philly crowd (and team), and made them treat a 47-43 halftime lead as much bigger than it was. And good for them, honestly. Everyone should have dreams.
The barfy grossness of this game continued unabated with the resumption of play. Unfortunately, a lot of that was the Celtics’ fault. Boston couldn’t get shots going with the exception of Tatum’s drives and midrange shots, and Philly fed off the madness of the crowd to go on a run. They pulled ahead to their largest lead, 62-54, with about seven minutes of the frame done, due to considerable effort from Simmons, Dario Saric and T.J. McConnell, who is alleged by multiple sources that I totally made up to be a card-carrying member of the American Nazi Party. *
I feel like I already used up my officiating rant earlier, so I’m not going to do another one here. But the succession of spurious calls that led to Jaylen Brown nearly fouling out, picking up a tech and then Stevens picking up one for smirking at nobody in particular does nothing but A. make me grab madly for whiskey and B. fuel speculation among the public that the NBA on occasion encourages refs to call a game in a way that produces a certain outcome. It’s stupid, and the league is too smart to not be cognizant of it, and allows it to happen based on certain refereeing assignments.
UUUUUUUUUGH. The Sixers took full advantage of the opportunities afforded them, and it would be duplicitous to say otherwise. Their offense ratcheted into full tilt and they hit their shots. Even guys like Robert Covington who’d been horrid much of the series did fairly well, and McConnell’s work as an irritant/InfoWars cohost continued unabated. It did not look well at all for the Celtics in the late third and the first half of the fourth. You could tell Stevens was somewhat grasping at straws when he put Greg Monroe in, who has not exactly been a playoff go-to for the Cs.
Boston made just enough shots to stay in the game somewhat as the clock wound down further and further—it just wasn’t enough to really put any fear of God into Philadelphia. A 12-point lead with about 90 seconds of gameplay is not quite within the Celtics’ considerable facility for comebacks. Miracles did not occur, and the Sixers avoided the indignity of brooms.
HOT ISH: I appreciated that the Cs never really quit even in the face of a lead that hit nearly 20 points at times. It was just too deep of a hole to emerge from.
NOT ISH: Leaving aside the above-mentioned officiating stuff, the Cs had 15 turnovers and seemed to lose focus defensively in long stretches of the second half.
GREEN FIRE
#ScaryTerry from way downtown! https://t.co/jQ4ibKsEDM
— Boston Celtics (@celtics) May 7, 2018
Super cool no-call here *vomits everywhere*
How?? 🤔 https://t.co/Mg8wjNUpdH
— Boston Celtics (@celtics) May 7, 2018
*I usually don’t feel the need to add such disclaimers, but let me reiterate that this is a fan-focused blog and I am engaging in satire with such comments. Please don’t sue me. Also, like, look at McConnell’s hair.
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