Into the Abyss

A breathtaking collapse to end an unbelievable season.

Philadelphia 76ers, 109. Boston Celtics, 100.

Well, that’s all folks.

The Philadelphia 76ers, for the first time in 900 billion years (read: 42 years) have beaten the Boston Celtics in a playoff series, and for what’s worse, they beat them in Game 7, on the parquet court of TD Garden in front of the Celtics crowd, and after being down 3-1 in the series and effectively counted out by many (including yours truly.) The Celtics lost their pristine 32-0 record after going up 3-1, and the 76ers expunged their horrific 0-18 record after being down 3-1. In equal parts exhilarating, exhausting, suspenseful and tragic, it was exactly what any fan would want out of a game seven, and it more than lived up to what the pure basketball fan in me craved.

About 2 hours before the game, the fatal news struck: Jayson Tatum was going to sit out to protect his ailing knee(? Calf? Ankle? We still don’t really know what happened!) This was a massive blow to the Celtics of course, but at least personally, did not at all feel like a fatal one. Boston had played without him almost all year, and had gone 2-2 against the Sixers in the regular season without Tatum, with the two losses coming by a total of three points. The stars of the gritty regular season grind would have to show up, but I absolutely expected to see better games out of Derrick White, Jaylen Brown, and Payton Pritchard than what we had seen this series.

But come game time, Celtics coach Joe Mazzulla rolled out an all-time lineup of what the absolute fuck. Derrick White, Ron Harper Jr., Jaylen Brown, Baylor Scheierman and Luka Garza hit the floor, with Garza summarily losing the opening tip to Joel Embiid. Embiid started alongside a more traditional and expected lineup of Tyrese Maxey, Kelly Oubre Jr., VJ Edgecombe, and Paul George. And to be totally honest, I didn’t hate this Celtics lineup, the time they spent on the floor together, and the idea behind it of maximizing offensive spacing and movement early with high defensive switchability and coverage on the eternally dangerous Maxey-Embiid (Maxey and whoever, to be honest) pick-and-roll. However, the results have to speak for themselves; the 76ers got out to a 9-0 start due to some truly awful shooting from the Celtics, and once the score hit 11-4, Harper Jr., with his only memorable contribution being an athletic steal to stop a Philadelphia transition bucket, effectively hit the showers, never returning to the game after 4 primarily forgettable minutes that unfortunately set the tone for most of the remainder of the game.

While Mazzulla will have his critics for this start, I liked a lot of things about it. The ball was flying around on offense, with at least one drive-and-kick almost every time down the floor, and this athletic lineup made it harder for Philadelphia to spam pick-and-rolls or pick-and-pops with Maxey blowing by the helpless big man. I really liked Mazzulla fully committing to Garza as a backup center, and even later in the game going completely small with Brown as the de facto defensive center when Queta hit foul trouble. Nikola Vucevic was a defensive disaster this series and didn’t bring nearly enough on offense to be worth his minutes. The Celtics waited too long to cut bait completely, but made the right move here. The early missed threes however, unfortunately set the tone for the night. And at the end of the day, while Luka Garza and Hugo Gonzalez got great looks from three, and looks I can (and will) live with, the 76ers were obviously quite prepared to live with those above-the-break looks too, and as the shots weren’t falling, both were played off the floor on offense. I also don’t think it was fair to Harper to push him into the starting lineup like this after getting virtually no meaningful minutes all series, and I can’t understand why Jordan Walsh or Gonzalez couldn’t have taken that role, as both have been shown to be very effective, switchable defenders, that would provide negligibly less off-ball offense than Harper, who could still have very much received time off the bench.

Even after the Celtics substituted in some players that would have been expected to start the game to begin with, i.e. Payton Pritchard, Sam Hauser, and Neemias Queta, and progressed their offensive game towards making shots (a good thing, in my opinion!), they unfortunately simply could not stop Philadelphia from scoring, allowing Embiid and Maxey to combine for 14 points on 7 of 10 shooting from the field. This included a truly ridiculous Embiid make at the end of the quarter when he attempted to foul bait via jumping into his defender, failed due to his clear grifting, but banked the shot in anyways. Even when they weren’t scoring, it felt like they were creating every piece of offense for the 76ers via their gravity (Embiid) and speed (Maxey). Both made the right pass at nearly every available opportunity off of double teams or collapsed defenses on drives, and to credit George, Oubre Jr., and Edgecombe, they hit the shots they were given, which they needed to and have done over the last three games of this series.

In the second quarter, the Celtics started MUCH stronger. They opened the quarter by focusing on going strong to the basket with multiple pretty floaters from Derrick White and a net-tangling dunk from Neemias Queta off a beautiful alley-oop pass from Payton Pritchard. Queta, who I presume didn’t start due to the high potential for foul trouble going against Embiid, proved every Celtics fan and Mazzulla’s worst fears right by nearly immediately committing one of the worst and stupidest moving screen violations I’ve ever seen practically as soon as he checked in, but really grew into the game, with multiple smart, aggressive, and confident moves to the rim off of handoffs and pick-and-roll actions. The offense he brought tonight was honestly an unexpected boon, and a real delight to watch with his touch around the rim. Around this time, the 76ers attempted to substitute in Andre Drummond, and it brought me much joy to watch him get played off the floor so hard I think he may have caught an early flight back to Philadelphia. He was a pure defensive liability, and without attempting a single shot, particularly his apparently unguardable corner three, he provided absolutely nothing to the 76ers. The Celtics also brought in Hugo Gonzalez, who played his usual brand of hard-nosed, high-effort basketball, and did his best against pure scorers like Maxey and George, forcing some very tough shots. A true highlight for me was when Hugo’s presence even made Embiid pass out of the post!

Nevertheless, despite a huge Celtics run to cut into Philadelphia’s massive first quarter lead and even get in front at one point, Philadelphia quickly regained a lead they would hold the rest of the game through some really great basketball from their more peripheral players, with a momentum-shifting VJ Edgecombe three-pointer giving Philadelphia a four-point lead just past the halfway point of the quarter. Jaylen Brown was truly impeccable in this stretch, and singlehandedly provided a lot of offense as the Celtics got bogged down without Tatum. It wasn’t always pretty, but it worked much more frequently than I expected, and his shotmaking, driving, and gravity lifted the Celtics a lot during this period. Unfortunately, a dominant Embiid rejection of a Brown dunk attempt at the end of the half, leading into a Maxey midranger to cap off the scoring, provided a 4-point swing to give Philadelphia a 55-50 lead heading into the intermission.

The third quarter felt like an absolute must-have for the Celtics. They needed to take control, and do it fast. The initial lineup adjustments hadn’t worked, but Jaylen Brown and Derrick White had both had great first halves, with White surpassing his series high in points within the half, and yet the Celtics were still down, and with Embiid’s crafty, veteran game down low, the Sixers were getting a lot of great looks when he passed out or free throws when he took it to the Celtics himself. Instead, by the time Mazzulla called for a timeout with a little over two minutes to play in the quarter, Philadelphia had ballooned their lead all the way up to 18 at 84-66, and it didn’t feel like it was going to get better. Edgecombe and Maxey combined for 18 points of Philadelphia’s dominant 29-14 run, buoyed by very strong outside and midrange shooting, with good ball movement and spacing getting them open looks time and again. On the other side, Jaylen Brown was the only player showing any signs of life on offense for the Celtics. White had gone quiet and Brown made it his mission to bully and bruise his way to points by any means necessary, first by using his midrange game and then with some veteran tactics to draw cheap fouls.

While Brown has and will draw a ton of criticism for this series, some deserved, his performance in this game was beyond reproach. His defensive awareness off-ball, like always, had its lulls, and some frustrating half-assed switches or doubles led to easy buckets for Philly. His offensive game, like always, included some hero ball possessions, some bad shots early in the clock, and some periods where his ball-stopping presence seemed to lull the rest of the team to sleep, making it harder for the Celtics to generate anything other than iso possessions or very basic two-man pick-and-rolls. However, his shot generation, shot-making, and gravity were priceless for the Celtics. Without him being the only offensive force in the early part of the first and second half this could have gotten out of hand very quickly, and for all the histrionics he receives about his tunnel vision and struggles to work off-ball on offense, he was a willing and smart passer for most of the game. His reads were accurate, he was one of the only Celtics who could consistently get inside, and it was a relief seeing him come back onto the court after a rare spell where he went to the bench. His defensive game also deserves praise today, with some thankless possessions spent battling Embiid by using his strength and patience to deny easy shots and not giving away backbreaking fouls when the Celtics went super small. Brown also had a truly memorable help block on Paul George right at the rim late in the game, which, at the time, seemed to mark a massive momentum swing that would guide the Celtics to victory.

Mazzulla’s timeout seemed to calm the Celtics down on offense just a little, and finally snapped the Sixers out of their white-hot shooting. The Celtics managed to cut the deficit to 88-75 entering the 4th quarter, and it did feel like the tide had started to turn. The biggest question on my mind was if there was enough left in the tank to complete the comeback.

The Celtics started the 4th with their top guys on the floor. The Sixers had Grimes on the floor in lieu of George, but otherwise it was best on best. And from the start the Celtics really did take it to the Sixers. Hauser hit an early 3 and after White had a beautiful defensive possession against Embiid culminating with a strip and coast-to-coast layup, the Garden was really roaring. At this point Queta really started making his presence felt offensively with a fantastic offensive board and putback followed by a beautiful hook shot and-1 on a possession that seemed to be going nowhere. When Brown followed that up with an and-1 of his own after an empty possession for Philadelphia that cut the score to 92-91 with just under 8 minutes to go, it really felt that the game had totally shifted and was there for the Celtics.

Of course, Embiid immediately hit a huge straightaway three-pointer to stabilize things for Philly though, and emphatically told the fans to be quiet on his way back down the court. And all of a sudden, both teams went cold, not least because of some seriously ramped-up defensive intensity at both ends. It was a magnetic watch, two teams led by stars playing at their absolute best as Embiid hampered the Celtics’ attacks to the paint and Brown had an incredible block from behind to save a point-blank Embiid layup (yes, a different incredible clutch block than the one previously mentioned!) A White three after some great ball movement and a beautiful shot fake again seemed to put the Celtics on the verge of the lead, and with how cold Philadelphia had gotten shooting, it seemed like a matter of moments before the Celtics fully took control. But, on a desperate, wild Maxey drive to the rim where he would have been hard-pressed to make a circus shot while careening out of bounds, Queta failed to maintain verticality and committed a brutal foul slapping down on Maxey’s arm. Adding insult to injury, a confounding miscommunication behind the Celtics bench led to Mazzulla challenging the extremely clear call, losing the Celtics a timeout and potentially more crucially, their ability to challenge for the remainder of the game.

After some more trading of free throws sandwiched around a Brown midranger, the score stood at 99-98 and from here, the Celtics had three straight possessions with a shot to take the lead. Brown had a beautiful look from three followed by a tougher midrange jumper, and after the aforementioned devastating block on George, the Celtics were off and running in transition as Brown drove the lane, found Pritchard in the corner for an open three, and a shot that I would’ve bet a week’s salary on hit the back of the rim and was duly rebounded by the Sixers. Although the deficit was still only 1 point, with more than 2 minutes remaining, that moment felt of extra importance, as if the game did hang on that high-arcing three. And as the Sixers came up the court, they finally got back to the play that the Celtics had had minimal answers for all series: a high screen for Maxey that resulted in him blowing past Queta even in a quasi-drop coverage. After a Brown midranger caught justtttt a little too much of the back rim, Maxey went right back to work for another layup to put the 76ers up 5 and truly signaling a gut-wrenching feeling of hopelessness. The Celtics ended the game missing 5 more threes, for an overall streak that stretched to their final 9 three-pointers missed in a game where they shot a mere 13-49 (27%) from three; a frustrating conclusion to a frustrating game in a frustrating series for three-point shooting, Boston’s alleged superpower.

As the Celtics season petered out and the buzzer finally, almost mercifully sounded, I was reluctantly forced to reckon with and reflect on this unexpected rollercoaster of a team and a season. This team that was prematurely perceived to be aimless, wandering in an NBA no-man’s land without their superstar, Jayson Tatum, with all the uncertainty that came with his devastating achilles injury, and with the pragmatic yet painful roster teardown that meant bidding farewell to Jrue Holiday, Kristaps Porzingis, and even the seemingly eternal Al Horford, somehow managed to overcome it all. It overcame the projections for a lottery season, the rumors of an absolute surrender that would have been trading White or Brown, and even the calls from within its own fanbase to tank, gleefully daydreaming at the possibility of landing hometown dynamo AJ Dybantsa at the top of the upcoming draft.

This loss brutally stung, and the manner in which it happened, in losing Tatum to yet another injury after his incredible, triumphant return to the Celtics’ lineup, in watching some of the best developmental stories of the Celtics’ season, Neemias Queta and Baylor Scheierman, struggle so much in the series, only made the disappointment multiply. But at the same time, to be this disappointed we had to first become so unexpectedly invested, in a Tatum return that became not only possible but truly meaningful in a surprise championship pursuit; in players previously only believed to be afterthoughts who blossomed, with real minutes and responsibility, into fan favorites. Payton Pritchard seized a starting role with vigor, and then comfortably acquiesced to returning to his sixth man role before and with Tatum’s return. Derrick White, despite struggling with his shot, was more impactful defensively and as a ball handler and connective force than ever before. But even more than that, Jaylen Brown stepping into the vacuum of being the de facto leader both on the court and in the locker room blew past all expectations, resulting in an All-NBA caliber season that will likely result in deserved downballot MVP votes. And finally, at the very top, Joe Mazzulla set the standard and expectation that this franchise upholds, of a commitment to championship contention, and his guiding hand should and will likely be rewarded with his first win for NBA Coach of the Year. with all the flak Mazzulla has taken and will take again for another shocking defeat in the playoffs, his force of personality and mind for the game are near unparalleled at present for his ability to drive winning, and winning in a way that makes a team barely considered as an afterthought preseason to be the runaway favorite to advance to the finals out of the Eastern Conference.

At the end of it all, I can only come to the conclusion that a season in equal measures rejuvenative and heartbreaking has to be considered a success, if not for the simple reason that I could hardly imagine this team breaking my heart at all a mere six months ago. A team that seemed to be set up to float at best for at least this season and who knows how much longer, coming off of major roster changes and rocketing its way towards a near infinite luxury tax bill that came with minimal roster flexibility, managed to maintain its seed in the East from the year before while only winning 5 fewer games. It faced a worthy and coalescing opponent in the first round, and despite frustrating me to no end in dispiriting, groggy losses in games 5 and 6, put it together for game 7 despite being down Jayson Tatum once again. While sudden and harsh, this hardly echoes the memories of much more lopsided losses to end other promising seasons in 2023 and 2025, losses that felt much more final and seemed to potentially come as a both short and long-term blow to championship hopes, to go along with the sting of missing out on the 3-0 comeback against Miami, and losing Tatum to the torn Achilles against New York. After watching nearly every player on the Celtics play beyond what I could have dreamed of this season, with Joe Mazzulla and the ever-brilliant, newly-two-time executive of the year Brad Stevens at the helm, I am already dreaming of the possibilities for next season and beyond. While it undeniably stings to end a season with championship dreams so abruptly, how lucky can you get as a fan to be able to dream of championships so frequently to begin with?

If for some reason, you made it all the way down to here, I salute and thank you. I’m excited to continue watching the NBA playoffs from a purely analytical and legitimately passionate standpoint without that pesky irritant of fandom interfering, and I hope to continue writing about basketball, with some potential future articles about football, the World Cup, and even maybe some film and TV stuff if we really want to get wild.

But in the meantime; let’s all do our best to remember Baylor Scheierman’s moonball lefty threes, Jordan Walsh’s impossibly long arms snatching offensive boards from nowhere, and Joe Mazzulla’s perfectly natural press conference answers.