Beaned in Boston | Sports Daily Newsletter

Philly sports fans were riding high after a feel-good playoff win by the Flyers in Pittsburgh. They came back down with a thud one day later when the Sixers got battered in Boston. The Celtics rolled to a 123-91 victory on Sunday, the largest margin of victory in a playoff opener ever for Boston.

Sixers coach Nick Nurse summed it up nicely: “A lot went wrong, that’s for sure.”

Let us count the ways. The Sixers shot horribly, missing 19 of 23 three-pointers, and made 38% of their shots overall, but this poor performance went deeper than that. Their defense was nonexistent.

“They had a lot of possessions where they just walked to the rim for easy layups,” Paul George said. “There was just no resistance at a lot of times throughout the game, and that’s not playoff basketball.”

The Celtics know something about playoff basketball. Boston simply dominated the Sixers, with Jayson Tatum finishing with 25 points, including 21 in the first half, and Jaylen Brown scoring 26.

Maybe this wasn’t such a surprise. David Murphy writes: “Boston entered this first-round series as the odds-on favorite to a laughable degree. To win $100 on a Celtics series win, you had to wager $950. They were a 12.5-point favorite heading into Game 1. Both of those numbers are gigantic. They were also conservative, it turns out.”

OK, enough on that beatdown. The Sixers will get a chance to make amends in Game 2 in Boston on Tuesday (7 p.m., NBCSN, Peacock).

— Jim Swan, @phillysport, sports.daily@inquirer.com.

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After the Flyers manhandled the Penguins in Game 1, they’ll look to take command in their first-round Stanley Cup playoff series tonight at 7 in Pittsburgh (ESPN, NBCSP).

Using their speed and physicality, the Flyers kept the Pens on their heels all night Saturday. Jackie Spiegel points to the efforts of Owen Tippett, Denver Barkey, and Travis Sanheim as key factors in the opening win.

Sean Couturier and the Flyers’ veterans led by example, setting a physical tone.

Ten Flyers who suited up for Game 1 had never appeared in a postseason game before. You never would have known, Mike Sielski writes. There was next to nothing about the game to suggest that the Flyers, despite their postseason inexperience, were nervous or tight or unprepared for playoff hockey.

Also from Sielski: Porter Martone continues to amaze, scoring the decisive goal in Game 1 at age 19. But isn’t some out-of-nowhere miracle for the Flyers, who knew what they had all along.

Entering the weekend series against the Braves, the Phillies were 23rd in the majors in batting average (.229) and 21st in runs per game (4.0). No wonder they took an 8-12 record into Sunday night’s finale.

How to jump-start that offense? Surely, they could leverage the elite speed of Trea Turner and Justin Crawford to find alternative ways to score when Kyle Schwarber and Bryce Harper don’t hit the ball into the seats, Scott Lauber writes. But Turner and Crawford had only stolen one base each entering the weekend.

“It’s going to come,” first-base coach Paco Figueroa says.

The Phillies will try something different in an effort to get Taijuan Walker untracked. Lugging a 9.16 ERA, Walker will pitch as scheduled on Wednesday, but he’ll enter the game after an opener.

Something else the Phillies might do differently? Playing Schwarber in left field at times.

The Phillies capped off a tough homestand with a loss to to the Braves on Sunday.

The conditions for Zack Wheeler’s final rehab start before he rejoins the Phillies were far from ideal. The pitcher credited the cold and rainy weather for the decreased velocity in his fastball, which sat in the low 90s Sunday in Bridgewater, N.J.

He threw 77 pitches for double-A Reading and allowed four runs in four innings against the Somerset Patriots, a Yankees farm team. He struck out four but allowed two homers. Wheeler is hoping his velocity returns in the warmer weather in Atlanta later this week, when he is expected to pitch. If not, he will adjust: “When your velo is down, you have to do other things.”

The Penn Relays are back at Franklin Field this week, but the Olympic Development events will not feature a star-studded crew. In the high school races, though, Quincy Wilson of the Bullis School in the Washington suburbs will offer a glimpse at pure speed.

Wilson set a record for the fastest 400-meter high school split in Carnival history last year, but his team did not win the 4x400 relay. A rematch with Jamaica’s Kingston College awaits. Here’s the rundown of this week’s Penn Relays at Franklin Field.

April 20, 2003: Allen Iverson scored 55 points, a Sixers record for a postseason game, in a 98-90 win against the New Orleans Hornets in Game 1 of their playoff series.

This time last year, the Eagles had the best quarterback and the best receiver locked down at good value for at least the next two seasons. The contracts of Jalen Hurts and A.J. Brown made them virtually uncuttable and untradeable, but then, who could conceive wanting to cut or trade either?

Things have changed. If 2026 goes badly, it most likely will be because of a poor season from Hurts, which inevitably will lead to the departure of Brown. Which is why, even though the Eagles need an edge rusher and offensive line depth, replacing Hurts and Brown in the first two days of this draft is so important. More from Marcus Hayes.

We compiled today’s newsletter using reporting from Mike Sielski, David Murphy, Marcus Hayes, Gina Mizell, DeAntae Prince, Jackie Spiegel, Matt Breen, Gabriela Carroll, Scott Lauber, Jonathan Tannenwald, and Jeff Neiburg.

By submitting your written, visual, and/or audio contributions, you agree to The Inquirer’s Terms of Use, including the grant of rights in Section 10.

Here’s hoping you had a much better Sunday than the Sixers did. I’ll see you in Tuesday’s newsletter. — Jim