Now facing elimination, the Sixers must play ‘desperate’ to extend their season beyond Game 5 in Boston
The Sixers are on the brink after they were blasted by 32 points in Game 4, despite Joel Embiid's return to the court 17 days after an appendectomy.
BOSTON — Tyrese Maxey offered the word “desperate” while describing how the 76ers must play Tuesday against the Boston Celtics with their season now on the brink of elimination.
The All-Star point guard also did not have an answer when asked why his team did not already possess that mentality in Sunday’s Game 4, when the Sixers trailed two games to one in the best-of-seven, first-round series and then got blasted by 32 points on their home floor.
“We should have been [desperate],” Maxey said. “We should have been.”
Now the Sixers are down 3-1 in their first-round series, and desperation is the only option to extend their season beyond Game 5 at TD Garden. The statistical discrepancies are clear in this matchup that the Sixers entered as underdogs against an NBA Finals-caliber opponent. Perhaps there are last-minute tactical or wild-card rotation adjustments that the coaching staff can try.
But none of that matters, coach Nick Nurse said, “if we’re not going to play with better energy [and] toughness.”
“You don’t even know if your schemes and what you’re trying to do is working [without that],” Nurse said. “So that has to take up a good portion of what we’re doing. It’s going to have to be a big mental pickup.”
» READ MORE: Joel Embiid vows not to ‘cry about’ his latest postseason injury setback: ‘Some things you can’t control’
The Sixers displayed that effort in consecutive competitive performances — a double-digit road win in Game 2, and a down-to-the-wire home loss in Game 3 — book ended by two duds. Yet Sunday’s return of a still-productive Joel Embiid, 17 days after undergoing an appendectomy, did not make up for the Sixers’ glaring shortcomings — not just in this series, but all season.
The Sixers again could not keep up with the Celtics’ three-point output and efficiency, going 9-for-30 from beyond the arc Sunday while Boston made 24 of 53 attempts. They did not contest standout reserve Payton Pritchard during a 32-point outburst, complementing the star power of Jayson Tatum and Jaylen Brown. And the Sixers were outrebounded, 51-30, in Game 4, including a 14-6 deficit on the offensive end that yielded 18 Boston second-chance points.
“We’ve had that problem all season,” Embiid said. “So we’ve got to do a better job.”
How Embiid continues to reintegrate after totaling 26 points and 10 rebounds Sunday will remain a storyline. So will the Sixers’ guard play.
Since Edgecombe’s historic (and wink-worthy) 30-point, 10-rebound performance in Game 2, he has reverted back to 7-of-26 shooting from the floor and 0 of 11 from three-point range in his last two games. And Maxey called his three-shot first half Sunday “absolutely unacceptable,” noting that even the mild-mannered Paul George got on his case in the halftime locker room.
Embiid echoed Sunday that Maxey needs to be more aggressive, but emphasized that does not simply mean hoisting a bevy of shots.
“He hasn’t had a lot of space,” Embiid said because of the way Celtics defenders have “trailed” Maxey on screening actions, “but that’s when you’ve got to make quick decisions. … We need that from the start. That might not mean getting up 10 shots in the first quarter. That might mean creating advantages for everybody else.”
That was part of a long list of issues Embiid vocalized late Sunday — perhaps to pivot away from a question about his relationship with the front office after he called out president of basketball operations Daryl Morey for ruling him out of an April 1 win at the Washington Wizards due to illness.
» READ MORE: After Game 4 stinker, Joel Embiid needs to take a backseat to Tyrese Maxey and VJ Edgecombe
Embiid added that the Sixers’ missed shots “start with me,” after his 9-of-21 performance Sunday came with seven consecutive misfires as the game got out of hand. And that the Sixers must limit Boston’s drive-and-kick opportunities, recapture their physicality, and track down long rebounds.
“Find a way to win one at a time,” Embiid said. “ … We know what they do well, and we know some of the mistakes we made [Sunday]. So now it’s on us to try to figure it out, how to fix them and go out there and, [with] everything on the line, play the best basketball possible.
“Because we either win or we have a couple months to think about [that] it wasn’t a horrible season but could have been better.”
Yet the tactical elements won’t matter if the mental approach does not meet the moment, Nurse said.
This elimination game arrives months after Maxey spoke at media day about setting a playing-style standard, no matter who was on the floor. And after the Sixers faced another revolving door of lineups throughout the regular season, due to a slew of injuries and George’s 25-game suspension. Entering this series, Nurse stressed that his team must “play like hell” in order to challenge the heavy-favorite Celtics.
The Sixers were not desperate enough in Game 4. Now they must be, or their season will end Tuesday night.
“Our kind of M.O. all year,” Nurse said, “is to have a lot of things thrown at us and pick ourselves up and fight back. We’re just going to have to do that again.”
