Sixers search for answers on defense against Celtics after falling into 2-0 hole

Boston Celtics point guard Kemba Walker tried his diplomatic best, but he clearly made his point.

After scoring 22 points in Wednesday’s 128-101 win over the 76ers that gave the Celtics a 2-0 advantage in the Eastern Conference opening-round series, Walker was asked about how easily the Sixers allowed him to get his patented pull-up jumper.

The All-Star guard attempted to be as politically correct as possible.

“That is different for me,” he said during a postgame Zoom call with reporters. “I really haven’t seen that much space in a long time, to be honest, so yes, it is different.”

Walker shot 8-for-16 from the field, including 1-for-6 from three-point range, but he kept destroying the Sixers with mid-range pull-up jumpers.

The Sixers defense went kaput in Wednesday’s loss. Boston wasn’t challenged, especially during the final three quarters when the Celtics outscored the Sixers by 33 points.

While Walker didn’t hurt the Sixers from three-point land, many of his teammates did. Boston, which was missing one of its top perimeter threats in Gordon Hayward because of a Grade III sprained right ankle, hit 19 of 43 threes (44.2%).

More than the volume of made three-pointers was the way they were scored. Like many of Walker’s two-point field goals, most of Boston’s threes came from wide-open shots. Several were also scored off the high pick-and-roll.

The Celtics made two threes in deep garbage time, so they won’t count for these purposes. Of the other 17, nine were considered wide-open shots. Four more were scored off the high pick-and-roll. The others were either step-back threes and/or contested threes. Either way, allowing nine open looks made it too easy for the Celtics.

Leading the assault was Jayson Tatum, who shot 8-for-12 from three-point range. Some of the threes were ridiculous, such as the one banker from about 40 feet as the shot clock was winding down late in the first quarter.

Tatum also made some incredibly difficult shots, but he was able to get any shot that he wanted.

“Jayson has been killing it,” Sixers center Joel Embiid said of Tatum, who is averaging 32.5 points in the two games and is shooting 13-for-23 (56.5%) from three-point range. “Somehow you got to find a way to get the ball out of his hands.”

Embiid says that in defending the three-pointer, the Sixers want him to sit back and defend the basket.

“But they are coming down and making a lot of threes, so we have to make adjustments,” Embiid said. “Either I gotta come up [or] we gotta scramble all over the place, but something has to change.”

What the Sixers have been doing simply hasn’t worked.

“The obvious answer is to bring 7 foot-2 out of the paint and bring 7-foot-2 up so that there is some sort of pressure,” coach Brett Brown said, referring to Embiid. “The punishment behind it is real.”

Brown means that if Embiid comes up, a Celtic could roll to the basket and have a free area.

We know that the Sixers’ best defender, Ben Simmons, is out after undergoing left knee surgery. Still, the Sixers have to fight off picks and not lose their man so often on defense.

Defense is hard work and effort, and in both games, the Celtics have been playing harder. They outscored the Sixers by 15-4 on second-chance points and 17-1 on fastbreak points.

So the Sixers have to show more fight if they want to get back in the series, which resumes Friday. The Sixers offered little resistance Wednesday, and the Celtics continually made them pay.