Believe it: The Sixers’ stunning dominance in Game 6 has Boston on the ropes
If the final margin of victory makes you clean off your reading glasses, know this: it didn’t come close to capturing the difference between the two teams.
You kept waiting for something to change. Nothing ever did. The best team on the basketball court at Xfinity Mobile Arena was the team that was blown out of the building the last time it played there, the team that has been facing elimination since Sunday, the team that looked like a dead team walking for the first five quarters of the series.
That team was the 76ers. Incredibly so. A ridiculous idea a week ago now is reality. They didn’t just force a Game 7 with their 106-93 win over the Celtics on Thursday. They looked like the better team.
In the game.
In the series.
If that feels absurd to read, imagine how it feels to write. It’s the only conclusion you can draw after six straight quarters of dominance from an offense and a defense that is operating around Joel Embiid as well as it ever has. The final margin didn’t even begin to capture the true disparity between the Sixers and the Celtics.
“We’re not a normal seven seed, obviously,” said Sixers forward Kelly Oubre Jr.
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It has been obvious since halftime of Game 5. Two nights ago, the Celtics had no answers for Embiid as the Sixers outscored them by 63-40 in the third and fourth quarters. By the end of Game 6, they still hadn’t found any. From the first possession to the last meaningful one, the Sixers outplayed the Celtics in every facet of the game.
Boston held Embiid to 19 points, but did so mostly by daring him not to pass. He aggressively declined, quarterbacking the offense with his back to the basket as adeptly as we’ve ever seen. Embiid finished with eight assists, several of them to Oubre. He was a possession-wrecker on the defensive end.
In his third game back from an appendectomy, Embiid was either the first- or second-best player on the court, depending on where you rank Tyrese Maxey, who scored 30 points and looked as comfortable as he ever has picking his spots alongside the big man.
The Celtics rarely looked capable of solving either of the Sixers’ stars. When they did, they had no answer for Paul George, who scored 23 to go with his usual excellent defense. The Sixers’ Big Three combined for 72 points, with Maxey hitting 11-of-22 shots.
“We’ve played four good ones and two really bad ones,” Sixers coach Nick Nurse said. “This is a great team. We have to play really good to be in the game or have a chance to win. That’s just it. The effort on the defensive end has certainly improved, and the shot creation, everybody’s kind of creating for everybody and that’s how it has to be.”
You’d be hard-pressed to bet against the Celtics in a do-or-die Game 7 at home, but you’d be even harder pressed to bet on them after watching the Sixers dismantle them.
It will come down to Embiid, as it always does. They need Maxey to finish like he did. They might need even more of him from three-point range. But they will not win this game if Embiid does not play like he has for the last six quarters.
The biggest knock on his legacy, apart from the injuries, is his lack of a signature postseason moment. Saturday will be his fourth Game 7. The first three were all losses, each one uglier than the last. From Kawhi Leonard’s three-pointer bouncing in for the Raptors in 2019 to Ben Simmons opting out of a dunk against the Hawks in 2021 to the 112-88 whupping that the Celtics put on Embiid and James Harden at TD Garden in 2023.
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The history before Embiid is relevant only in the sense that he has thus far failed to be the one who changed it. The Sixers are just 6-12 all-time in Game 7s. They’ve lost six of eight Game 7s against the Celtics, the most recent win coming in 1982.
“I’ve been playing these guys for so long,” Embiid said. “I’m tired of losing to them. We have a chance to accomplish something special. They’re a great team. You look at everything they have, that’s a super team. We just have to go into Boston with the mindset we’ve had the last two, three games. One play at a time. Tough environment, but we won two games over there. Just keep on doing what we’ve been doing and we’ll be fine.”
In Game 6, he was everything that he needed to be: aggressive, composed, smart with the basketball. He scored the first bucket of the game after burying Neemias Queta down low and then hitting a short turnaround jumper.
The game might’ve been over by halftime if the Sixers had maintained that strategy. Instead, they were up only nine at intermission despite a brutal shooting performance by the Celtics.
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The second half was a different story. Every possession was paint by numbers. Entry pass to Embiid, then watch him overpower single coverage or pass out of a double-team to a wide-open teammate. On the other end of the court, he helped anchor a defense that held Celtics superstars Jaylen Brown and Jayson Tatum to a combined 35 points on 13-of-30 shooting.
Make no mistake. The Celtics were brutal. They’re a good bet to shoot better than 12-for-41 from three-point range and 9-for-16 from the foul line. But the Sixers didn’t exactly shoot the lights out either, hitting just 11 of 33 attempts from three-point range. This was not a case of the Celtics losing the game for themselves. The Sixers won it outright.
A week ago, it would have felt ridiculous booking a return flight to Boston for Game 7 on Saturday (7:30 p.m., NBC10). By the end of Game 6, it felt startlingly right.
