5 takeaways from Celtics' series

Marcus Smart keeps Boston's heartbeat alive until Jayson Tatum takes over late in the 4th quarter to force a Game 7.

Steve Aschburner

Jayson Tatum comes alive in the 4th quarter of Game 6 to send the series to a Game 7.

PHILADELPHIA – In an almost identical situation a year ago, Milwaukee star forward Giannis Antetokounmpo tried to spin the story forward while the Bucks, the coaches and their fans were reeling from a Game 6 loss at home, in the Eastern Conference semifinals, to the Boston Celtics.

"Good old Game 7," Antetokounmpo said that night. "Beautiful."

Well, actually not beautiful. Two days later, Milwaukee went into TD Garden and got blown out by 28 points.

Now it was Joel Embiid's turn. Same situation: A chance for the Philadelphia 76ers to close out the Celtics at Wells Fargo Center to the delight a raucous home crowd starved to have their team get past the semifinals. Same self-conscious grab at a happy face, too.

"Who doesn't love Game 7s?" the Sixers center said after his team's 95-86 defeat Thursday that evened the series at 3-3 and forces Philadelphia to try to do in Boston Sunday what the Bucks could not.

What Embiid said would have been fingernails on a blackboard had that question come after Game 5, the Sixers’ finest performance of the playoffs. Two nights later, though, he and his team are just grateful they had a cushion to squander, because Game 6 would have been a miserable way to have headed into summer.

Here are five takeaways on the Celtics staving off elimination for a few more days and the Sixers moving to the brink of it:

1. Tatum on Tatum: ‘One of best in world’

The first thing people wonder when a player is scatter shooting as ineptly as Jayson Tatum was for most of Game 6 is, has his confidence cratered yet? Yet when he walked off the floor after the victory, the Boston forward's first words into a microphone were "I’m one of the, humbly, best basketball players in the world."

Not tonight, of course, in absolute terms. But that belief, that stubbornness in knowing that it's okay for him to shoot 1-for-13 through three quarters and to keep chucking them up, is a trait the best performers in any field tend to have.

Somehow he also felt the urgency to fix things on the fly. Suffering through a bad performance and licking one's wounds to do better next time isn't advised in an elimination game. Next time could have been months away for the Celtics and for Tatum, so he rose from the jump shooters’ grave right there, right then.

After struggling the first 3 quarters of Game 6, Jayson Tatum stayed confident en route to 16 4th-quarter points in Boston's win.

The Sixers led 83-81 with 4:58 left when Tatum, with enough daylight over Embiid, nailed a 3-pointer from the left corner. Next trip down, from the right wing, he did it again. His personal dark clouds parted and there was a glimmer of sunshine after all.

It was 89-84 with 1:53 left when Tatum launched again, a 27-foot 3-pointer from out front. His fourth of the quarter came with 37.6 seconds left, pushed Boston's lead to 95-84, capped a 14-4 run and sent the Sixers into a final timeout. Their coach, Doc Rivers, emptied his bench at that point.

"All it took was one to kind of get that off my back," said Tatum, acknowledging the frustration. "I kept telling myself I’ve got time, I’ve got time to make a difference."

Teammates and coach Joe Mazzulla were in Tatum's ear throughout, encouraging him and praising him for the other things (rebounds, passes, defense) he did while his shots bricked.

Interestingly, guard Marcus Smart said something identical after Tatum's resuscitated performance to what he had said in that Game 6 in Milwaukee a year ago. That night, Tatum was dazzling from start to finish, scoring a clutch 46 points.

"He makes the big bucks for a reason," Smart said, adding that he told Tatum this time, "‘Let it go. Just let the game come to you.’ Once he starts to just calm down, he can get into rhythm and start to feel good."

2. Smart provided Boston's heartbeat

Through thick or thin Thursday, no one kept Boston on course more than Smart. He scored 22 points with seven rebounds and seven assists, had a pair of steals and fell to the floor — or knocked a Sixers player there — probably a dozen times.

Take away any of those things, or Smart's ongoing cajoling, and this suddenly becomes baseball season in Boston. He was like a sergeant barking his troops all the way home, safe and sound.

"Just let ‘em know, this could be our last opportunity," Smart said afterward. "We don't want to get off this court thinking ‘I could have done more, should have done more.’ You’ve got to go out there and it's got to be a dogfight. You’ve got to scrap, you’ve got to bleed, you’ve got to be willing to take a shot to the face, to do whatever it takes to win."

Multiple times, even after committing a foul or missing a free throw, Smart had a big smile on his face. Nothing self-conscious about it — he was having fun and wanted his teammates, if not the world, to know it.

JT took over the fourth quarter, but don't forget to heap praise on No. 36 for his stabilizing performance throughout Game 6. https://t.co/VY5BX9zFDy

— Boston Celtics (@celtics) May 12, 2023

"When you’re all tight and not enjoying the game, it shows," Smart said. "Your play shows it. When we’re out there just enjoying the game, having fun, playing for one another, that shows as well. It's a positive thing to see.

"You could see, JT starts to get hot, he starts smiling. That helps. That type of energy is very, very contagious."

3. Sixers’ turn to flatline

What the Celtics did in Game 5, coming out wholly and inexplicably unprepared to compete in their biggest game of the season in front of their home fans, is precisely what the Sixers did in Game 6.

They fell behind 15-3 in the opening minutes. Eventually that gap grew to as much as 16 points. Halfway through the second quarter, Embiid, James Harden and Tobias Harris had combined to shoot 4-for-22. Imagine how ugly it might have gotten had Tatum actually made a few of his misses.

You could hear the gears of Philadelphia's offense grinding almost all night. It was clunky, with only Tyrese Maxey playing with any fluidity. Embiid had four turnovers, Harden five. The Sixers shot 36.1% overall and made only eight of their 34 3-point attempts.

Rivers mentioned "ball movement" repeatedly, as in the Sixers’ biggest missing ingredient. He talked about the Celtics’ size in the lane as causing issues for Harden — if he happened to shake one or even two Boston defenders, there still was a big between "The Beard" and the rim.

Now some of the negatives hanging over Philadelphia's quest to reach the East finals will get dusted off over the next few days. It hasn't advanced past the semifinals since 2001, when Allen Iverson led the Sixers to the NBA Finals. Rivers, individually, already has three red marks on his resume from blowing 3-1 series leads. And Sunday's opportunity/challenge has some ominous numbers gathering too: Rivers is 6-9 in Game 7s, and those nine losses are four more than any other NBA coach.

When it was against the ropes in Game 6, Philadelphia seemed to forget about its Kia MVP big man.

4. Two bigs isn't too big

Anyone who had watched Boston in last year's postseason noticed the difference this spring: Mazzulla wasn't a fan of using forward Al Horford and center Robert Williams III together. Some of the Celtics’ most successful stretches in the 2022 run to the Finals, and some of their defensively stingiest minutes in limited stretches this season, had come from that alignment.

It got talked about in the media after Boston slipped behind 3-2 in the series. The notion wasn't exactly rocket surgery, either, what with Embiid as a behemoth in the middle for Philadelphia.

Well what d’ya know? In the hours before tipoff, Mazzulla decided he would start both Horford and Williams. Together. For the first time in their team's 12 playoff games. The coach soft-sold it but from comments of his players afterward — Smart was "ecstatic," Horford "excited" by the move — second-guessing reporters weren't the only ones who thought it was overdue.

Horford struggled for the second game in a row with his shot, but defended well and grabbed 11 boards. Williams had 10 points with nine rebounds and two blocks, and in the 27:48 he played, the Celtics were 18 points better than the Sixers.

Marcus Smart's public criticism of his coach should have happened behind closed doors.

5. Toothpaste be put back in the tube

Maxey stole the ball and Tatum whacked him as the Sixers guard started downcourt. Foul. The only question was, a clear-path foul or the take foul introduced this season? The referees huddled, deemed Tatum's desperation move to be of the clear-path variety and assessed the penalty: two free throws and the ball.

Embiid walked to the line to take and make the free throws, then missed a hook shot on the ensuing possession. This was all rather important, coming with less than five minutes left in game that was tied 81-81 when the sequence began.

On the next play, Rivers challenged — successfully — an out-of-bounds call and of course had to use a timeout to access the green light. That's when the referees huddled again and came up with a doozy of a correction.

On take fouls, a coach can send any of his players currently in the game to shoot one free throw, before getting possession of the ball. But on clear-path fouls, the specific player who was fouled must shoot the pair of freebies. That meant Embiid's two points had to come off the scoreboard and Maxey – 32 seconds later in game time, each team had run offense – had to step to the line to re-do the penalty.

He made them, so the score returned to 83-81, but the whole sequence was confounding. Almost as confounding as it was for the Sixers, who scored just three more points over the final 5:25.

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Steve Aschburner has written about the NBA since 1980. You can e-mail him here, find his archive here and follow him on Twitter.

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