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Tim BontempsESPN
LAKE BUENA VISTA, Fla. – Since arriving at the NBA bubble at the Walt Disney World Resort, the Philadelphia 76ers have emphasized the importance of Joel Embiid’s improved reads from double teams following the Sixers’ success.
But in the final two minutes of Game 3 of Philadelphia’s first-round playoff series against the Boston Celtics, Embiid made crucial mistakes – a terrible pass that went straight to Celtics guard Marcus Smart and a forced shot that was blocked by Celtics forward Jayson Tatum. The errors led to six Boston points, part of a 10-0 run to end the game, allowing the Celtics to claim a 102-94 victory on Friday and take a commanding 3-0 lead in the best-of- seven series between the league’s oldest rivals.
“I thought I got better at passing the doubles teams, and it happened,” Embiid said afterward. “I turned it around. That was a big mistake. That was on me. It happens, and you go on.”
The problem for the Sixers, however, is that those mistakes have put them on the verge of being sent home by the Celtics from the playoffs for the second time in three years – and that in a shameful way.
It was a small miracle that the Sixers could even have a shot at winning the game at the end, seeing how their offense performed. Philadelphia finished the game with an abyss to shoot 29.5% from the floor, and an even lesser 9-for-39 (23.1%) from 3-point range.
“We just couldn’t make a shot,” Sixers coach Brett Brown said. “We really could not make a shot. The good news of 20 offensive rebounds is a fantastic effort, but many of them were a lot of rebounds to get. I give our boys credit for continuing to shoot they have to. I give our boys credit for going to the offensive boards. Twenty is a big number. But it’s hard to win when you shoot 29% for the game and 23% of the 3. It’s really hard to do that. we got to the line, we did a lot of good things.
“We just didn’t make any shots.”
Because of those Embiid errors – along with Josh Richardson being blocked by Tatum on the next possession – Philadelphia did not even get a shot to the rim, while the Celtics rattled eight consecutive points to keep the game going. After the Sixers spent the past six weeks declaring that Embiid could operate successfully out of those double teams at this time, it was a particularly defiant series of events.
“I think the last two plays are disappointing,” Brown said. “I don’t think you can minimize that, or say it in any other way. I feel like he has made tremendous progress in the environment that did not put him in the crunch at the end of the game. time favored.I went back and saw those two plays.If we had to do it again, there were other goals that were open.We made the wrong reading, and there’s the game.
“I’m glad we got the ball for him. I wish we did better after we got him.”
Embiid was dominant in the first half, grabbing 22 points and 10 rebounds for the time being as he went 6-for-11 from the field. But in the second half, Embiid just scored 1-for-9 from the field, making his lone field goal with less than six minutes to go into the game, and finished the night with 30 points and 13 rebounds – combined with minus -18 in his 35 minutes on the court.
“I mean, we just executed it offensively,” Embiid said of his lack of production in the second half. “Mostly thinking back in that third quarter and the beginning of the fourth, it was a bunch of plays, you know, just like that, setting up screens and things, and just going through conversations and things. If I’ll set up a screen, like the ball find me, okay.If not, we can use me to set up my teammates to help them and get some shots.You know, it was a lot of pick-and-rolls when we used me as a decoy, and that’s probably the reason. But we could have done more. “
At this point, whether the Sixers could have done more is irrelevant. All that matters is that they find themselves on a Sunday afternoon in a 3-0 deficit towards Game 4. Yet, despite the loss and deficit that the Sixers now find themselves in, both Embiid and Brown remained defiantly behind on their chances. team to fight his way back into the series.
“You can’t give up,” Embiid said. “You have to keep fighting. You have to play hard. You have to come in on Sunday … I do not want to be swept. I do not want that on my resume, so I said, I played my ass, and I will come in and do everything what I can do to make sure we win one game and take one game at a time. “
Typically, the Sixers Games 3 and 4 of this series would have played at home as the team with lower seed. And although Brown said during his television interview between the third and fourth quarters Friday that the ‘crowd’ – as in the crowd noise is being pumped into the arena to present some sort of home-court feeling for the ‘home’ ‘team in this neutral -court environment – helped keep his team in the game, the Sixers will be the first team to be eliminated in the NBA bubble when they take the court at 1 pm ET Sunday ( ABC).
However, Brown said these circumstances – and the fact that no NBA team ever came back from 3-0 in a best-of-seven series – did not make him think Philadelphia’s season was already coming to an end.
“I’m not running over,” Brown said. “I understand, I get it, everyone would assume this series is over because we’re 3 and 0. I’m not trying to be my Knute Rockne with my sincere opinion. We’ll get into the game and play get a win .
“It’s to keep a series alive. I mean that really. That’s my message to her, that’s my message to my staff, and that’s what I think.”
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