Joel Embiid, Sixers vanquish demons in improbable Game 7 triumph in Boston

BOSTON — If you have been paying attention to the Sixers‘ first-round series against the Boston Celtics even a little bit, you will have no doubt heard by now that it’s been 44 years since the Sixers beat the Celtics in a playoff series.

Until last night.

The Sixers’ 109-100 Game 7 win in Boston was a monumental night in the history of the franchise, for so many different reasons.

It was, first and foremost, just a damned good performance in a hostile environment, with the Sixers’ Big 4 all coming through at various points of the game, and in their own individual ways.

From Joel Embiid’s dominance through the first three quarters, to Tyrese Maxey’s heroics down the stretch, from Paul George’s flu game to VJ Edgecombe being a 20-year-old rookie dropping 23 points in a Game 7 on the road while having the confidence to request the Derrick White assignment in the second half, the Sixers’ stars played like stars in the biggest stage possible.

Last night was the completion of an improbable comeback, the first time in franchise history that the Sixers came back from a 3-1 deficit to win a playoff series, and just the 14th time in NBA history that such a feat has occurred. The Sixers’ opponent, the Boston Celtics, were a perfect 32-0 in such situations prior to last night’s loss.

Last night was a proof of concept over the team that Daryl Morey was looking to build when he added Paul George to the Tyrese Maxey and Joel Embiid core, and the upside they would have if they ever did get healthy at exactly the right time.

But, most of all, last night was the vanquishing of Joel Embiid’s personal demons.

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The Boston Celtics have knocked the Sixers out of the playoffs three times in the Joel Embiid era.

The first, back in 2018, stung, but it was the very first taste of playoff basketball for Embiid and this iteration of the Philadelphia 76ers. It was easy to look ahead, to view it as a stepping stone towards future playoff success. The defeat in the 2020 bubble came without Ben Simmons, who missed the entire series with a dislocated left knee. The Sixers just didn’t have the talent around Embiid to compete.

The trauma in this matchup largely comes from that 2023 tilt between these two teams.

When the Sixers took Game 5 up in Boston to take a 3-2 series lead three years ago, it looked like they had finally overcome their greatest hurdle. Beating the Boston Celtics, advancing to the Conference Finals, it looked like the Sixers were on the precipice of greatness.

And then it all came crashing down, in a way that this team, and this fan base, hadn’t truly recovered from.

The Sixers held an 83-81 lead with 5:25 left in that potential closeout Game 6, before Boston ended the night on a 14-3 run. Tatum, who scored 16 points in that decisive fourth quarter, went on to drop 51 points on the Sixers in a Game 7 rout in Boston.

Joel Embiid’s season went from the greatest individual triumph of his professional career, when he received the MVP award while up in Boston, to being sent home in humiliating fashion in a devastatingly quick vibe shift that felt as though it could become the defining moment of this era of Sixers basketball.

When Embiid tore the meniscus in his left knee for a second time the following year, and then spent a full calendar year struggling to play basketball with any kind of regularity, it looked like the book had closed on Embiid’s chances to slay these his Celtic demons.

Perhaps more to the point, it looked like Embiid was out of chances to rewrite the book on his playoff failures.

Heck, it looked like the book was closed on that front as recently as last week.

Standing there in Boston last night, triumphantly celebrating overcoming that 3-1 deficit, to that Boston Celtics team, is an incredible accomplishment in and of itself. Doing it just a week after return from an emergency appendectomy that most people assumed would cause Embiid to miss the entire first round is borderline preposterous.

This was a moment that most pundits didn’t even think was possible, much less likely. Which, in many ways, makes it all the more meaningful.

“It feels good to win. Obviously we have a bigger goal in mind, but finally beating these guys feels pretty good,” Embiid acknowledged after the game. “I had until midnight to celebrate. It’s past midnight, so it’s over with. Felt good. Only the first round. One series down, got more to go. Now the focus is on New York. “

It will be interesting to see what this series win does to Joel Embiid’s legacy, and to how this era of Sixers basketball is remembered.

This was, unquestionably, the best series win the franchise has had in the Embiid era, and the best team that they have defeated in the postseason.

By almost every metric — 4th best record in the NBA, 3rd best point differential — the Celtics were one of the best teams in the league this season, and that was largely without the services of Jayson Tatum. Brad Stevens was just named the NBA’s Executive of the Year last week for his efforts. Joe Mazzulla is a finalist for Coach of the Year. All of which led to a panel of 12 ESPN analysts to pick the Celtics to win the series 12 to none.

When you add in the theatrics of it all — Embiid missing the first three games of the series with an emergency surgery that was wholly unrelated to basketball, then winning three straight do-or-die elimination games to advance — and it’s the kind of effort that would be immortalized if the stakes were higher.

If you think this is much ado about a first-round victory, you’re missing some of the key context that made this special for the Sixers.

The Joel Embiid era has largely felt like one big, cruel, what-if experiment, the acquisition of a generational talent doomed to hot takes and endless debates as his body, and at times the team around him, failed. What if Joel Embiid had been healthy for just one playoff run? What if Embiid had the kind of the supporting cast around him to truly meet the moment? What if Kawhi’s shot bounces out, like physics suggest it should have?

“No shade towards anybody that has played in this organization, [but] I’ve always taken the blame for everything that’s happened,” Embiid said after the win. “Sometimes I’ve been in those positions where I’ve come up short, and that’s [criticism] fine. But being in a position where you know you can relax one or two possessions because you trust the guys — the steps that Tyrese has taken, PG with big shots, VJ with the rebounds and big shots — it means a lot. You can’t win alone. You need a team to be able to win.

“I think the way we’re playing right now, we’re in sync, offensively and defensively. Guys understand what they have to do, and that’s beautiful to see,” Embiid continued. “That’s what I’ve always wanted. Play winning basketball, sharing the ball, defensively everybody being locked in on what they have to do. That’s what you have to do to win.”

This win over the Celtics doesn’t answer all of those questions. The health, specifically, is something to monitor, as Embiid was limping quite badly in the fourth quarter after Jaylen Brown pushed Tyrese Maxey into him, with the knee looking like it may have hyperextended on the play.

“I feel great. I feel amazing. I was faking it [the limping],” Joel Embiid, clearly joking, said when asked about the knee after the game.

That made the grit and determination that Embiid showed down the stretch all the more commendable, but leaves you nervous about what is next to come.

But the series did answer, at the very least, is the heights that Embiid, and this specific team around him, are capable of reaching, even if the sustainability of the run is still something that is to be determined.

Just as importantly, this game, and the series as a whole, showed Joel Embiid battling through adversity in a way that he often isn’t given credit for. In fact, Embiid showed a level of perseverance, of fortitude, and of determination that runs counter to the narrative that the NBA world has largely settled on to define the Sixers’ enigmatic superstar.

If Embiid, at 32, with his injury history and precious little meniscus left in his knee, is able to string together another series or two of the dogged determination and focus that he showed against the Boston Celtics, it could be one of the greatest late-career narrative rewrites that we’ve seen an athlete persevere through in this town.

The Joel Embiid era has a new and unexpected lease on life, and how could you not be excited about that?

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The fact that the Sixers took this series by winning three games in Boston is no small feat. The Sixers had gone 3-14 in their previous 17 playoff appearances up in Beantown.

Having covered the team for the entirety of the Joel Embiid era, I have now witnessed quite a few playoff games up in Boston, and I cannot think of a more hostile environment to try to perform in. You are always just one or two made 3s away from an absolutely raucous atmosphere, with 20,000 absolutely deranged (compliment) Boston fans on their feat and shouting at the top of their lungs.

More often than not, this has a way of tilting the game in Boston’s favor, at least when they have played the Sixers in the past. Game 7 in 2023 was something that I’ll never forget. It’s an environment that displays everything great about sports, a level of excitement, jubilation and community that make the pain and suffering that all sports fans are destined to endure fundamentally worth it.

It was an experience that I hoped the Sixers and their fans would replicate in a big stage in south Philadelphia at some point in the future.

So when Boston made their fourth quarter comeback last night, trimming the Sixers’ once 18-point lead all the way down to 1 with 3:49 remaining, this was not an environment conducive to success for the visiting team. The momentum was all swinging Boston’s way.

But the Sixers persevered and, by the end of the night, the few Sixers fans in attendance mockingly chanted “We Want Boston” as the opposing team’s fans, for once in this matchup that can now officially be called a rivalry, left the arena in a state of shock.

“It’s really good for us to go through that and respond to it. It’s good to have that experience. It’s going to be like that in the playoffs,” Nick Nurse said after the game. “I think we handled it just enough, but I think it’s really good for us to experience.”

The Sixers’ defense was phenomenal down the stretch once again, holding the Celtics to just 1-10 shooting to close out the game, with the only make a Payton Pritchard layup with 10 seconds left and the game already decided.

That defensive showcase followed up an even more epic defensive lockdown earlier this week, when the Sixers held the Celtics to 14 straight missed shots to close out their Game 5 win at the Garden.

“We stayed together, we stayed connected, and we didn’t panic,” Paul George said of the win. “We knew what we were up against. Just had to come out and do our part. We believed in our talent, we believed in our abilities.”

There is just something about this team that feels different. They’re winning games that they previously wouldn’t. They’re coming up big in spots that they have previously shrunk in.

“We’ve had this weird swag about us all year. This confidence, that we know who we can be, and we know who we are,” Tyrese Maxey said after the game. “We never wavered. We always believed in each other. And we really, really like each other. This group really likes each other, they like to see each other succeed, and that’s big-time.”

They have a rookie stepping up to volunteer to clamp down the opponent’s pest, while launching 11 threes in a do-or-die elimination game just one year removed from the jumper being his biggest question mark as a prospect.

They have Tyrese Maxey proving yet again that he is the cold-blooded closer that these team has always lacked, reinforcing the reputation he garnered after his big series against the Knicks the last time around.

And, perhaps most of all, they have Joel Embiid, taking control of the offense and executing at levels never before seen in April and May, punishing mismatches in the paint when the matchup calls for it, and forcing rotations with swift ball movement and timely decision making to put even the league’s most sophisticated defenses in hell.

They just out-executed the heavily-favored, veteran-laden, NBA champion Boston Celtics down the stretch on their home floor in back-to-back games at the storied Boston Garden, overcoming history and atmosphere to succeed in the moments they have previously failed in.

How can you not be excited.