Instant observations: Sixers lose Game 3 heartbreaker to Celtics

A few critical Celtics rebounds were the difference in a 108-100 loss in Game 3, with Boston outlasting the 76ers in a hard-fought, highly entertaining game. Tyrese Maxey led the way for Philadelphia with 31 points, but he could not get enough help from VJ Edgecombe to get this one over the line.

Here’s what I saw.

A slow start for the guards

The story of the series through three games, unsurprisingly, is that the Sixers will go as far as their guards can take them. Tyrese Maxey and VJ Edgecombe were electric in the Game 2 victory, but have otherwise found it tough to try to break apart this Boston Celtics defense. One of those guys got going, and it’s probably the one you’d expect.

Philadelphia’s half-court success has largely come from the wings, with their utilization of side pick-and-roll opening Boston up for long stretches of Game 2. We saw Maxey exploit Boston’s foot speed on the sidelines on a few occasions in Game 3, including one noteworthy sequence where Vucevic tried to ice the screen, only for Maxey to run right past him for two points at the rim. The problem is that those plays represented only a small to medium-sized chunk of their offense, and their middle pick-and-roll game has been pretty heinous across the first two games.

Boston’s ability to completely ignore Philly’s bigs as shooters is part of that, but Maxey owns a share of the responsibility. He created driving angles and then thought better of them; he turned the corner into pull-up space and then reset the offense, frequently stalling Philadelphia’s possessions and grinding down the shot clock. Maxey threw Edgecombe a few brutal hot potato passes late in the shot clock on Friday night, leaving the rookie to get busy shooting or get busy dying. The Celtics are showing him a lot right now — lots of bodies, certainly, but they played a variety of coverages compared to the first two games — but it’s not like these are looks he hasn’t seen before.

As Maxey and Edgecombe struggled early, you could have argued for more involvement for Paul George and Kelly Oubre, given the performances of their other starters. George had some success in those aforementioned empty side actions, canning a pull-up three as he walked into space with the Celtics sitting deep in coverage. Oubre pulled off feats of sorcery on broken possessions in the first half, hitting one particularly wild baseline jumper with the shot clock winding down at the end of the second quarter.

In the third quarter, the Sixers obliged. George was the man with the plan early, hitting a catch-and-shoot three before a drive for a tough two at the rim, and the Celtics began falling all over themselves trying to stop him. After a terrific individual spurt for Maxey — a drive for two and then a stepback three in Sam Hauser’s grill — George sucked two defenders in and found Adem Bona in the middle of the floor, with Bona’s ensuing dunk nearly blowing the roof off the arena. Boston timeout, Sixers down just two:

Let’s stick with Bona for a moment…

A big Bona response

If you had told me before this game that Adem Bona would be Philadelphia’s leading scorer through the first seven minutes of the game, I would have assumed that they were losing by 20 points. And after his first minute of action, featuring a clear goaltend and a moving screen on back-to-back plays, I was damn near ready to call it a series for No. 30.

But boy, did he put in a hell of a shift to open this game. Bona was the most active player on the floor, drawing multiple Boston fouls with his pursuit of the basketball on the offensive glass. The Celtics were convinced that he had nothing to offer on that end, abandoning Bona several times to send extra help toward the guards and wings, and he made them pay with some slick work navigating the baseline, scoring a quick six points that included a pair of free throws.

It’s a good thing he was ready to play on Friday night, because the Sixers’ chosen matchups in the frontcourt finally caught up with them in Game 3. Against Boston’s stretch big combo of Vucevic/Garza, the Celtics ran Andre Drummond ragged in his first rotation of the night, putting him in a lot of ball screens to force him to recover and rotate, leading to a high volume of swing-swing sequences that turned into open threes for the Celtics. A Sixers optimist would have pointed to the three-point disparity at halftime and called it a good sign, but this is the sort of style Boston loves to live in.

Frankly, I thought the Celtics gave the Sixers a gift by switching their own big-man rotation to open the second half. With Vucevic in the game to start, Bona did a great job of closing space and contesting without fouling, never nervous about Vuc putting it on the deck and driving. Philly began stringing together stops, and this was a ballgame despite some shooting struggles. But Bona’s fifth foul early in the fourth, spent on an ill-advised attempt to dig out a loose ball around Jayson Tatum’s ankles, was ultimately a decisive factor in this game. The ensuing Boston run

Back to the guards…

Not enough help for Maxey late

After halftime, it was as if an imposter Maxey body swapped with the real No. 0, finally doing the things that powered his starting berth in the All-Star Game. Sensing the game might be getting away from them with Boston pushing the lead to double digits, Maxey got to work.

As Maxey found his shooting boots, the Celtics countered by having Jordan Walsh follow him all over the floor. Boston’s defensive wing did well to win a few possessions, but the Sixers answered by getting Maxey off-ball and running him through multiple screens to create an initial window of separation for Maxey. He did a better job of probing the in-between areas, and it felt for the first time that this was a genuine chess match between Nurse and Mazzulla, each coming up with some wins as the two teams went back and forth.

But in the end, this game came down to very little outside of Maxey doing superstar shit. Armed with the confidence he picked up during the third quarter, Maxey continued rolling in the fourth, scoring eight points in the first three minutes and change to pull the Sixers out to a one-point lead. It was a ridiculous display of shotmaking, with Maxey hitting a twisting two in the corner before drilling a trail triple with 8:41 to play, forcing Joe Mazzulla to call a timeout to regroup.

After that timeout, the Sixers struggled to find their footing, in part because they are reliant on a rookie. VJ Edgecombe did everything he could to impact this game with energy and athleticism, skying for some critical rebounds when no one else would get off the ground, but his offense was a total mess. His shot was nowhere to be found, with Nurse even ripping him midgame for passing up an open corner three, Edgecombe raising his hand with a “my bad” to acknowledge the error. Edgecombe had two costly turnovers in the fourth, one on an attempted jump pass that he traveled with and another in a failed jump stop attempt driving to the basket. Expecting him to hit the levels he hit in Game 2 would have been absurd for a rookie, but they needed him to be just average, and he couldn’t muster it.

I do blame Nurse a bit for their lack of organization late, because as the offense came unraveled in the final eight minutes, he sat on four timeouts far longer than I would have, watching as the Celtics padded the lead with Philly’s offense crumbling. There are times to let your team play through it a little bit, but those moments are in a mid-January snoozefest, not a high-stakes playoff game.

Even then, they made the correct call to turn the keys over to Paul George in the final four minutes, and the veteran wing did exactly what everyone hoped for when they signed him. George battled through Jaylen Brown pressure and inside-the-arc doubles for key assists on Drummond dunks. He hit a seemingly impossible leaner with 1:43 to play, fighting through Brown to kiss one off the glass and bring the Sixers within two.

But in the end, this was a game defined by the Sixers being a player or two short. The execution and effort was high on both sides, and the Sixers simply needed a better second big to try to see this thing through. Any idea where they might find one of those?

Other notes

— I’m not sure how I left this so late, but forgive me for trying to operate within the anarchy: Rebounding was arguably the defining story of the game, and the defining story of Philadelphia’s season. The Celtics converted a slew of threes after pulling down extra possessions in traffic, so it felt fitting that the game effectively ended when a Derrick White board turned into the Jayson Tatum shot that put the game to rest. It’s a problem they have to address at some point, whether it’s with personnel additions, systemic changes, or both.

— John Goble is an underrated awful official, and this crew was absolutely horrific all night.

— Quentin Grimes has been borderline unplayable in this series, making basic mental errors on both ends while offering no shotmaking or lift off the bench. I’m not sure he could have offered less through three games if he was actively trying to sabotage the team.

This is a matchup where they could really use his particular set of skills, but only some on-ball moments on defense have kept him from being a DNP. They need him to turn it around in a hurry.