Celtics pull off comeback but series not over
By Steve Bulpett BOSTON, M.A. » The Celtics can feel good about their 2-0 Eastern Conference semifinal lead over Philadelphia, but they cannot feel comfortable.
With some 10 seconds left and the shot clock nearly spent, Al Horford found himself out by the free throw line with the imposing Joel Embiid between him and the hoop.
But with five fouls, Embiid’s fangs weren’t as sharp. So Horford drove cleanly for a layup that threw an ice cube into what would become a 108-103 victory Thursday night.
The C’s simply made the most important plays down the stretch to survive Philadelphia’s attempt to carjack home-court advantage. After trusting the process these last few years, the Sixers will now have to trust their own surroundings.
And trust that they won’t get so battered in the Rookie War. While Jayson Tatum was leading the Celts with 21 points, putative Rookie of the Year Ben Simmons was going 0-for-4 from the floor on the way to one single point, with five rebounds, seven assists and five large turnovers.
But the bottom line will be the basic idea heading into Game 3.
Take what Brad Stevens said before this one and change the particulars to get the message:
“We know it’s going to be hard,” he said around 6:45 last night. “We know that every game’s its own entity. And we’ve known from the moment we left TD Garden on Monday night that we’re going to have to play better in Game 2 than Game 1 to win.
Probably a lot better. For a time, it seemed Philly was going to blow the Celts out of their own joint.
The Sixers’ lead had been as great as 22, and there was no reason to believe the visitors were in anything but firm control when the margin sat at 20 after a pull-up jumper by the suddenly free-flowing J.J. Redick. And the needle on Philly’s give-adamn meter didn’t twitch when Greg Monroe scored inside to make it 53-35 with 3:24 left in the first half.
The Garden had by then grown a tad groggy, cranky even, as the patrons watched their nearsighted heroes make just 12 of their first 34 shots. There was little evidence of what was to come.
In fact, the 76ers bench didn’t appear fazed at all as the Celtics found a groove that had eluded them for the first 20-plus minutes. There was no timeout forthcoming as the C’s closed the half on a 25-8 run.
There was no administrative response when, on consecutive possessions, Terry Rozier, Marcus Smart and Rozier again drained 3-pointers and those in the stands lost their collective mind. The Celtics had made 7-of-9 shots in the key stretch and were within five at the break.
Perhaps the Sixers had been lulled into inappropriate comfort by their early success.
They had fought back perfectly against what the Celtics did to them in Game 1 and what they tried to do to them again last night. The C’s had run the Philly shooters off the 3-point line in the opener, and Brett Brown’s troops countered wisely in this one. They attacked. There were killer cuts that led to inside hoops — which begat openings on the perimeter that Redick and Robert Covington gratefully filled.
The pre-series thought here, as explained on these pages three days ago, was that the Celtics would do well against Simmons and Embiid but get hurt by Redick, Dario Saric and Covington.
It’s the way things were playing out much of the night, which meant the Celts could find no real comfort in taking an eightpoint lead in the third quarter.
The advantage was 79-75 heading into the last quarter, and there the smallest Sixer put the bite on Boston. The 6-foot-2 — maybe — T.J. McConnell scored twice inside, then went into the forest and snared an offensive rebound that led to a Covington trey and a repossession of the lead by Philly.