7 takeaways as James Harden, turnovers doom Celtics in Game 1 vs. 76ers
"I don't think they felt us."
The Celtics threw away a golden opportunity to take a 1-0 lead in their Eastern Conference semifinal against the 76ers on Monday, falling 119-115 in a bizarre game even though the Sixers were without Joel Embiid.
Here are the takeaways.
1. There will be a lot of talk about how the Celtics didn’t take the Sixers seriously without Embiid, or how the Celtics aren’t clutch down the stretch. Both things might be true, and indeed, Al Horford more or less admitted to the former.
“As much as you don’t want to say it wasn’t a factor, I think it was,” Horford said. “We have to be better. We have to understand that we have to be able to play with whatever happens, whatever variables. But with our team, I’ve just seen it happen for us for whatever reason.”
But the reason the Celtics lost Monday’s game is simpler: They couldn’t get stops and they turned the ball over way too much. As it turns out, winning basketball games is difficult when the other team scores easily and you throw the ball away.
The turnovers were particularly brutal, highlighted by one of the worst of the season. With a one-point lead, roughly 30 seconds remaining, and the shot clock winding down, Malcolm Brogdon drove to the paint seemingly without a plan and whipped a pass to the 3-point line that would have resulted in a shot-clock violation even if a Celtics player had been standing there.
A shot-clock violation, however, would have been a best-case scenario, because at least that would have given the Celtics a chance to reset. Instead, Tyrese Maxey — who was standing right where the ball was thrown — caught it with barely any time on the shot clock. Maxey ran the length of the court for an uncontested layup. Celtics players later said they all thought the shot clock had gone off (incidentally, they might be right), but even if they had pursued Maxey, he’s fast and had a big head start.
That turnover was a microcosm of the entire evening. Jaylen Brown had two brutal ones on back-to-back possessions in the second half and four overall. Marcus Smart finished with six. As a team, the Celtics coughed it up 16 times to just six by the Sixers.
Meanwhile, the Sixers shot 50.6 percent from the field, 44.7 percent from three, and 100 percent from the free-throw line. They made 17 3-pointers, while the Celtics made 10. A big turnover differential plus one of the worst performances of the season in defensive efficiency is not a winning formula.
“Defensively, I don’t think they felt us,” Horford said.
2. Related to the Celtics’ inability to get stops: James Harden lost his mind and shot 17-for-30 en route to a 45-point outpouring. His biggest shot, of course, proved to be the game-winner with just under 10 seconds remaining — a classic step-back 3-pointer that caught Horford off guard.
“He probably surprised me how quick he shot the ball,” Horford said. “I figured he would have tried to spend a little more time before going. But I felt like I was right there, contested. You’ve got to be careful with him because you can’t really contest him, because he always kicks his legs. That’s one of the things he does.”
Smart played some solid ball-denial defense against Harden, but the Sixers freed their star guard with relative ease — using the Celtics’ willingness to switch to move Smart elsewhere within the scheme and get players like Jaylen Brown and Horford matched up with Harden to let him get going.
The good news for the Celtics is Harden had one of his best games of the season, which isn’t likely to happen repeatedly. The bad news is Harden might be getting seven feet of superstar reinforcement for Game 2.
3. The Celtics got big performances from their stars. Tatum paraded to the basket all evening, scoring 39 points on 14-for-25 shooting, and a Sixers team with no presence at the rim allowed him to coast to points at will until the Sixers went into a zone later in the game (more on this in a minute).
Jaylen Brown, meanwhile, had an odd game — 23 points on hyper-efficient 8-for-10 shooting, the kind of stat line that suggests a player actually should have taken a lot more shots. In related news, Brown took just one shot in the second and third quarters combined and took (and made) two in the fourth.
Three shots for Jaylen Brown in the second, third, and fourth quarters combined quite clearly calls for an adjustment.
“I’ve got to be better than that,” Joe Mazzulla said.
How, exactly?
“Just certain play-calling, get our spacing right,” Mazzulla said. “That’s an area I’ll definitely get better at.”
4. Marcus Smart took a shot to the ribs in the third quarter that sent him to the bench clutching at his chest in a concerning way, but he returned to the floor and appeared healthy in the fourth.
5. The Celtics got very little from several key role players, most notably Derrick White who had a rare poor performance at a very inopportune time — shooting 1-for-5 from the floor and tallying four points, two rebounds, and three assists.
Robert Williams scored six points on 3-for-3 shooting, while Sam Hauser and Grant Williams barely saw the floor.
6. The Sixers’ zone seemed to throw the Celtics off a bit — while they ran one gorgeous zone-breaking action with a pass to the middle of the floor and a pass to a cutting Jaylen Brown, they generally struggled to shoot 3-pointers and create anything going to the rim against it.
“I think it just slows us down,” Brogdon said. “We talked about it. We knew they were going to go into it a bit just because we’re a team that can score with so many different guys. But that just slowed us down, made us hesitant, and we weren’t able to get the shots we wanted for the majority of the time they played that.”
7. The Celtics now face a game that’s as close to a must-win as the second game in a series can be. They missed their chance to win without Joel Embiid, but the Sixers are pretty good without Embiid, and the Celtics are pretty good at beating him.
The Celtics might not be particularly good at taking care of business the first time around, but they do seem to be able to learn from and shed hard losses.
“I’m not concerned,” Brogdon said. “But I do have a level of I guess awareness and we’ve been ready. We’ve got to come out ready, we’ve got to come out and send a message next game. I really think that’s the key.”
Game 2 tips off at 8 p.m. on Wednesday.
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