7 takeaways as Jayson Tatum scores 51, Celtics dominate Game 7 vs. 76ers
Tatum set the NBA record for most points in a Game 7.
The Celtics got a historic performance from Jayson Tatum on Sunday, while the 76ers got yet another postseason no-show from both of their stars as the Celtics claimed a 112-88 victory in Game 7 to punch their ticket to the Eastern Conference Finals.
Here are the takeaways.
1. Jayson Tatum was brilliant, and frankly, “brilliant” doesn’t entirely cover it. He was hyper-efficient — 17-for-28 shooting, 6-for-10 from three, 11-for-14 from the free-throw line. He recorded two steals (and should have gotten credit for a blocked shot that was ruled a goal tend). He dished out five assists. He pulled down 13 rebounds.
In short, Tatum was everything the Celtics needed — a true superstar rising to the moment when his team needed it most. The performance was reminiscent of Jimmy Butler’s destruction of the Bucks, right down to Butler screaming “This is my s—!” after a huge bucket in front of a roaring Miami crowd.
“JT just got it going and then get out of that man’s way,” Jaylen Brown said. “Just got it rolling, and there’s nothing they could do to stop him. They started trying to double team him and they just gave open looks to other guys. When JT is playing like that, we’re going to be extremely hard to beat.”
Tatum roared out the gates with 11 first-quarter points and an assist. After a short break at the start of the second quarter, he immediately got back to the free-throw line and tacked on 14 more points, finishing the first half with 25.
But in the third, he broke the game open. If Tatum alone had scored in the quarter, the Celtics would have pushed their lead to 10. By himself, Tatum outscored the Sixers 17-10, shooting 4-for-5 from 3-point range. As it was, the Celtics landed a knockout blow, and a concussed Sixers team wobbled meekly through the fourth quarter en route to elimination. In front of an electric TD Garden crowd, Tatum swished a 3-pointer that gave him 51 points — the most in any NBA Game 7 in history — and strutted back up the court holding up a 5 and a 0.
As recently as Game 5, Tatum’s legacy was on the line. He seemed to struggle with that fact for most of Game 6. Then came the flurry of 3-pointers, which turned into a blizzard that buried the Sixers in Game 7.
Tatum told reporters postgame that he was too tight and “too locked in” before Game 6.
“Today, I was more myself,” he said. “Yesterday, pregame, I was relaxed, laughing, joking. And that’s when I play my best — when I’m having fun. At the end of the day, this is basketball. This is something I’ve been doing since I was a kid. Something that I love to do. And just go out there and relax and have fun.
‘When you go out there and relax and kind of think about those days when you were a kid at the YMCA or whatever, the game kind of opens up. Just try not to think about the pressure and what everybody’s going to say. Just focus on the game and having fun. I think that’s when I’m essentially at my best.”
2. As great as Tatum was, Joel Embiid and James Harden were the exact opposite. Embiid struggled against Al Horford offensively, finishing 5-for-18 in one of the biggest games of his career.
“He’s the MVP. He’s the MVP flat-out,” Horford said (kindly, in our opinion). “He can do so many things and for me it was very difficult, but it was one of those things that I just had to figure out. I had to put my imprint on the series. I had to figure it out.”
On the other end, the Sixers were far too willing to let Embiid get switched onto Tatum — a bad matchup that both allows Tatum to attack a slower-footed big and keeps Embiid away from the rim, where he packed up Celtics shots throughout the series. Midway through the third quarter, as the game got out of hand, Tatum was explicitly hunting Embiid.
Harden, meanwhile, was at his absolute worst — 3-for-11 with nine points and seven assists. Harden was excellent in Games 1 and 5, but he has a lengthy history of delivering awful performances in some of the biggest moments, and Sunday was no exception.
3. A quote from Embiid floated around Twitter in which he appeared to throw his teammates under the bus following the loss.
“Me and James, we can’t win alone,” Embiid said. “That’s why basketball is played five-on-five. We need everybody to find ways to be better.”
Before you roast Embiid too thoroughly, a few things should be noted:
- The quote was out of context. The question was about James Harden, who has a player option this offseason. Embiid noted that the duo hasn’t won anything, but he still likes the potential and will let the front office figure things out. The rest of the quote: “We all have to look at ourselves. I’ve got to be better, and I will be better. That’s what I’m focused on. All of us, we’ve got to come back and find ways to just keep improving and help the team.”
- Embiid also said, “If you want to call me the best player on the team, every loss and failure should be on me. It’s all on me. I will be better.”
- Embiid talked for nearly 21 minutes, which frankly is the kind of accountability he needed to take after a loss like that, but also offered endless opportunities for him to say something that could be aggregated.
If you still believe Embiid’s comments were out of line, that’s fine. Just make sure you have the full context.
4. Jaylen Brown had a nice performance – 25 points on 9-for-19 shooting, 3-for-6 from 3-point range. He also had two noteworthy moments in the first half that seemed to spark the Celtics.
The first was an elbow from a flailing Harden, which caught Brown in the face and sent him to the deck. Officials reviewed it and ruled it a flagrant.
“Nothing like a shot to the face to wake you right up,” Brown said.
Then a truly bizarre play took place on the sideline. Brown and Harden battled for a loose ball (Brown may have committed a foul), and Brown ended up running near the Sixers’ bench. He stopped and had words for the Sixers’ bench, which resulted in several Celtics assistants running over to pull him away. Official Scott Foster gave him a technical.
Upon replay, however, it was easy to see why Brown was upset: Niang reached out and grabbed Brown’s knee as he tried to run.
The two were given matching technicals, one to Niang for interfering and one to Brown for “taunting the bench,” which felt a little unfair to Brown who only stopped because Niang reached out.
Brown noted that he works out with Niang in the offseason.
“I don’t think Niang’s a bad guy or anything,” he said.
Still: “I don’t know which way I should have responded to it,” Brown said. “But if I didn’t do anything it probably would have played on. And here comes Scott Foster, right away before even deciphering the situation gives me a tech. I definitely didn’t want to get a tech in that situation, but somehow coming out of all that commotion, it ended up being even right? And it was nothing, no advantage from that, ended up calling it even. I got a tech, he got a tech, and then it just being a side out.
“I think a play like that, that should have been a little bit more.”
Fair points, all around.
6. Give Joe Mazzulla his flowers: Doc Rivers may have out-coached him at times, but Mazzulla pressed all the right buttons with Tatum (which seems to be the case all year), went to the double-big lineup at the right time, and he came up with a complicated “next” switching pick-and-roll coverage that helped the Celtics tamp down the Embiid-Harden pick-and-roll so well that even Embiid called it out postgame. He preached an “intentionality” about Game 7 that seemed to resonate with his team.
“I think nobody would have been surprised if he blew up, but he kept his composure,” Marcus Smart said. “He kept his poise and like I said, we believe in Joe, and Joe believes in us, and this is the reason why, right here. He might be a first-year coach, but that’s a guy who’s going to go to war and battle and that’s who you want on your team.”
7. The Celtics are frustrating. They are inconsistent. They have bad habits that seem to surface at some truly inopportune times.
But the Celtics are also certified in big-game situations. They have played in a lot of Game 7s. They have played in a couple of Game 6s that may have been even more high-pressure than their Game 7s. They haven’t always come through in those situations, but it’s clear they have learned a lot. At 25, Jayson Tatum has experienced more playoff heartache and regret than a lot of veterans experience in their entire careers. At 26, Jaylen Brown has been on every big stage and has taken on essentially every role imaginable.
The Celtics might drive you crazy sometimes, but they were cool, calm, and collected when facing franchise-altering stakes in Games 6 and 7. Their successes and failures have molded them into a team built for the postseason.
The Heat are similarly molded and will be a worthy challenger in the Eastern Conference Finals, but less than a week ago, it looked like the Celtics might be eliminated before they could face them. Tatum, Brown, Smart, and Horford — and yes, absolutely Joe Mazzulla — helped make sure they got a chance.
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