However disappointed the Sixers and their fans may feel about a five-game series loss to the depleted Celtics, their season was an enormous success. They won a playoff series, and were the favorites to win another, and they certainly look closer to championship contention than all but maybe two or three other teams in…
After half a decade under head coach Brett Brown and four years and two contracts into the career of star center Joel Embiid—the team’s only All-Star—the Philadelphia 76ers and their fans face a moment of reckoning. It’s a painful one, but it won’t get any less painful if we ignore it. The facts are what they are, and…
Nobody needs it explained to them that it’s relatively normal for a rookie, no matter how talented, to play like ass for an entire series in the second round of his first trip to the playoffs. This is how things are generally supposed to go.
The Celtics are one more decently bad injury away from barely being able to field a full NBA-caliber rotation, but that didn’t stop the guys they have left from carrying their team to a 114-112 Game 5 win over the 76ers, clinching Boston’s spot in the Eastern Conference Finals.
A last-second surprise from Sixers coach Brett Brown proved to be the difference-maker in his team’s Game 4 against the Celtics. For only the second time all season, reserve Philly point guard T.J. McConnell got a spot in the starting lineup, replacing small forward Robert Covington, who had failed to make a field…
When I look at Philadelphia 76ers guard Ben Simmons, I see a very tall and extremely talented young basketball player with a resting dick face and no jump shot. When Boston Celtics coach Brad Stevens looks at him, he sees a curious foraging bear. For this reason, he is a basketball coaching genius.
It’s not that the Sixers are dumb. They’re not. They are, in fact, quite tough and disciplined. But it is also true that their best players are children, and they are playing a series against one of the very sharpest, most wisely and meticulously coached NBA teams you will ever see. And the consequence of that dynamic…
Marco Belinelli’s fade-away buzzer-beater forced overtime against the Celtics after a J.J. Redick turnover left the Sixers looking at a 3-0 series deficit before the Italian’s heroics.
Aron Baynes has to retire now, those are the rules.
In the most basic sense, there’s the 22-point comeback. There’s also the complete disassembling of Ben Simmons and Terry Rozier’s fearlessness and Al Horford’s craft and a whole host of other things that explain how a Boston Celtics team missing both its two best players and a full-strength Jaylen Brown have taken a…
The Celtics were probably going to win Game 2 no matter what happened in the last 30 seconds. They’d already come back from a 22-point deficit and were ahead by three with half a minute to play. But the Sixers did something to lessen their already-small chances of winning late last night: They didn’t foul.
With a little more than five minutes remaining in the first half tonight, Robert Covington drained a three, stretching the 76ers’ lead over the Celtics to 21 points. Philadelphia was in control here, with no signs of loosening their grip. And then they sent all of that to hell. Over the next quarter and a half, they…
Coming into this postseason, Al Horford’s playoff reputation never really stood out. He spent most of his career on a series of Hawks teams that were doomed to be steamrolled by LeBron James every spring. In the 17 times he met James in the playoffs, he only won one game, and that was on his 15th try. Horford has…
Ben Simmons was soundly outplayed by wee Terry Rozier in Game 1 of the Eastern Conference semifinals. Simmons still had 18 points on 6-of-11 shooting but did not connect on any shot farther than three feet from the rim. Many of his usual pinpoint passes landed in the hands of teammates who collectively shot an arctic…
The 76ers had nearly a week off between closing out their easy first-round series against the Heat and kicking off their second-round one against the Celtics, and it showed. Against a Boston squad missing Jaylen Brown, who was sidelined with a hamstring injury, they couldn’t hang—getting beat down by a final score of…
That’s my guy. Looking like Crossfit Benedict Cumberbatch. Love to see this type of vigor.
Miami Heat center Hassan Whiteside entered the NBA playoffs grumbling about his diminished role on the team, and the proceeded to give his squad absolutely nothing of value while playing limited minutes in the first two games of their series against the Sixers. But last night offered a chance for redemption, as Joel…
After missing a few weeks with a concussion and an orbital fracture, Joel Embiid is finally back on the floor for tonight’s Game 3 against the Heat—with a pretty sick mask, goggles included. Constructing the thing was apparently quite the project...
