Brown was desperate to spark the Sixers and benched slumping forward Robert Covington (0 for 14 combined in Games 1 and 3) for McConnell.
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Embiid said Simmons came to him and showed him his hands while saying, “there’s going to be a lot of (championship) rings in the future”. In the first three games, Boston outscored Philadelphia by 1, 9 and 4 points in the third quarter. But they blew it at the end, as Joel Embiid lost a ball out of bounds with a chance to tie things with around 10 seconds left.
The Philadelphia 76ers could no longer afford to lose in their second-round series with the Boston Celtics. Smart missed the first, and while trying to also intentionally miss the second, sank it for a two-point Boston lead, 114-112. After that, he hustled down the court and intercepted a pass on the inbound play to seal the win for the Celtics. The sequence was Marcus Smart in a nutshell. There is a reason, Brown kept saying, why none of the first 129 National Basketball Association teams to have fallen into an 0-3 hole were unable to recover and win a series.
Al Horford, the teams leader and veteran voice, has acted as a unifying theory for Boston, but its been the development of the Celtics’ younger players that have driven the majority of their success, none more so than their pair of precocious wings in Jaylen Brown and Jayson Tatum.
Only Horford and Terry Rozier have played more clutch minutes than James this postseason, and Cleveland has outscored opponents by 31 points in clutch time this postseason.
“I think we were in a hole too deep, that we put ourselves in”, Simmons said.
Aside from his concerns over Tatum, Brown said repeatedly that he feels good about his players’ mindset heading into another elimination game. Redick then sank a three-pointer to make it a one-point game, 113-112, 4.7 seconds remaining in the clock.
It was back-and-forth all game, with Terry Rozier hitting a buzzer beater to help give the Celtics a 61-52 lead at the half. Embiid had 27 points, 12 rebounds, four assists and four blocks while Saric posted 27 points, 10 rebounds, four assists and a block.
A bombastic Embiid is the ideal archrival, riding momentum after picking up a technical foul to help the Sixers erase a double-digit deficit and even take the lead in the fourth quarter. It was Rozier’s first turnover in the fourth quarter of the playoffs.
Boston scored six straight to go up 100-94 on Rozier’s finger roll with 5:27 left.
That lead wouldn’t hold, as Philadelphia ripped off a 11-2 run.
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That has always been their go-to lineup in critical situations and in Game 4, it looked up for the task as it registered an offensive rating of 130.1 and a defensive rating of 66.5 for a net rating of 63.6 – a great sign for Golden State’s bid to repeat as champions.
