Young 76ers face first major test of the post-'Process' era

On Feb. 2, the Philadelphia 76ers beat the Miami Heat to bring their season record to 25-24. They were showing flashes of what the future would hold with both Ben Simmons and Joel Embiid healthy, but they were barely playing .500 basketball. Had the trend continued, they still would have finished with 13 more wins than the season before with nothing but good things to look forward to in the seasons to come.

Instead, the Sixers went 27-6 over their last 33 games, including winning their final 16 games to close out the regular season. Even with Embiid hurt for the final eight games of the season, the team refused to falter, winning the games without their All-Star center by an average of 14.6 points per game, which included two playoff teams in the Cleveland Cavaliers and Milwaukee Bucks.

These 76ers, for the first time in three months, look like a team that has a lot to learn about itself. The Boston Celtics handed Philly its first loss of more than 15 points since Dec. 23 and looked great doing it even without Kyrie Irving or Jaylen Brown. Terry Rozier was a monster, Marcus Smart was everywhere, Jayson Tatum showed why he was a front-runner for Rookie of the Year early in the season and Al Horford quietly held everything together.

The Celtics wanted to keep Simmons out of the lane and did just that, disrupting everything else Philly likes to do on offense. They kept their mistakes to a minimum and passed up good shots for great ones to limit the number of transition opportunities for Philly. They played a perfect basketball game, and the 76ers are going to have to regroup.

Fortunately, this is exactly what they’ve done all season, and they have the talent to make the necessary adjustments. The Celtics, if nothing else, are showcasing how terrifying this team is going to be when everyone is fully healthy; these 76ers have to showcase what their team can look like when fully matured.

The Process is a weird era that ended up panning out way better than Sam Hinkie could have ever imagined, but so much of that process fell to the players to fill necessary roles around a youthful nucleus. J.J. Redick, Marco Belinelli and Ersan Ilyasova allow Embiid, Simmons and Dario Saric to become the collective faces of 76ers basketball — and that trio has shown that they belong on the court with anyone.

The Celtics are the necessary kind of challenge for a young team that needs to learn how to win with more than just the strength of its talent. Boston is a team that thrives on even the smallest of mistakes on either end of the floor, and for the 76ers to take that next necessary leap, the details need to be cleaned up. Simmons turned the ball over seven times while the whole team shot a collective 5-for-26 from three. Finishing a game minus-36 from beyond the arc isn’t going to win any games in the postseason.

Even with the turnovers and poor shooting from three, the 76ers are going to have to find a way to defend these Celtics. Philly’s strength all season has been its ability to get stops and turn those stops into transition opportunities. The Sixers had the fourth most efficient defense in the NBA but looked like a bunch of kids scrambling against the varsity team in the second half of Game 1.

Embiid finished with 31, 13 and five; Simmons finished with 18, seven and six; and Saric contributed 12, seven and four. This is the recipe if the team can get stops. Brett Brown has made all the necessary adjustments all season, and after working with Gregg Popovich for years, this is the first time in which we’ll get to see how he handles real adversity in a playoff setting against an extremely well-coached team.

The Process is processing a tough loss, but the series can still shift in the Sixers' favor by taking Game 2 and heading back to Philly with home-court advantage. Another loss and they’re in a deep hole to dig themselves out of. This team has rebounded from losses well, though, and it’s hard to imagine them not turning things around before the series concludes.