Halfway Through the Series, Maybe Tyrese Maxey Is Right

PHILADELPHIA — Tyrese Maxey was uncharacteristically blunt.

Perhaps he was just being the leader he's been all season, setting the tone at the top for a message he wanted to trickle down to his teammates.

Or maybe he was just sick and tired of hearing about how much better the Boston Celtics supposedly are than the Sixers.

Maxey was asked whether the Sixers thought their first-round series with the Celtics would be more competitive than many pundits at the national level expected it to be.

"Yeah, I could care less what they say. Honestly. I could care less what they got to say," he replied before the person asking could spit the question out.

"We know who we are and we believe in the group that we have. We've battled with them all year. We battled with pretty much everybody all year. So, yeah, I could care less what the national whoever say. Whatever."

It's not just lip service. He might be right.

The Celtics are good. They have the formula to win at a high level in the regular season.

But this series feels like proof that the regular season and the playoffs are entirely different animals.

In the regular season, you're trying to get through 82 healthy. You're trying to catch the first bus so you don't miss the team's flight to the next destination. You're trying to cram film and game preparation into small windows. You're trying to get some rest.

You may cycle through three or four different opponents in any one week.

Top-end talent, health and some luck in either direction are probably dictating most of your outcomes.

The story is different in the playoffs.

And at some point during Game 3, it felt clear that these Celtics are not the same ones that have tortured Philadelphia for decades.

The doubt you feel is the scar tissue. The memories of previous disappointments. The urge to protect yourself from feeling hope so that you're not crushed if it doesn't end well.

And, by the way, their series of transactions last offseason made it clear they weren't trying to be those Celtics, either.

Paul Pierce, Ray Allen and Kevin Garnett are not walking through that door. Al Horford, Robert Williams III and Marcus Smart are not coming to torment Philadelphia.

Boston is undoubtedly a deeper regular-season team than the Sixers are.

Guess what? By the end of Game 3, the Sixers had played starting center Neemias Queta—who has had the season of his life—down to 13 minutes of trust from Joe Mazzulla because he's a drop big. Third-string big man Luka Garza, who can shoot and rebound but cannot defend in space, only got four minutes.

35-year-old Nikola Vucevic played 30-and-a-half minutes in Game 3. He can't defend in space, but he can credibly shoot and rebound.

By the end of Game 3, Mazzulla's rotation technically sat at 10 players. If we want to be real, it was really nine players because Garza played one short stint.

The Sixers are sitting at eight players worthy of Nurse's trust.

Philadelphia has already strategized starting wing Sam Hauser and reserve wing Baylor Scheierman down in minutes because they're both liable to be targeted in isolation by the Sixers' offense.

Boston's depth is skilled, but it has clear limitations.

Super sixth man Payton Pritchard can dig into a stance and push against the floor all he wants. He's still only 6-foot-2 with a 6-foot-5 wingspan. He can be targeted.

The more you dig into this matchup, the more you can poke holes at every single piece surrounding Jayson Tatum, Jaylen Brown and Derrick White.

The more they resemble one of the several other teams Sixers fans have seen but do not fear.

Boston shot 16-for-44 from 3 in Game 1. The Sixers weren't ready. They shot 13-for-50 in Game 2. The Sixers won by 14. The Celtics laced 20 of their 47 3-point attempts in Game 3. Even by their own lofty standard, that is just about the highest level of shooting you can hit in a game.

And yet, the Sixers held a one-point lead with eight minutes and 42 seconds remaining in the game.

They absorbed a shooting game that was near the top of what any team can submit in this league, and it took Pritchard netting a step-back 3 going to his left with a minute and 17 seconds to play and a Tatum 29-footer with 29 seconds left to put the Sixers away.

The series is 2-1, Boston.

A pivotal Game 4 will tip-off on Sunday night in Philadelphia. But the Sixers should take solace in knowing that they've already absorbed one of the Celtics' strongest hits and still had every chance to win.

"1000%. We could obviously tell, like, they heard their fans. They read the media reports about what they lacked in Game 2. And they went out there and just did that. But we were still close," Kelly Oubre told reporters at Saturday's film session.

"It was a fight til the end. It was a couple plays that, if we would've cleaned up, it would've been a different story. And tomorrow, we'll clean those things up and we'll be ready for battle."

Philadelphia and Boston are neck and neck in halfcourt offense this series, per Cleaning The Glass.

The Celtics are seventh amongst playoff teams in points added per 100 possessions by transition play, per Cleaning The Glass. They are fourth amongst playoff teams in points scored per 100 transition plays.

This series is being decided on the margins right now.

Nurse remembers three possessions down the stretch of Game 3 that hurt: Two turnovers and a low-quality wing 3 from Paul George.

"Turnover leads to a basket. Offensive rebound leads to a 3. It's, like, every time. Every single time. We're doing a helluva job defensively guarding them. Helluva job in the halfcourt. Everybody fighting and doing a really good job," Maxey said after Game 3.

"But it's like offensive rebound, 3-ball. Turnover, 3-ball or layup. Missed box-out, layup. But when you play good teams, that's what it is. You got to be sharp. Extremely sharp in the playoffs, man. You're seeing it."

They've experienced a voluminous shooting game by the Celtics. Philadelphia has already seen excellence in shotmaking from Boston's two stars.

The one thing they have yet to see is an excellent offensive game from White. That's a wild card.

But the Sixers have a wild card of their own.

One that could flip the series with how close things have been to this point.

Joel Embiid is listed as 'doubtful' on the initial injury report ahead of Game 4.

The Sixers held media availability on Saturday away from the team's practice court, a rarity, because Embiid was on the floor getting work in.

"He's on the court right now, doing individual work. He's working as hard as he can to get back and we're just going to have to see how it goes here today and tomorrow morning and maybe we'll know more toward the end of shootaround tomorrow," Nurse said.

The Celtics won't fear an Embiid return. They've seen the Sixers too many times to be perturbed. But it's still only Queta, Vucevic and Garza there to get in his way from a positional matchup standpoint.

"They've been through the battles. They've been through the wars," Maxey said Friday night.

"In our case, you got to fight. You got to fight like hell and push them to the limit and we can do that and we will do that.

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