Celtics drub Sixers 135-87, put damper on day team introduces James Harden | Analysis

The Philly boos came out when Shake Milton lost the ball on a second-quarter turnover.

The reaction shifted to an exasperated groan when Jaylen Brown hit a three-pointer that pushed the Boston Celtics’ lead to 24 with less than seven minutes to play before halftime.

Then those fans chanted their displeasure at the officials when Joel Embiid was called for a foul at the 5:15 mark of that period.

And that was before things turned even uglier in the second half.

A disastrous on-court performance put a damper on what began as a celebratory day for the 76ers, who officially welcomed superstar James Harden and veteran big man Paul Millsap to the team before getting drubbed 135-87 by the Celtics hours later at the Wells Fargo Center.

“They were better tonight in every way,” coach Doc Rivers said. “Coaching. Playing. If there’s another category, they were better in that. ... This game was over early, and you can just see it. We were flat. Offensively, we just had no life all night.”

It was by far the Sixers’ most lopsided loss of the season. They trailed by as many as 51 points and shot just 28.8% from the floor.

The Sixers’ fanfare from the afternoon initially continued into the pregame festivities, when Harden stepped to midcourt to ring the bell. He also spent the game sitting on the Sixers’ bench, cheering teammates on while wearing a red get-up that resembled a coat with the sleeves cut off. He will not play until after the All-Star break while continuing to rehab a hamstring injury that kept him out of his final three games with the Nets before last week’s blockbuster trade.

Though Harden’s presence represented what’s to come for the Sixers during the regular season’s home stretch, Tuesday’s loss was a stinger. It was the rival Celtics’ ninth win in a row and 12th victory in their last 13 games to rise to sixth in the Eastern Conference standings and make them a possible Sixers playoff opponent.

It does not get much easier for the Sixers (34-23), whose final game before the All-Star break is Thursday at the defending-champion Milwaukee Bucks.

“This is an easy one to flush,” said reserve forward Georges Niang, who finished with nine points and four rebounds. “You don’t like to remember stuff like this, but we’ll remember the feeling of what it’s like to get served up pretty good, and I know we won’t let that happen again.”

A quick scan of the box score illustrated why this game got so lopsided, so quickly.

At the end of the night, the Celtics had made more three-pointers (25) than the Sixers had made field goals (23).

Boston drained 11 of its first 15 three-pointers and finished 25-of-45 from deep, including Jaylen Brown’s make right before the first-half buzzer to push Boston’s advantage to 69-42. The Celtics also scored 20 points in transition (14 in the first half).

The Sixers, meanwhile, made just 8 of their 32 shots from beyond the arc. The only time they gained any sort of offensive traction was a 10-0 run that cut Boston’s lead to 58-41 on an Embiid jumper with less than three minutes to play. But the Celtics answered with an 11-1 spurt to take their comfortable advantage into the locker room.

“From a player’s experience, I’ll tell you that it’s pretty deflating when you have to take the ball out of the net every single time,” Niang said. “And if you compound that with turnovers, missed shots over the longevity of the game ... you saw the end product of those guys playing with confidence while they’re making shots, and us being frustrated and playing stagnant when we missed shots and weren’t getting stops.”

Rivers said his team did not penetrate enough against Boston’s switch-heavy defense. The Celtics, meanwhile, consistently got into the paint for kick-out passes to open shooters. When asked if guarding bigger wings, such as Celtics stars Jayson Tatum (28 points, 12 rebounds, 6 assists) and Jaylen Brown (29 points, 8 rebounds) is a challenge for the Sixers’ smaller backcourt, Rivers acknowledged, “Oh yeah. No doubt.”

“You watch Boston play and you can literally see the improvement of their ball movement,” Rivers said. “The old Boston is more isos. This Boston is driving and playing with each other, and that’s what makes them so much tougher. I think it makes Tatum and Brown even tougher when they move the ball like that.”

The lopsided score meant a shorter-than-average night for Embiid, who finished with 19 points, 9 rebounds and 6 assists. It was the first time the NBA’s leading scorer entering Tuesday failed to reach 20 points since a Dec. 15 home loss to Miami, a streak of 26 consecutive games played.

Embiid, like his team, struggled from the floor (3-of-9). Thirteen of his points came on 16 free-throw attempts, including an 11-of-14 mark in the first half.

Perhaps impacting Embiid’s shot-making is the hand/arm injury that he has been nursing for several days. He grabbed his taped-up arm multiple times after shooting free throws.

He missed his first four shots, but collected four rebounds and four assists in the first quarter alone. His first field goal came on a pull-up jumper with less than six minutes to play in the second period, and followed that up with a thunderous one-handed dunk. He only scored two points in eight second-half minutes.

The only other Sixer who finished in double figures was Tyrese Maxey, who scored 11 points on 3-of-11 shooting.

Embiid did not speak to the media after after the game.

Rare cheers emerged from the home crowd when Millsap entered the game for the first time as a Sixer at the start of the fourth quarter. He finished with nine points on 3-of-6 shooting, three rebounds and one assist in nine minutes, playing alongside second-year big man Paul Reed and rookie center Charles Bassey.

It was Millsap’s first game action since mid-January, when he and the Nets mutually decided to find him a new playing destination. Since then, he had been working out and playing pick-up ball in Atlanta before joining the Sixers. He said he missed a couple defensive assignments Tuesday and had a few ballhandlers blow by him, but overall “it felt great to get back out there.”

“I feel like I can get out there and contribute, but that’s coach’s call,” said Millsap, a four-time All-Star. “I’ll leave that up to him, and whenever he calls my name, I’ll be ready. ... Tonight, for me, it was really learning.

“[I’m] trying to get a feel for the guys and get a feel for the game plan and everything that goes with it. So it’s still a whirlwind right now, trying to figure all that out, but it’s going to come.”

Perhaps that’s why Reed, who has been the backup center since Andre Drummond departed as part of the trade, stayed in that role while Embiid rested in the first half. Reed scored two points on an athletic dunk off a nifty bounce pass from Milton late in the first quarter, and added two rebounds in the six-minute stint. He played another 10 minutes in the second half, recording two more rebounds during that stretch.

Bassey also got seven late minutes at center with the game out of reach.

Join The Inquirer’s Gina Mizell, Keith Pompey, and DeAntae Prince live from the NBA’s All-Star Weekend in Cleveland on Feb. 18 at 4:30 PM. They’ll discuss Joel Embiid’s role as an All-Star Game starter and Tyrese Maxey’s appearance in the Rising Stars Game, plus the latest forecast for the remainder of the season and updates from the league’s Feb. 10 trade deadline on Inquirer LIVE.

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