The Philadelphia 76ers' James Harden hits the game winning three point shot past the Boston Celtics' ... [+]
A day after a visiting Florida Panthers team eliminated the Boston Bruins with a shocking overtime victory, the Philadelphia 76ers, operating without the likely NBA MVP, defeated the Boston Celtics in Game 1 of their second-round matchup. Now, the Celtics are down 0-1 in the series and hoping to reverse a troubling trend taking place in their own city.
See, in the last four playoff games played in Boston’s TD Garden, the home team has gone 0-4. The nightmare began a week ago today with a Trae Young game-winner in Game 5 between the Celtics and the Atlanta Hawks. The Bruins then dropped two straight home games, including Sunday’s crushing Game 7 loss that instantly earned a place on the Mt. Rushmore of all-time Boston sports collapses.
Boston fans were still attempting to process that heartbreaking defeat when the Celtics took the floor against a 76ers team playing without Joel Embiid. Boston came out ready to score, going 17-for-20 on field goal attempts in the first quarter. However, the team’s postseason defensive woes continued, allowing James Harden to put together a vintage James Harden showcase where he scored 45 points, including a backbreaking three-pointer to ice the game.
It should have been shocking, but it wasn’t. Even before the playoffs began, the consensus regarding this otherwise impressive Celtics squad was that they had a maddening habit of playing down to the level of competition. Because of this, many suspected that Embiid’s absence could, counterintuitively, end up working in Philadelphia’s favor. After the loss, Boston big man Al Horford echoed these concerns, noting that their defensive pressure just wasn’t there in a game where the 76ers shot 50.6% from the field.
Now, the Celtics have lost home court advantage in this series, complicating what should have been an easy pathway toward an NBA Finals return. In perhaps a preview of the top-seeded Bruins’ collapse, the Milwaukee Bucks had already lost to the eighth-seeded Miami Heat in the first round. Now, Giannis Antetokounmpo was on the shelf until next season and Embiid would be dealing with a knee sprain for at least the start of the upcoming series.
If the Celtics were busy looking ahead at their potential competition in the West, Harden just reminded them why they shouldn’t have. It was a lesson they shouldn’t have needed after the Hawks nearly forced a Game 7 in the previous round. On paper, Hawks-Celtics looked like a potential sweep, but bad habits picked up late in the regular season continued to plague Boston.
The Celtics have yet to shake them off. Against the 76ers last night, they managed to hurt themselves nearly as much as their opponents did, committing a brutal 16 turnovers on their way to a four-point loss.
The Celtics won’t admit it, but the Bruins’ unfathomably early playoff exit has put even more pressure on them. With the New England Patriots and Boston Red Sox currently shadows of their former selves, the hope was that the two TD Garden teams would follow up their regular season successes with deep postseason runs. Instead, the Bruins couldn’t even last until April and the Celtics now must carry the burden of the city’s championship hopes all by themselves.
