Jaylen Brown Explains Celtics' Mentality Before Game 6 vs. 76ers
The Boston Celtics hoped they could garner a 3-2 lead with a Game 5 victory at home on Tuesday night. After splitting games on the road against the Philadelphia 76ers, losing by one point in overtime during Game 4, the Celtics were set up for success on Tuesday.
But as Jaylen Brown put it after the Game 5 battle — Boston dropped the ball.
The Sixers put together their most impressive performance of the second-round series in Game 5. Offensively, five players scored double-digits, with both Joel Embiid and Tyrese Maxey scoring at least 30 points.
Meanwhile, James Harden and Tobias Harris notched double-doubles, while Danuel House Jr. was an excellent spark off the bench for the Sixers as he led the unit with ten points.
Defensively, the Sixers made the matchup tough for the Celtics. Boston shot under 40 percent and was out-rebounded 49-36. Also, the Sixers blocked four more shots than Boston, with all but one of the Sixers’ blocks courtesy of the big man, Joel Embiid.
The Sixers left Boston with a 115-103 victory. With that win, they took a 3-2 lead in the series and are set to battle it out for Game 6 at the Wells Fargo Center in South Philly on Thursday night. Although the Celtics no longer hold the home-court advantage with their backs against the wall on Thursday night, Brown hopes his team has a “short-term memory.”
“I think we can get better, and I think we will be better,” said the star forward.
Brown and the Celtics are no strangers to being placed in this position. During last season’s playoff run, the Celtics needed to fire off two-straight wins after losing Game 5 at home in order to advance to the Eastern Conference Finals. While Boston executed then — they understand this isn’t last season.
“Last year’s over with,” Brown said. “This year, we gotta come out and be better than we were tonight, or we’ll have a different ending. Obviously, we’re still in this series. We got to muster up whatever we got left to be better for Game 6.”
“We got a resilient group,” he added. “Tonight, it just seemed like the door wasn’t open. It seemed like we couldn’t get nothing going, and every game’s got its own story. That’s the beauty of basketball. I believe in my guys. I think that we can come out and be inspired to play the next game. We just gotta be ready to go. The past is the past. We could talk about a lot of stuff that happened in this series that could’ve went the other way, and it didn’t. Right now, we got in front of us a great opportunity. To mull in the past would take that opportunity away from us. We just got to be ready to play basketball. That’s it. Come out and play Celtic basketball.”
The Sixers and the Celtics are set to begin Game 6 on Thursday night at 7:30 PM ET.
