Six Thoughts: Embiid, Maxey Power Sixers to Game 7 Victory, Upset Celtics

Joel Embiid and Tyrese Maxey each notched at least 30 points, 11 rebounds and six assists to power the Sixers to win Game 7 in Boston, completing a 3-1 series comeback against the Celtics and advancing to the Eastern Conference Semifinals.

Here are six thoughts on Game 7.

Embiid's masterpiece

The big man came out firing in this game. But not in the way he did in Games 4 through 6, when he burned some possessions trying to shoot his way out of a 3-point slump. In this game, Embiid came out and immediately stuck an elbow jumper in the two-man game. He dominated the first half, amassing jumpers out of the post and on the move trailing Maxey in the pick-and-short-roll.

But just as Embiid did in Game 6, he orchestrated the offense, using Boston's defense against them. He helped amplify the team's pace in transition instead of slowing the offense down to walk his way into position, making quick passes ahead to V.J. Edgecombe and Maxey early on.

His passing vision didn't fail him when the pace slowed to a halfcourt setting as the first quarter wore on, Embiid finding cutters at the rim over and over again to punish Boston's shading toward the ball.

It's one thing to make the right read. It's another thing to make accurate passes. Embiid's passes were on target, allowing his teammates to receive the ball on the go and play with their momentum. The difference between that and a bad pass is a turnover, a defensive rotation that takes away the rim or a catch-and-shoot 3 that is off the mark because the pass takes the shooter out of their mechanical rhythm.

The non-Embiid minutes in the first half

If you could just eliminate non-Embiid minutes from this game, the Sixers likely would've been up at least 20 by halftime. But sending a high-usage player out there to play 48 minutes is a recipe for disaster if the game hands in the balance at the end. We also live in a world where appendicitis exists and asking so much from Embiid through three games of basketball would've been unrealistic.

Of course, a tale as old as time, a playoff opponent kicked the door down when Embiid departed the game, Boston cocking back and delivering a punch to take the lead in the early stages of the second quarter. Andre Drummond was very good in Game 6. His stint in Game 7 was a disaster, the Celtics outscoring the Sixers by six in his three minutes and 48 seconds.

It wasn't a plus-minus number that Drummond wore for his teammates' futility, either. He inexplicably stepped up to guard the non-shooting Neemias Queta high on the floor and got punished with Boston's big man winning the foot race to the rim for a dunk. That was just one of several mistakes in his brief run.

Drummond's poor play only led the way for the rest of the lineup, though. Paul George, for example, committed an obvious and unnecessary offensive foul pushing off a Celtic away from the ball.

It takes a village

Nurse went back to Drummond late in the third quarter, playing with fire once again. The Celtics bailed him out a bit, never even trying to get to the rim. Granted, the Drummond drop coverage can be a trap when a team that fires off 3s in bunches is cold. It's effectively a dare, giving Boston the runway to shoot open pull-up 3s. The Celtics simply could not capitalize on that. But rather than try to get deep into the paint as Drummond retreated, they stopped short and settled for off-balance jumpers in the mid-range.

The Sixers' perimeter defense had something to do with that. Everyone in the lineup helped Drummond, walling off drives and forcing the Celtics to shoot contested twos outside of the restricted area. Not only did the defense hold court, but the offense also stepped up in those minutes. Philadelphia complimented its efforts on defense with timely 3-point makes, George and V.J. Edgecombe combining to lace three 3s during that stretch to extend the lead with Embiid on the bench.

Credit goes to Maxey, too. He was quite passive in the first half, ostensibly because Embiid's mismatches could not be ignored. But when Embiid went to the bench, Maxey got the offense moving quickly. He didn't launch 3s during that stretch, instead blowing by Derrick White for a floater off a swing pass and shedding Baylor Scheierman on a drive for a pull-up jumper in the lane.

Barbecue chicken

How done was Joe Mazzulla with Nikola Vucevic missing 3s and getting roasted on defense? So much so that he trotted out lineups with Jordan Walsh and Jaylen Brown taking turns functioning as center when both Luka Garza and Neemias Queta got in foul trouble.

But that chaos was all because of Embiid, who asserted himself on offense the exact way that all of his biggest critics have always wanted him to. He muscled his way into the post and bullied the undersized Celtics into the restricted area, scoring through them over and over again. It got to a point where they had no choice but to foul him before the ball even got to his hands because of how physical they were in attempting to deny entry passes.

Still, Embiid didn't lose sight of the rest of the floor. He applied pressure with his physicality, making Boston send double-teams just to have any chance of bothering him. And in those moments, Embiid still made the right reads, leaving the ball for his teammates to make shots as punishment for Boston sending the extra pressure.

Rebounding won the series

There were absolutely some moments in which the Sixers just got beat and conceded open 3s. Such is inevitable when the opposition is hitting mid-to-high 40s in 3-point volume every game. But the Celtics did not punish the Sixers for the final three games of this series. And whereas Boston kept getting extra opportunities off of offensive rebounds—the best time to take a 3, anyway—early on, the Sixers found it within themselves to mitigate damage on the boards. Boston missed 36 3s in Game 7. They pulled down just 10 offensive rebounds.

Nurse's trust tree

When it came down to it, Nick Nurse trusted just one non-starter to play more than 10 minutes in a win-or-go-home game. Quentin Grimes played 26 minutes. We could very easily argue that Kelly Oubre, who had a rather bad game, would've played more had it not been for foul trouble. Outside of Grimes, Drummond was the only reserve to play more than five minutes in the game. Justin Edwards and Dominick Barlow played just over two minutes each.

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