Six Thoughts: Joel Embiid Carries Sixers to Comeback in Boston, Forcing Game 6

Joel Embiid scored 33 points and dished eight assists to lead the Sixers to a comeback victory over the Boston Celtics to stay alive and send the series back to Philadelphia.

Here are six thoughts on Game 5.

Another chance for Andre Drummond

Drummond's first stint of the game went decidedly better than his first stint of Game 4 went. It would've been very difficult for it to be worse, quite frankly. To Nick Nurse's credit, he had Drummond a little bit higher in coverage than he was in Game 4. So there was an adjustment there.

But the principle remains.

Joe Mazzulla matched the decision by going five-out on offense, bringing stretch big Nikola Vucevic into the game to either get Drummond guarding in space or punish the drop with open 3-point looks for the big man.

After a stable defensive start to the game, you saw cracks in the rotations as soon as that substitution was made. Philadelphia lost position on Boston's shooters right away because they were trying to help Drummond guard in space.

To Drummond's credit, he was OK in his minutes. The Sixers actually outscored the Celtics by a point in his four minutes and 23 seconds. But Nick Nurse, in a do or die game, put his trust in the hands of a veteran who is anything but trustworthy. He violated the principles of his own defensive game plan at tip-off—don't help, stay home off the ball—to roll the dice on a player who everyone knows cannot support that game plan. What is the definition of insanity?

None of this is to say that Adem Bona is more reliable. But he can actually maintain the coverage Philadelphia was in. At least give it a shot and see if you can keep the defensive rhythm going.

A rough Embiid first half

One of the several reasons this is a really challenging matchup for Philadelphia is that it forces you to feel like you need to shoot more 3s to keep pace with Boston's offense. And in some respects, that is correct. The Sixers have no chance against anyone if they can't push their 3-point volume into the 30s or 40s. But they did not put much pressure on the Celtics in the first quarter despite a slow start for Boston because they tried to kick-start their 3-point shooting when it was totally dead to start the game.

Aside from a few makes from Paul George early on, the Sixers had nothing going from deep. And Embiid fell into a sluggish floor-spacer approach on offense—to no avail. He had no touch from deep. When he did try to attack, he played to the contact quite a bit, losing the ball on strips and stopping when he sensed contact on shots.

You'll never catch this writer saying that Embiid shouldn't take 3s. But it does make you scratch your head when you see him drill a handful of mid-range jumpers, suggesting he does have some feel closer to the basket, only to keep trying from deep.

It wasn't just the offensive end that was bad for Embiid, either. He was not timely to the ball when the Celtics got deep in the paint, often rotating too late to make a difference.

Fortunately for Philadelphia, there are, indeed, two halves of basketball.

Flipped the switch

That first-half approach is what inspires Embiid's critics to deem him a pumpkin when the lights are the brightest. He came out with a far better mindset in the second half, and Boston had absolutely no answer. Nurse and company get credit for tweaking his catch points. Rather than putting the ball in Embiid's hands on the left wing extended to the top of the arc, the Sixers patiently waited for him to get isolated with his back to the basket from the block to the short corner on the left side of the floor.

Once he got the ball in those spots, he had the Celtics dead to rights. Embiid tortured Vucevic and Neemias Queta, backing them deep into the paint and collecting himself through Boston's help to score at the rim seamlessly.

As he started racking up scores with his body, Embiid found an excellent rhythm. The Sixers started getting the ball back to him in his sweet spots, trailing the play for walk-in isolations at the foul line and elbow extended and at the foul line in the two-man game with Tyrese Maxey.

Boston eventually tweaked its coverage, opting to front the post to deny Embiid catches. The Sixers simply lofted the ball over the top, setting him up for unbothered scores at the rim to beat the front.

Welcome to the series, Quentin Grimes

Payton Pritchard played bench hero for Boston in Games 3 and 4, leading what was a run of the Celtics' bench outscoring the Sixers' bench, 74-24, over a 53-minute span of this series. Grimes was the one to respond for Philadelphia.

It wasn't his best game of shot selection, but Grimes put down four 3s in this game. He also got fouled on a pair of 3s, silencing Boston momentum.

Perhaps the moment of his NBA career came in the back half of the fourth quarter. Grimes laced a wing 3 to put Philadelphia up by six and then disrupted a pass to Jaylen Brown that trickled into the backcourt. Rather than retreating once it was clear that Brown recovered the ball, Grimes hounded him in the backcourt, eating the shot clock all the way down to force an awkward clanking jumper from the Celtics star.

The backcourt rebounds

As the momentum flipped in the Sixers' favor, Philadelphia really shut down Boston's offense by competing on the defensive glass. You can credit Maxey and V.J. Edgecombe for helping end Boston possessions on the miss. They snatched down 17 rebounds between them, making up for Embiid only securing four of them.

Lockdown

With their season on the line, the Sixers held the Celtics to 3-for-22 shooting in the fourth quarter. Sam Hauser connected on a pair of 3s in the first four-and-a-half minutes of the quarter and Queta got a dunk with about seven minutes to play. The only other Boston points in the final frame came via Brown—at the charity stripe.

That's how you earn the right to live another day.

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