5 Reasons Boston Celtics Lost Game 2 to Philadelphia 76ers, Including Hot Shooting

BOSTON — The Sixers evened up their opening round series with the Celtics thanks to a convincing 111-97 Game 2 win. The Celtics failed to score 100 points and the Sixers couldn't miss.

Here are five reasons the Celtics lost.

They turned the ball over too much

Protecting the ball was rule number one in this series. On Sunday, I wrote:

“More than anything, the Celtics need to limit their live-ball turnovers. While the Sixers were never an elite defensive team, they were 6th in the NBA in steals and 11th in points off turnovers. So even for a middle of the pack defensive team, they will gamble for the big payoff.”

Well, the Sixers cashed in 15 points off 13 turnovers and were +5 in that margin. The Celtics made some absurd pass attempts in this game, showing a lack of focus and execution.

The Sixers got blistering hot from three

This was the number one adjustment after Game 1. It didn’t take a genius to understand the Sixers were never going to win the math if they didn’t start taking a bunch of three-pointers.

So the Sixers took 16 more threes, and made 15 more than they did in Game 1. They were +18 from the three-point line, which is a bit surprising. They went from their fourth-lowest output to their sixth-highest between Games 1 and 2.

I doubt they can keep hitting half their threes in this series, but the volume gives them a chance to get hot like they did in this game.

VJ Edgecombe was awesome

The Celtics didn’t seem too worried about him in this game and he made them pay. He scored 30 points and went 6-10 from three.

“I think we all knew where the shots were going to come from,” he said after the game. “. We knew where we were going to get the shots from, where the help was going to be at … so we kept trusting each other and I was in the spot and they wanted me to shoot the ball. It wouldn't have been right if I didn't shoot the ball, so I had to shoot the ball, hit wide open shots and try to get my teammates assists.”

The Celtics got nothing from their non-stars

Jaylen Brown scored 36, Jayson Tatum had 19, and no other Celtics hit double-digits. Sam Hauser, Derrick White, and Payton Pritchard combined to shoot 4-22 from three.

It goes without saying that those guys need to do more. Each of them had chances to hit huge shots especially in the fourth quarter, and it was just miss after miss after miss.

"[We have to] just keep finding them. Just keep trusting them,” Brown said after the game. “I thought Sam and Payton both got good looks tonight. Both got some open shots. That's what we want. Continue to trust that process. But just continuing to play Celtics basketball. It starts on defense and then getting out and running also leads to the type of energy that we need. We trust Payton. We trust Sam. We trust Baylor. We trust all of those guys to come in and impact the game. We just gotta continue to stay consistent with that and we'll be okay."

They made bad defensive decisions

Everyone is going to be harping on the drop coverage late in the game to allow Tyrese Maxey to step into wide open three-pointers. I’m not sure why that was the choice the Celtics made.

But beyond that, there were double-teams Mazzulla himself was questioning from the sideline. There were miscommunications. There were flat-out mistaken coverages. It wasn’t exactly a crisp defensive effort.

“I think it starts with the stuff that we can control,” Mazzulla said. “When you don't do those things, it puts pressure [you], and we have to be able to be better at those things. Credit to them. They made shots. So start with that, move to our pick-and-roll defense, whether it's our body position, whether it's the timing of our shifts, the level of our shifts, and we adjust from there.”

Game 3 is Friday night at 7 on Prime Video.

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