Joel Embiid was awesome. He hit just about everything. When the Celtics played off him and lived with his jumper, he drilled it. When they played up on him, he drove past them. When they brought help, he found the open guy.
It was a dominant performance.
And it didn’t matter to the Celtics.
Boston came out of the loss to the Sixers seemingly unbothered by Embiid’s outburst. They didn’t care to show their full package of defenses against him, instead choosing to mostly single-cover. It wasn’t until the very end that Joe Mazzulla decided to send some help, and he got burned by Embiid actually passing out of traps and blitzes effectively.
“We were right in that sweet spot of like, how long are you willing to live with something?” Mazzulla said. “Credit to them they made the three big shots that kind of took the game from us a little bit, but credit to our guys for continuing to fight and we got it down in the last possession and I think we executed our end of game stuff really well.”
Now that the Celtics are firmly the second seed (technically, the top 3 seeds are still fluid, but no one expects the weird confluence of events to make anything other than the current seeding happen), they know a second-round matchup against the Sixers is very likely. It’s not like there isn't a ton of game film on how Boston defends Embiid. They’ve done it pretty effectively for years, but they simply were not going to give Doc Rivers any fresh data that can be used against them in what’s expected to be an eventual playoff series.
And so Embiid was allowed to cook. Different guys got a crack at him, and one by one, Embiid roasted them all. The wet bandits were more successful against Kevin McCallister than Boston’s defense was against Embiid -- though to be fair, Embiid wasn’t allowed to use paint cans tied to ropes in the rafters (Grant Williams might feel like he got hit by a couple, though).
Embiid hit 80% of his shots, putting up a stat line we haven't seen since Wilt Chamberlain was dominating for the Philadelphia Warriors. And yet, the Celtics were still right there at the end.
Boston did a lot of things it wanted to do against Philadelphia. They took 13 more shots than the Sixers and matched them at the free-throw line. They won the points off turnovers battle by nine and the second chance points by 14. The only thing they couldn't do was hit the open shots they generated.
“I think our offense, we weren't elite tonight,” Mazzulla said. “When your offense isn’t elite, it puts pressure on your defense against great, great players like tonight. And so when you have some empty possessions and he’s playing that way from mid range, you just gotta stick with it as long as you can. If Tucker doesn't make those three threes, it's a completely different game. Or if we let Embiid keep going maybe he misses a couple, I don't know.”
Embiid missing a couple was probably the plan because that's definitely something I expected. I was fine with all the shots he was getting because I expected him to tail off and start missing in the fourth quarter. He just never did.
So the Celtics watched Embiid have an outlier game against them, without the benefit of having Jaylen Brown or Robert Williams to make him work a little harder or match him shot-for-shot on the other end.
And they still had their chances to win. Could they have unleashed a few tricks to make it happen, even without two of their most important players? Sure. That game was within reach for the Celtics if they really wanted to go for it.
But, with the top seed already effectively out of reach and just one more win necessary to clinch the second seed, Boston clearly decided tipping their hand wasn’t worth it in this situation; that holding back and hitting the Sixers with new stuff in the playoffs and forcing them to adjust on the fly was better than giving them a month to prepare for the test.
Embiid actually owes Boston one here. This performance might be the one that clinches enough votes for the MVP. Dropping a 52/13/6 on 80% shooting could be what sways the final few voters his way to get the award he’s very obviously been craving for a very long time.
Maybe he can pay the Celtics back in the second round. In fact, I think the Celtics are counting on it. There's a good chance he won’t see one-on-one defense by the Celtics in May, which means there's a good chance he won’t be seeing the court at all in June.