Celtics Embarrass Sixers in Dominant Game 7 Win

Jayson+Tatum+of+the+Boston+Celtics.

Jayson Tatum of the Boston Celtics.

Ryan Dean, Sports Writer

The Celtics and Sixers faced off in a Game 7 to decide who moves on to the Eastern Conference Finals to face the Miami Heat.  

Boston has struggled at home in the playoffs recently, especially in this series, going 1-2. The Celtics got off to a terrible start, while the Sixers got it going early with the 2023 MVP Joel Embiid fueling Philadelphia. 

The Celtics went down early at the end of the 1st quarter. Then the game started getting chippy. Sixers guard James Harden received a flagrant foul, penalty 1, for elbowing Jaylen Brown in the face. A flagrant foul is assessed when a player is accused of using a forceful blow to the head unnecessarily. Jaylen Brown then scored 6 straight points to tie up the game.  

Jayson Tatum, who I said needed to have a big game, did great in the first half, scoring 25 points. From this point on, the Celtics dominated the game. They outscored the Sixers 33-10 in the third quarter and Tatum had more points than their whole team in that period. The Celtics did the same in the fourth quarter, taking over and winning the game by a score of 112-88. 

The Celtics defense was locking up Joel Embiid, holding the MVP to 15 points and only making 4 shots the whole game. They also limited the other Sixers star, James Harden, to 9 points. Jayson Tatum finished the contest with 51 points, which is the most points scored by a player in a game 7 of all time. The Celtics now have a date with the Miami Heat, with Game 1 on Wednesday at 8:30 EST on TNT. 

My thoughts for this series are simple: stop Jimmy Butler. We cannot let Jimmy Butler get going in this series or else we could go home. We must put Jaylen Brown on him, as he has been our best guard defender these playoffs. He held James Harden to a minimum for most of the last series.  

Jaylen Brown can hold Jimmy to a minimum as well. We should run our double big lineup once again just like we did in these last 2 games. This team is unbelievably good with this lineup, especially on the defensive side, holding the elite Sixers offense to 88 and 86 points in the last 2 games.  

Robert Williams III is an X-Factor in this series, and we will have to see if he can hold Heat star center Bam Adebayo to a minimum as well. Al Horford also must get hot from 3. Al Horford needs to get it going, effectively spacing out the floor so Bam will not clog the paint, making it easier to get better, high percentage shots at the rim. 

This series will be a clash of 2 great teams, but I have my Celtics winning this series in 6 games. I feel like since we have home court advantage and a better roster, we have the upper hand in this series. The play of our 6th man of the year Malcolm Brogdon will give us an extra push off the bench. Our bench is the best in basketball. There are no weak links on this team. This team is hungry for championship number 18, especially after making it all the way last year but coming up 2 games short.  Let’s see how they do tomorrow, May 17th, in their next match up.