The Boston Celtics beat the Philadelphia 76ers by 32 on Sunday afternoon, going wire-to-wire to take a 1-0 lead in their opening round playoff series. The Celtics won the first quarter by 15, the second by three, the third by six, and fourth by eight.
But what if I told you there was one point in the third quarter where the Sixers actually threatened to make this a game?
I don’t want to be overly dramatic because the Sixers looked really bad and the Celtics looked really good, but the Celtics in the third quarter were doing that thing teams who are making it look easy with big leads sometimes do. They got away from what was working, they played slow and hunted mismatches, and they backed themselves into late-clock contested shots.
At the same time, the Sixers were starting to sniff some success with scores on three straight possessions and a 20-point lead was down to 15 with nearly 19 minutes to play in the game.
So when Jaylen Brown got himself into trouble with 6:44 to go in the quarter, there was a hint of dread. The offense was getting clunky and the Sixers were getting transition opportunities. When Brown missed a tightly contested mid-range shot, it looked like the Sixers had a chance to get the game down to 13 or 12 and ride a wave of confidence into an inevitable timeout.
But then Brown made up for the miss in the biggest way possible.
I don’t know how he deflected that pass. Maybe it’s because the play was in such close proximity to Patriots Super Bowl hero Malcolm Butler, who was courtside watching the game, and some of that defensive back aura seeped into Brown’s atmosphere. However it happened, it happened, and the Celtics responded with a 10-0 run.
Boston was up 25, their biggest lead of the game, and Philly’s momentum went up in smoke.
“They’re gonna go on runs, we’re gonna go on runs, but can’t let that kind of stampede and turn into momentum,” Brown said of the play. “So we just got to cut out the momentum plays. Right there, they were trying to get out, get a transition basket, and we was able to stop it. But that’s just gonna be how the series is gonna be, back and forth. We gotta just manage momentum.”
It’s easy to look at a 32-point win and think it was easy the whole way, but sometimes even eventual blowouts have clutch plays in them. That play was as clutch as anything that happens in a tight game because it prevented the kind of run Philly’s capable of going on. They feed off confidence and momentum, so stopping that run was very important.
“I thought that was a huge play,” Joe Mazzulla said. “There’s going to be ebbs and flows to the game, making winning plays, whether it’s offensive rebounding, I thought we had guys sprint back and block some shots. I thought we got some great team rebounding, those things give you a shot, and they help manage runs. I think that’s a key, is how can you manage runs with your execution on the offensive end, and also with trying to make winning plays.”
Who knows who the game would have gone if Brown didn’t make that play, but we do know how it went after he did. The Celtics were able to win a playoff game with Brown, Jayson Tatum, and Derrick White all playing less than 33 minutes, and it’s easy to envision that not being the case had the Sixers continued their run.
It’s something that might ultimately be forgotten by history, but is an example of how a handful of plays can be the difference between massive shifts and building on big leads. It’s the basketball butterfly effect, and it had a big impact on a huge win.
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