During the first half of an NBA basketball game against the New Orleans Pelicans, Boston Celtics head coach Joe Mazzulla can be heard shouting instructions from the sidelines.
In Boston, the Celtics were heavily favored against the depleted 76ers on Tuesday evening. With Joel Embiid absent from the lineup for the past few months, Philadelphia’s performance has been lackluster, losing seven out of their last 11 games and sliding down the Eastern Conference standings. However, the visiting team put up a tough fight against Boston for most of the game, keeping the hosts on their toes until the Celtics launched a remarkable 16-0 run in the fourth quarter, ultimately securing a 118-102 victory.
This win marks the Celtics’ ninth consecutive triumph, maintaining their comfortable eight-game lead over the Cavaliers in the East standings. Interestingly, Boston managed to clinch victory without heavily relying on one of their usual strengths: 3-point shooting. In fact, they attempted and made a season-low in 3-pointers (5- of 22). Instead, the Celtics capitalized on their dominance in points scored in the paint (64-42) and at the free-throw line (34-11) to offset their lack of success from beyond the arc. This unconventional approach to victory left head coach Joe Mazzulla exhilarated in the postgame analysis.
Mazzulla commented, “I thought in the second half, we did a great job of just getting to our spots and playing with physicality on our drives. We controlled the shot margin with our one-shot defense and our ability to get to the free-throw line. So this game was probably one of our best games of the year and really gave us—from the standpoint of being able to win a different way—a template for how teams are going to guard us, and it gave us another thing to practice. I thought our guys did a great job.”
Sixers coach Nick Nurse made a clear effort to limit Boston’s 3-point shooting, but Celtics coach Mazzulla saw it as an opportunity for his team to adapt and excel.
Mazzulla stated, “They switched and tried to take away threes and forced us to play dribble drive. So as long as you take care of the ball and you play physical and you don’t turn it over and you get to the free-throw line, we were really, really efficient in the paint, and then once we were able to take away their multiple shot possessions and then get to certain guys that we wanted to shoot and make sure we contest it, then it kind of evened itself out. So that game can be a misleading game of is it math or is it effort, and sometimes it’s both, and sometimes it’s just you have to keep the effort up until the math plays itself out, and I thought our guys did a good job of that.”
With Jayson Tatum, Jaylen Brown, and Kristaps Porzingis all making numerous trips to the free-throw line, they demonstrated a keen awareness of exploiting Philadelphia’s vulnerabilities without their top rim protector.
Porzingis explained, “I think we played our game. For example, I’m talking from my perspective; I saw that they’re like… I’m popping and they’re early veering so right away the guard is coming with me so we don’t get any advantage and I’m standing on the perimeter. So what I did was, as the game went on, I started to hit under, like set the screen underneath and start to roll. And JT and D-White, they found me a couple times or we got a mismatch and then we kicked from there or sometimes I roll and bring in some guys and then we get some kick-outs because some help is coming in. So I just created small advantages within those situations, and that was it. We just have to be a smart team, and boom, we go to this. If they start doing this, we go to this, and we always need to have the answers.”
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