Why the Celtics Lost to Philly: Game 7 Breakdown, Embiid’s Dominance, and Boston’s Missed Chances

squadcaster-0d00_1_05-04-2026_112157 === [00:00:00] Welcome to another week of "Celtic Chalk Talk." My name is Steve Purciello, a lifelong Celtic fan. I go back to the Bill Russell days. It's been a while. I-- Before we begin, I just want to mention this. You're listening to something that's from the Peach Basket network. We have a whole bunch of pods along this network, and I really suggest y- if you like this one, to look into the other ones as well. They're pretty good and real good, actually. But the big thing here is that we are all independent fans of basketball, and we watch the games, and we naturally root for some teams and so on. But we're different in that way, and we welcome anybody who wants to subscribe but also just wants to comment about what we're doing. It's an interesting group of people, and it's an interesting group of podcasts. I suggest strongly that you try the Peach net- Peach Basket network. Now let's talk about the Celtics. Now part of me [00:01:00] is naturally disappointed the season is over. Today I want to talk about the games that the Boston Celtics lost and just go into a little bit about that and maybe a couple other little things and really not get too deep on the future. We'll do that in the next few weeks. The game five is where I left it and where it was last week. What a terrible loss. Boston was winning at halftime, winning in the second quarter, winning throughout and they just couldn't score in the fourth quarter. They really just didn't play well. I don't think that was the story in going back to that game. I think what Philly did in the third quarter, they realized that Embiid-- Boston has nobody that can stop Embiid in the post. So what did Philly do? And Nick Nurse deserves a great c- a great deal of credit. I thought he coached a good series, and this was very intelligent, putting Joel Embiid on the block. Now Queta had trouble with him. Queta had trouble throughout the series with foul trouble and all the other things that, that go [00:02:00] with it, and he didn't play a f- the final game, he did play over 30 minutes, but before that he didn't because he was constantly in foul trouble. But they put him on the block, Embiid on the block with him. If Boston doubled, Embiid was sharp enough to kick it out, and the beauty of this was Philadelphia shot very well from three throughout the series. So his kick outs would end up being a three from Edgecombe or George, who shot 55% from the series And it would help-- it hurt Boston. And that kind of changed the tone of the game, which is important. They couldn't stop Embiid, Boston. I thought after the game, I wrote some notes, and naturally I thought they could be in trouble because this game wasn't a loss as much as Philadelphia did some things that Boston didn't have answers for. The fourth quarter was the natural killer for the Celtics. They went three for 22 [00:03:00] in the fourth quarter. They only scored 11 points. It was anybody's game going in, and it became Philadelphia's game going out because of the inability to make a shot. Now, we can criticize Boston for relying on threes 'cause they did take their share of them, but you just expect better shooting and they'd shot well all year. They didn't do it there. So the loss was tough. You start thinking about it after the game. You say to yourself, "Okay, they gotta go to Philly. That's gonna be rough." And then you still got that ace in the hole, the seventh game. So you still have some hope that y- you can, right the ship. Game six, I thought Boston would make some adjustments if Embiid played the block and do different things to, to try to stop him. What adjustments can you make with Embiid on the block? I don't know. You have Vukovic who played n- horribly in the series and really no defense at all, especially on the block. He just allowed Embiid to just go [00:04:00] through him and do. So you had that. Garza's not a defender. He's not there for his defense. He's more of an energy guy who can offensive rebound and spark you in a lot of ways 'cause he plays so hard. Queta is a nice center, but he's not big. He's not physically big, and that's a problem with Embiid. And they-- Boston really made no adjustments going in, which I was disappointed. The other thing that Boston didn't do throughout is they always play drop, and in the drop coverage, Embiid was getting little 15-footers, but also Maxie coming off the screen was killing Boston, getting layups getting threes, getting anything he wanted. So they didn't adjust at all. They got blown out by 13. It was a terrible effort. The guards, as I, I just alluded to, the guards were unstoppable. Edgecomb and, Maxey were just unstoppable, and Boston had nobody that could stay between them and the basket consistently. Then that was a [00:05:00] killer also. The other thing that just throughout this series, Paul George went back to the fountain of youth, and he played like he was 10 years younger. He was great in the whole series. Again, 55% from three in the series. What-- in my notes, I wrote something down at the end of the game, "Boston is in trouble. Only thing that can save them is to shoot well at home." Now, I thought it would be difficult. They're coming home. They're going to shoot the ball well. They haven't shot it in a couple games now, so they're gonna have a night. And now we go to game seven. Game seven now. Jayson Tatum, it's announced suddenly on, on I guess it was Saturday morning, that he had some problems, he was questionable, and then by Saturday afternoon he was out. He had some left knee stiffness, which is another story. I think that's a problem, and naturally Boston goes into the game in a little bit of trouble without their, one of their best players. Anyway, [00:06:00] Boston now, I don't know why, I guess 'cause the end of game six, Mazzulla used his bench and they played with energy. So what he decided to do in game seven was, without Tatum, he used Harper and Scheierman and Garza with JB and White. Interesting idea. Don't know how good an idea it was, but I understand the thought behind it. Now, to me, going into the game, Boston, the whole game comes down to if Boston can shoot. If they don't shoot, it's not gonna be easy 'cause they're down their best player and they're playing against a pretty good team. Anyway, the game began. Philly got off, I believe, to about 9-0 start, and Boston was in trouble. Mazzulla went away from that after about four or five minutes of those guys and got some of the guys like Hauser and Queta and Pritchard back into the game. They were h- down the whole game. They did get the game down to one point with five minutes left. At that point, Boston had three [00:07:00] shots at taking the lead, three, and they chose three threes, and they were open. One was by Pritchard, one was by Brown, and one was by D. White. The Jaylen Brown one got halfway down and then came out, and just when that happened, you sit there and say, "This ain't our night." "It ain't happening." But they missed all three. Pritchard's was shot, and from the camera, m- when you're watching it on TV, you could see it was not gonna be... It was gonna be going towards the basket towards the back rim. And it didn't go in, and Pritchard makes that shot, I'd say 70 out of 100 times, but he didn't there. So it w- it was just a tough game. They didn't play good. They shot poorly. Boston shot 26% from three 40% overall. Paul George, as I said before, shot 55% from three in the series. Played a little bit, he's still a good player, but he played above his [00:08:00] head. And that's what Philly had to do. Boston had no answer for Embiid. They did put JB on him late, and he kinda held his own, which was surprising and he made a nice block on one shot. He made another block, I guess on Maxi going to the basket at another time. So Jalen Brown tried to, muscle and do his best against Embiid in the post. But, Embiid is bigger and stronger, and that's just the way it is. Now, in the game, White started out very well. He had 16 or 18 at half. He shot a bunch of threes. It looked like, oh, good. This horrible slump is over. Ultimately, he ended up five for 16 from three. Not a good night. Nine for 26 overall. Not a good night also. Just not as good a game as you'd hoped. He had 26, six rebounds, four assists. For JB, interesting game. 12 for 27. He had parts where he was [00:09:00] dominant like he was during the year and other parts where he wasn't. Three for nine from three. 33 points. Nine rebounds. Four assists. A couple nice blocks, as I said. And he guarded Embiid down the stretch. Took a shot. But Boston got no points from Shireman, Garza, Harper, Ugo, Walsh. And by the way, Ugo came in the second quarter and turned the game a little bit with his energy. Boston came back. Ugo also missed two foul shots, which could have helped, of course, at some point. Now, how do I look at this? I think it was a great year. We had a lot of fun. We didn't expect this. Yeah, they should have been able to beat Philly, especially with Embiid missing the first three games. Losing game two was key in the whole thing. But it is what it is. I think we're setting ourselves up slowly for [00:10:00] next year and the future. Tatum got to play, proved that he's okay. He knows what he has to do and what he has to work on this summer. But he also goes into the season knowing he's healthy. He can play. He's not going to worry about this major injury again, hopefully. Those are big things for him. For JB, he's just got to keep on keeping on. I think there will be changes, which I will allude to in the future. But I guess for now, that's it. Next week, we're going to talk a little bit about the future and what we think Brad Stevens might or should do. Thanks again and take care.