Payton Pritchard scores 32 off the bench, Jayson Tatum adds 30 & the Celtics defeat the 76ers, 128-96, to take a 3-1 series lead.
PHILADELPHIA – The return of Joel Embiid was not nearly enough for the Philadelphia 76ers on Sunday.
Seventeen days after undergoing an appendectomy and having missed the Sixers’ last seven games, Embiid was back in the lineup for Game 4 of their their first-round series with the Boston Celtics, only to have a better view of his team getting clobbered by the team that is now one win from its ninth trip to the Eastern Conference semifinals in the last 10 years.
The Celtics took control of Game 4 with a 22-5 run to close the first quarter, and they never led by fewer than 14 points after that, cruising to a 128-96 victory, a dominant performance on both ends of the floor.
Payton Pritchard led all scorers with 32 points off the Celtics’ bench, while Jayson Tatum added 30 points and 11 assists.
Here are some notes, quotes, numbers and film as Boston improved to 36-14 in first-round games over the last 10 years:
1. Embiid doesn’t get going until it’s too late
Though it wasn’t known if Embiid would play until less than an hour before game time, he logged 34 minutes in his return and led the Sixers with 26 points, 10 rebounds and six assists. Those are big numbers, but Embiid did not have a big impact on the game.
On offense, only six of his 21 shots came in the paint, and he shot 5-for-15 from the outside. The Celtics played him soft and invited him to shoot jumpers and he couldn’t make them pay…
With his 21 shots, nine free-throw attempts and three turnovers, Embiid registered the second highest single-game usage rate (37.8%) for any player in these playoffs. When he was on the floor, he was getting the ball.
Embiid did hit four jump shots on a third-quarter stretch where the Sixers scored 10 times (24 points) on 11 possessions. But that stretch only cut the deficit from 26 to 19, and the Sixers never got the stops they needed to make this game interesting.
On defense, Embiid was unsurprisingly put into the action early and often. According to tracking data, he was the screener’s defender on 37 ball-screens, tied for his second-highest total of the season and two fewer than the most for any player in a game in these playoffs.
The Celtics made him guard the pick-and-roll or off-ball screens on five of their first six possessions. On the first trip, Embiid was up at the level of the screen and Neemias Queta got a dunk over the late-arriving help of Kelly Oubre Jr.
Less than two minutes later, Derrick White got Embiid on his heels, got him to lunge forward, and then hit Queta under the basket:
When the Celtics are at their best, they’re intentional and relentless in looking to gain advantages offensively. They were at their best on Sunday, and they never let Embiid take a break, continuing to attack him until he checked out midway through the fourth quarter with Boston up 30.
2. Pritchard hits flow state
Payton Pritchard drops 32 points off the bench vs. 76ers, becoming 3rd Celtic to do so in the playoffs.
Pritchard had never scored more than 23 points in a playoff game before, but he had 13 by the end of the first quarter on Sunday, having checked in with 6:35 on the clock.
The Sixers can blame themselves for Pritchard getting going, because he had plenty of time and space to shoot on his first two 3-pointers of the night.
He put the Celtics ahead for good by taking advantage of their drop coverage. Then he stepped into another 3 when they weren’t matched up in transition.
Now that he was warmed up, he was taking Justin Edwards off the dribble. And he capped off the quarter, by dribbling past Embiid for a 3 at the buzzer off of one foot:
That’s what he does.
At times, Pritchard was the beneficiary of the attention drawn to Tatum and the Sixers need to send help for Embiid. But he was also splitting double-teams and hitting step-back jumpers in the pick-and-roll.
“It’s a good feeling,” he said of catching fire, “but it’s more of a flow state. In my workouts, I try to hit that on the daily, so that when I get into the games, it’s a regular thing.”
Good things come to those who work.
“P’s a gym rat,” Tatum said. “That’s one thing that’s consistent about him always. He’s always going to be in the gym, working on his game, working on his craft, trying to get better. It shows in moments like tonight, because he’s just relentless in how hard he works.”
3. Celtics dominate the glass
Pritchard’s first two points of the game actually came on a tip-in, the Celtics’ third shot on a possession midway through the first quarter. Those were two of their 19 second-chance points as they registered a rebounding percentage of 59.8%, the highest mark for any team in these playoffs thus far.
The Celtics prioritized the possession game more this year than they had in the past, and they ranked fifth in offensive rebounding percentage after ranking outside the top 10 in each of the last four years. They’re crashing the glass more and that crashing paid off on Sunday.
The Celtics scored on 10 of their final 11 possessions of the fourth quarter, a stretch that started with Pritchard’s tip-in. Amazingly, the one possession in which they didn’t score was the one in which they got five chances, frustrating the Philadelphia crowd to no end. After Baylor Scheierman (2) and Jordan Walsh grabbed three offensive boards, a fourth bounced out of bounds off the Sixers and Nikola Vučević then went to the free throw line.
The Sixers escaped with a “stop” when Vučević missed both free throws, but the Celtics still had 13 second-chance points at halftime, while the Sixers had none.
The tally was a little less dramatic (19-9) at the end of the game, but second-chance points have now been in favor of Boston in all four games in this series.
“It’s just a big boost for your team,” Tatum said, “when you get those [second-chance] opportunities.”
4. A mismatch from beyond the arc
Nine of those 19 second-chance points came on 3-pointers.
The Celtics have now seen a jump in 3-point rate in every game in this series, from 49% of their shots (what would have been the second highest rate for any team in the regular season) in Game 1 to 61% of their shots in Game 4.
The Sixers outscored the Celtics in the paint (34-32), from mid-range (14-4) and at the free throw line (21-20) on Sunday … and lost by 32.
The score from 3-point range was Boston 72, Philadelphia 27, with 10 different Celtics contributing to that tally. Over the 30 playoff games that had been played through Sunday, the three biggest 3-point differentials were:
- Celtics-Sixers, Game 4: Boston +45
- Celtics-Sixers, Game 1: Boston +36
- Celtics-Sixers, Game 3: Boston +24
The Celtics will try to add to that list and close the series out in Game 5 on Tuesday (7 ET, ESPN).
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John Schuhmann has covered the NBA for more than 20 years. You can e-mail him here, find his archive here and follow him on Bluesky.
