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It’s impossible not to think back to the unprecedented shooting bombardment Boston endured in a Game 2 loss to the Miami Heat in the opening round of the 2024 playoffs, which will have happened two years to the day when the Celtics travel to Philadelphia for Game 3 of their current first round matchup.
On that night, the Heat, after a 20-point loss in Game 1 and without Jimmy Butler for the entire series, hit a franchise playoff record 23 3-pointers, running away from a Celtics team led by Jaylen Brown’s 33 points that got the deficit down to as close as six points late in the fourth quarter before the Heat slammed the door shut.
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“It seemed we couldn’t get them to miss,” Brown said after that game. “They made a lot of shots that usually we’re comfortable with.”
In the end, it was a small divergence from a 5-game series where Boston smacked Miami in every other game, but we’ve seen it before and we’ve seen it since: the Celtics have lacked comfort as hosts in Game 2.
Among their last eight Game 2s at home, they’re now 3-5, with frustrating displays against Cleveland in 2024 (118-94), New York last year (91-90) and now, against an Embiid-less Sixers, who shot 49% on 19 made threes and were led by a VJ Edgecombe 30-point, 10-rebound performance that hasn’t happened since Tim Duncan’s rookie year in 1998. TIM DUNCAN.
Between Boston’s own shooting misfires (they were 13/50 from beyond the arc), a deep drop coverage that opened the door for Edgecombe and Tyrese Maxey to fire pull up threes at will, and Philly’s own defensive adjustments that shut the door on a paint that Boston had previously owned, the Celtics often looked unrecognizable from the team we’ve seen this season.
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Even as they cut the deficit to two with 6:25 left to play, the Celtics, already with the slowest pace in the league, spun their wheels deeper and deeper into a muddy rut, and in this area of the game in particular, the Sixers do deserve credit for putting more foot traffic in the middle of the floor.
Though the first quarter indicated more of the same from the Celtics after they attacked…
Source link : https://sports.yahoo.com/articles/celtics-game-2-problem-090000439.html
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Publish date : 2026-04-23 09:00:00
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