BOSTON — As Joel Embiid writhed in pain on the ground, a cohort of Sixers staffers stared in disbelief. The game hadn’t even started yet. It was just warmups. But somehow, Embiid managed to stumble on a security guard’s foot and twist his ankle less than an hour before the Philadelphia 76ers’ Christmas Day game against the Boston Celtics.
It took Embiid a minute to get up, eventually hobbling around in anger as he finished out his warmup and stomped to the locker room. Once he became a game-time decision, there was naturally concern that he would miss yet another crucial game.
“(It) was a little sore, but it’s Christmas. Gotta play in the Christmas game.” Embiid said after beating the Celtics 118-114. “Can’t feel bad about yourself. Life is life. It happens. You do whatever necessary to get better and get back on the floor. But it is tough. But what can you do?”
Embiid wasn’t the only Sixers player facing a challenge coming into the game. Tyrese Maxey was fired up when his phone dinged with a message from his friend Trendon Watford. The Nets guard told Maxey he is always taking over regular old games, but could he do it on Christmas with all of his family watching?
As Maxey recounted how he “stunk it up” on Christmas last year, Embiid piped in from the next locker over. “You were like the worst player in the NBA.” Maxey nodded, saying that the game had been in the back of his mind for a long time. He can finally let it go. Even with Paul George and Embiid out there, Maxey stole the show against Boston with 33 points and 12 assists, the second most dimes of his career.
His speed on the ball left the Celtics defense inhaling dust throughout the evening. When they pressured him most of the night, he found a way to play around it. The 76ers only had two turnovers heading into crunch time, then course-corrected when the Celtics’ half-court press turned him over two plays in a row. They just always had an answer, and the first step to that equation was Maxey.
Even when Boston thought it contained him, his speed won out. Maxey is so fast that he can catch the ball, lose the ball, get the ball back, and then get off a shot in one second flat to ice the game.
TYRESE MAXEY. pic.twitter.com/xekbPjFk2B
— Philadelphia 76ers (@sixers) December 26, 2024
Maxey said he actually hyperextended his knee a bit on that drive. Even his own body struggles to deal with the G forces.
He was a hound on defense in this game, racking up deflections with his point of attack defense and even standing up to Kristaps Porziņģis at times. The Celtics simply struggled to get around Maxey and Jayson Tatum couldn’t bully him. A lot of what has worked in the past for Boston didn’t hold up against this pit bull version of Maxey.
Philadelphia’s second unit couldn’t have ruled the fourth quarter without Caleb Martin. He went 7-for-9 from 3 and played good defense — this is the guy the Sixers anticipated when they signed him this offseason.
“That’s what Caleb does,” Maxey said. “That’s the Undertaker we know.”
The Sixers players kept calling Martin the Undertaker after the game, maybe because this seemed like a resurrection of a sluggish start to his 76ers career. But shooting nearly perfect from deep was some unwelcome deja vu for the Celtics. Martin has a habit of catching fire against Boston, famously burying the Celtics early in the 2023 Eastern Conference finals.
“He hates them as much as I do,” Embiid said with a wry smile.
But the first thing he told coach Nick Nurse after the game was that he feels much better physically than he did even two weeks ago. Nurse said that’s why Martin is battling defensively throughout the night and just looks healthier than he did two weeks ago.
Things are a lot different for the Sixers in the past few weeks. They’re 8-3 in their last 11 games, finally breaking into the play-in portion of the standings.
Their win against San Antonio on Monday was a declaration that they could rally to win without Embiid after his ejection. But the win in Boston shows they can go toe-to-toe with an elite team from start to finish without any game-breaking turns of events. The second unit’s 23-6 fourth-quarter run provided the cushion needed to survive the Celtics’ crunch time turnaround, with just enough moments from the Sixers’ stars to close it out.
“I think we’ve got a high ceiling,” Embiid said. “I don’t think that was close to our best basketball. But we got a pretty good chance, so it’s all about hoping for some luck and staying healthy.”
Embiid said a key difference against Boston is that Philadelphia has always lacked wings, a clear detriment against the best wing pairing in the league. Their depth makes the Celtics a bit more manageable and allows the Sixers to chip away over the course of the game.
“You can never have enough (wings),” he said. “But I feel like we have quite a few now.”
But this win wasn’t just about matching up with the champs. The Sixers are finally a complete team, healthy (for the most part) and finding their identity. There is some consistency to rotations, guys are figuring out their roles, and they just know what they are supposed to be doing.
“Just playing harder,” Embiid said. “We’re going after the ball. We actually follow the game plan. … It’s always going to be a challenge because 95 percent of the team is brand new.”
This is why Embiid said the team has a long way to go. The Sixers are still learning how to play with each other. He knows the Maxey-Embiid pick-and-pop game will be their bread and butter to get the team through tough moments, but this is a Sixers team starting to show it can avoid these huge drop-offs that bury them.
“We’re putting the pieces together. We started to figure it out,” Martin said. “We haven’t had a ton of games with everybody playing. We’re still almost 30 games in and trying to get that together. Tonight was a great, great step in the right direction.”
(Photo: Michael Dwyer / Associated Press)
