Boston Celtics Must be Wary of Trap Game in Philadelphia
The Celtics need to be careful against the Sixers this Sunday before their showdown with Washington.
Without Isaiah Thomas on Friday night, the Celtics barely edged out the Nets in an ugly contest that went down to the wire. The remain 2 games ahead of the Washington Wizards for the second seed in the east, and they are still 1.5 games out of first place in the conference.
Boston’s next game is a Sunday afternoon contest in Philadelphia against the scrappy Sixers. Everything about this one screams “trap-game.” The Celtics have an extremely important match up with the Wizards on Monday night, so it’s possible that Boston overlooks Sunday’s game since Philly isn’t very good.
The Celtics need to make sure they take care of business in Philadelphia. Each of the three games against the Sixers have been close. Even though Boston has won all of them, it doesn’t mean the Sixers are an easy out.
Here are the scores for this season’s Celtics-Sixers games.
12/3: 107-106
1/6: 110-106
2/15: 116-108
The surprising part about all of these close games is that Philadelphia has only had rookie sensation Joel Embiid for one contest in early January. So the shorthanded Sixers have given the Celtics fits this season, even though they haven’t been able to get the win.
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Thomas will be out for the second straight game as expected, so the same Celtics team who struggled to get a win over the lowly Nets will have a slightly more difficult challenge against a Dario Saric led squad this time around.
The problem that Boston had with Philadelphia the first three times around was the physicality of their bigs. Now that Embiid is out, and Nerlens Noel has been shipped to Dallas, I have a better feeling about this one. Saric is good, but Philadelphia’s starting front court is not as physically dominant as it was earlier this year.
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Every game is important coming down the stretch of the season. Boston needs to have as much home court advantage as possible if they hope to make a deep playoff run this year. Putting substantial distance between them and the Wizards should be more important than grabbing the top seed from Cleveland.