Boston Celtics: The best path to an NBA Championship
Eastern Conference semifinals: (1) Boston Celtics vs (4) Philadelphia Sixers
There are three things you can guarantee in life: death, taxes, and the Boston Celtics beating the Philadelphia Sixers in a playoff series! It has happened in every playoff matchup between the two teams since 1982.
Make no mistake these two franchises have an incredibly storied rivalry that spans decades, but the scales have heavily swayed in the C’s favor in the last few.
Even Sixers MVP frontrunner and big man Joel Embiid does not think it’s much of a rivalry:
"“This is not a rivalry,” Embiid said following the Sixers’ 105-87 loss to the Celtics on Tuesday night, per Sporting News’ Sean Deveney. “I don’t know our record against them, but it’s pretty bad. They always kick our (expletive).”"
When the best player on your team makes this type of admission, there has to be some honest truth to it. Let’s look at the recent history between the teams in playoff series from 2018 and 2020 respectively. Boston beat Philly in five games in 2018 and swept them in the 2020 bubble playoffs.
As I had mentioned earlier, we are going with the premonition that Rob Williams will be all healed up and ready to go by the semifinals of the Eastern Conference playoffs for the Celtics, so the team should have plenty of ammo in terms of guys to throw at Embiid.
Al Horford has commonly been referred to as the father of Joel since he goes to a whole other level when playing against the superstar. The trio of Timelord, Daniel Theis, and Grant Williams presents an array of bodies to switch on to the process.
Previously, the C’s were playing Enes Freedom way too many minutes in these games and he was shipped out in a trade to get the German-born big man back and it’s a huge upgrade on both sides of the ball.
Theis is much better defensively than Freedom and has a more diversified offensive skillset with a nice rainbow shot from the mid-range and the ability to step out and hit the three.
Playing the Sixers will be a real test since we have not faced this group with James Harden yet, but based on historical poor playoff performances, we can only guess what type of player will show up?
The beard has the capability of getting clamped in big games, giving away a record number of turnovers in a playoff setting, and missing over twenty straight long balls in a WCF game.
He also has the capability to have hamstring problems which closed the door on his playoff hopes last year.
If Harden is healthy, then the Celts still have an incredible defensive backcourt with countless bodies to throw at him in the form of Derrick White, Marcus Smart, and even Jaylen Brown.
Philly’s downfall in this series will be that they are way too top-heavy without much of a second unit. I expect a back and forth series, but I like the Celtics to handle their business at home and steal one on the road as they absolutely demolished the Sixers in Philadelphia during their most recent matchup.
I trust the history of this one-sided rivalry to continue and I do not trust James Harden to show up when it matters.