No matter where you look for your Boston Celtics content; Twitter, Reddit, YouTube, etc., you’re almost certainly seeing fans complaining about the drop defense. If you’re unfamiliar, drop defense is a pick-and-roll coverage where whichever defender is guarding the screener backs off and protects the rim, rather than hedging up on the ball handler.
The Celtics ran with that a lot in their Game 2 loss to the Philadelphia 76ers.
Now, as a spectator, seeing this coverage repeatedly simply looks like the 76ers cracked the code in creating wide-open looks from three. The screener sets a good screen, the ball handler uses it, and then steps into an unguarded triple.
That’s sort of the story, but not the entire thing. Philly took 27 open or wide-open threes (which the NBA defines as the closest defender being four or more feet away) in Game 2. They drilled 18 of them.
Throughout the regular season, the 76ers shot roughly 33 of those looks per game. They averaged just 11 makes.
Even with the defensive coverage that effectively concedes open looks, Boston still allowed fewer clean attempts than Philadelphia averaged in 82 games. The problem was that seven more than the Sixers’ season average found the bottom of the net. Those 21 points sure can swing a game.
Not to mention that the Cs stuck with the same defensive scheme that worked so well for them two days prior. Boston conceded many of the same advantages in Game 1, the 76ers just sort of refused to take advantage of them. Tyrese Maxey, who finished with 29 points and made two dagger threes in the fourth quarter, didn't even look at the rim when coming off of screens on Sunday.
Philly only fired up seven pull-up threes in Game 1, making just two (28.5%). On Tuesday, they shot 18 pull-ups and made eight of them (44.4%). In the 82-game regular-season sample size, the 76ers were the sixth-worst shooting team on these shots at 31.2%.
All of this is to say that the Celtics chose to play the drop coverage because they trust the data. As annoying as it can be when it doesn’t work, that approach works most of the time. When it doesn’t, it's largely out of their control.
“That’s the low-hanging fruit to look at,” Joe Mazzulla said for the Sixers’ 19 makes from beyond the arc. “It starts with the stuff that we can control.”
He pointed out things like allowing multiple offensive rebounds off of free throws and conceding the wrong types of threes, like the catch-and-shoot opportunities Sixers guard Quentin Grimes got, as controllable factors.
It doesn't help that Celtics were ice cold in their own right
Another was Boston’s offense.
“One of the ways you have to defend them is with offense,” Mazzulla added. “I thought we got great looks, thought we missed them… You have to be able to score in close games against a team like that, and they made more shots than us down the stretch.”
He’s right.
It’s always going to be hard to win games on nights where you shoot below 40%, regardless of what the opponent is doing. Nevermind a night like Tuesday, when the 76ers put up 48%/49% shooting splits.
A lot of the shots the Celtics missed were ones they were happy to take, too. Sure, there were some stagnant possessions in the second half when the game got tight, but there were also plenty of clean looks that ricocheted off of the rim.
Our numbers say the Sixers were +14.8 points on jumpers and the Celtics -19.7 points compared to what we'd expect for those shooters on those types of shots (to the extent we can estimate it via pxp data) https://t.co/rfm61Jzvd3
— Nate Duncan (@NateDuncanNBA) April 22, 2026
Derrick White, Sam Hauser, and Payton Pritchard shot a combined four of 20 from three. No Celtics player not named Jayson Tatum or Jaylen Brown cracked double digits in the scoring column.
This, in just about every way possible, was not the Celtics’ night.
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