The Boston Celtics had an opportunity to take a commanding lead and head to a close out game on the road in their Eastern Conference Semifinals series against the Philadelphia 76ers, but came up short in a 115-103 loss on Tuesday night.
Boston is now in a 3-2 series hole as they try to force a game 7 on the road Thursday night.
The Celtics never led following the halfway point of the first quarter, shooting a dismal 39.8% and clocking their lowest point total of the postseason thus far.
“We dropped the ball tonight,” Celtics guard Jaylen Brown said, according to ESPN’s Jamal Collier. “Couldn’t stay in front of anybody. Couldn’t get a stop when we needed to. Missed a lot of wide-open shots, gave everything up that they wanted us to give up. That was the story of the game. But got to have a short-term memory.”
Celtics star Jayson Tatum dropped 36 points, but it wasn’t enough to turn the tide.
“We just didn’t have it today,” Tatum said, following the game. “There’s nothing we can do about tonight. It happened. It’s unfortunate. We wish we could change it, but that’s not how life works. Can’t go back in time.”
“That was our first really, really bad game of the playoffs” Celtics head coach Joe Mazulla said. “It doesn’t come at necessarily the best time, but we just have to shift our perspective and we’ve got to get ready to play the next game.”
“The past is the past. We can talk about a lot of stuff that’s happened in this series that could have went the other way, and it didn’t,” Brown said. “Right now, we’ve got in front of us a great opportunity. To mull in the past would take that opportunity away from us.”
“Last year is over with,” Brown added. “This year we got to come out and be better than we were tonight, or we’ll have a different ending. Obviously, we still are in this series, and we got to muster up whatever we got left to be better for Game 6.”
The Celtics are hoping to pull off an upset on the road to keep the series alive.
