The 2025-26 Philadelphia 76ers are the 14th team in NBA history to come back and win a playoff series after trailing 3-1. They beat the Boston Celtics 109-100 on the road in Game 7 on Saturday night and have advanced to play the New York Knicks in the second round. That series will begin at Madison Square Garden on Monday.
Joel Embiid scored a game-high 34 points on 12-for-26 shooting for the 76ers, plus 12 rebounds and six assists. On two separate occasions, a player collided with his knee. On one occasion, he went to the locker room and returned with a wrap around his midsection. He played 39 minutes, though, and presented problems that the Celtics could not solve.
"He was doing everything he could to stay in the game," Sixers coach Nick Nurse told reporters. "And obviously we ran a lot of stuff through him, did just enough."
Before this game, Philadelphia was 0-3 in Game 7s during the Embiid era. Before this series, the Sixers had lost their last six series against Boston. In fact, before Saturday, Philly's last series win over the Celtics was 44 years ago.
It was not just the Embiid show that changed Philly's fortunes. Tyrese Maxey put up 30 points on 11-for-20 shooting, plus 11 rebounds and seven assists in 45 minutes. He iced the game with several clutch buckets, as Boston was unable to keep him out of the paint.
Rookie guard VJ Edgecombe added 23 points on 8-for-17 shooting. He made 5 of his 11 3-point attempts, dished four assists and grabbed six rebounds in 43 minutes. Paul George was relatively quiet on offense (13 points on 5-for-10 shooting) but was fantastic on both ends for a guy who was on the injury report with an illness leading up to the game.
Boston won 56 games during the regular season, but, with Jayson Tatum sidelined on Saturday, its impressive season is over. Jaylen Brown scored a team-high 33 points on 12-for-27 shooting in the loss. As a team, the Celtics shot just 13 for 49 from 3-point range.
Derrick White added 26 points in 45 minutes, but shot 9 for 27 (including 5 for 16 from deep) and did the vast majority of his damage in the first half.
Here are our biggest takeaways from Philadelphia's win:
The Process gets results
What a game for Embiid. What a series for Embiid. The guy had an emergency appendectomy on April 9 and just led the Sixers to three straight playoff wins. I still can't believe his absolutely massive block against Brown late in the first half:
Boston challenged Embiid defensively, but couldn't consistently punish him. And on the other end, the Celtics couldn't guard him one-on-one and couldn't disrupt him with double-teams, either. Embiid turned the ball over just once in Game 7, a credit to him and to the Sixers for collectively staying organized on offense. In each of their three wins with Embiid in the lineup, they made Boston pay for all the attention it was giving Embiid with smart spacing and timely cuts.
"He's directing traffic and making good passes and all that stuff and giving us at least a focal point to play through, which has been excellent," Nurse told reporters.
Nurse also praised Embiid for his defensive rebounding. At times during this series, the Celtics have dominated on the glass, but had just a 17.9% offensive rebounding rate on Saturday (to Philly's 20%), per Cleaning The Glass.
Embiid has finally beaten Boston in a playoff series. Now he is going to the second round for the first time since losing to the Celtics in 2023. Given that he was widely written off while dealing with a chronic knee injury, this victory must be extraordinarily sweet.
The backcourt of the future (and present)
In his first playoff series, Edgecombe averaged 15.1 points, 6.9 rebounds and 3.0 assists in 38.4 minutes per game. And in the Sixers' four wins, he averaged 19.3 points on 65.2% true shooting and shot 15 for 33 (45.5%) from deep.
Edgecombe is just 20 years old. This is not normal. And for some reason, he seems to love playing in Boston specifically. TD Garden was the site of his 34-point debut back in October and his two best games of this series: Game 2 and the clincher.
Early in the season, Sixers general manager Daryl Morey told me that he'd never been around a player of Edgecombe's age who plays with as much poise as he does. Edgecombe's shooting efficiency went up and down throughout the season (and this series), but that poise was always there. So was his confidence, his defensive intensity and, obviously, his unreal athleticism.
On Saturday, Edgecombe "came out of the halftime saying, 'I got White and I'm going to do better on him,'" Nurse told reporters. Nurse added that "those are the things that make a huge difference in games like this."
Even if Philadelphia had fallen short in Game 7, it could feel good about the direction of the team with Maxey and Edgecombe in the backcourt. These guys love playing together; they're impossible to stop in transition, and even though they're the fastest tandem I've ever seen, they play with great composure in the halfcourt. Maxey deserves credit, too, for the way he competed on defense when Boston repeatedly targeted him.
Get ready for the Celtics 3-point discourse again
Stop me if you've heard this before: After the game, a reporter asked Boston coach Joe Mazzulla if he thought the team became too reliant on jump shots. Mazzulla said no.
"I thought we did a great job reading the 2-on-1s, taking what the defense gave us, and, in the games we lost, the other team shot over 38% from 3," Mazzulla told reporters. "And so you gotta make shots. You have to be able to do that. It's something we've done well. It's something we do well. And we just didn't. And I thought they did a good job throughout the series, later games, of making 'em. Love the looks that we got. Love the process that we had. But hate the result."
Boston shot 27.4% from 3-point range in its losses against Philadelphia and 41.7% in its wins. As the series went on, the Sixers dialed back their help defense and stayed more attached to shooters, forcing the Celtics into more difficult 3s. Philadelphia knew that Boston wanted to get up a ton of 3s, but clearly wanted to limit the catch-and-shoot 3s, the transition 3s and the wide-open 3s.
There are fair criticisms to be made of the Celtics' shot selection. The sheer number of 3s attempted, though, is not the issue, especially without Tatum. Shooting is their major strength on offense, and if they were going to pull this game out, they needed to make a ton of 3s. As Mazzulla said, though, they didn't get it done. I'm already tired of this talking point!
