CAMDEN, N.J. — The Philadelphia 76ers are on the doorstep of the Eastern Conference finals for the first time since the Allen Iverson days in 2001. They moved into this position with an impressive Game 5 win over the Boston Celtics on Tuesday night.
With the series shifting back to Broad Street for Game 6 on Thursday, coach Doc Rivers knows this will be a battle. The Celtics were in a similar spot in the 2022 postseason. They dropped Game 5 at home to the Milwaukee Bucks in a 2-2 series. The Celtics went into Milwaukee and won Game 6 before rolling in Game 7.
Rivers reminded his team that the Celtics have been here before.
“Oh God, yeah,” said Rivers on Wednesday. “Listen, we all look for stuff. We openly talk about it as a group. What do they have to lean on to be confident about? Well, they’ve done this and so they’re gonna come in with confidence. We gotta be ready for that. You still gotta get to four. No matter what. No matter how it is, you gotta get to four. We haven’t done anything and we talked about that a lot.”
Philadelphia’s Game 5 win on Tuesday was impressive for a couple of reasons. First because of just how tough the Celtics are and second because the Sixers had to overcome a great deal to get that done. The playoffs offer what Rivers likes to call “emotional terrorism,” and his team is handling things very well.
“It is an important word for every team,” said Rivers. “You see it throughout teams, throughout moments, getting over a mistake. Paul Reed had a great play last night (Game 5). He bobbled the ball, clear turnover, should’ve been, but he got to the ball first.”
Reed made the play in the second quarter when it looked as though the Celtics were going to go the other way. Instead, he dived onto the floor for the ball, forced a jump ball, and the Sixers gained a James Harden 3 out of the play.
“We win the jump ball with five seconds left, and then James makes a 3,” Rivers beamed. “You talk about single possession games, those are plays–Joel’s (Embiid) run down. Early in the game, he turned the ball over, emotional terrorism would have been he would have just (stopped). Instead, he runs a guy down, we get the ball, those are plays, man. Those are team growth.”
The Sixers have grown as a team. Game 6 is going to be emotional. The Celtics don’t want to go home after they reached the finals in 2022. They want to reach their ultimate goal just as the Sixers want to and Thursday is going to be a tough battle.
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