There were no real stakes on the line on Thursday night. It was not the NBA Playoffs. There would be a tomorrow no matter the result, but for the Philadelphia 76ers, this 109-98 win felt different.
They had won the first two matchups with the Boston Celtics and now had a chance on Thursday night to be able to clinch the season series with Boston and go up 3-0 on their heated rival. Something like that can come in handy down the road when tiebreakers are brought into it.
“I never go here, this was a closeout game in some ways,” said coach Brett Brown. “Not in some ways, it was a closeout game. You can go 3-0 on Boston and you don’t know where that may be able to be cashed in at some point if at all. In our eyes in January, this was kind of a unique game.”
The Eastern Conference standings are so close and jumbled up and any of these wins against each other can be huge when it comes to positional battles and seeding for the playoffs in April. The Sixers entered the game 2.5 games back of the Celtics for the 3 seed and now, they gain a game and now own the tiebreaker.
“You look at their team and have they’re having a great year,” said Al Horford of Boston. “They’re playing well, I look at tonight as for us, it was a big game. It was felt like a must-win. We’ve laid some eggs recently in a few weeks here and we just needed to get this win. It feels good to beat a good team.”
Philadelphia now has a leg up on the Celtics for tiebreaker purposes with this big win on Thursday. Getting home court in the playoffs is a huge aspect for this team due to the fact that they are so dominant at home with a now 18-2 record compared to 7-13 on the road. So this is big for them to make sure they have this in their back pocket when seeding comes into the fold in April. [lawrence-related id=23154,23147,23128]