Sixers

What’s Your Level of Sixers Belief Considering the Outcome of the Last Game 7 in Boston?

By Kevin Kinkead

Published: May 1st, 2026 · 9:55 AM EDT

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Sixers vs. Celtics on Saturday night in Boston. Game 7 on prime time television.

Safe to say there weren’t a lot of people expecting the Sixers to still be alive at this point. They did, after all, go down 3-1 in the series with two straight home losses, and looked terrible in Joel Embiid’s return, a 128-96 blowout loss. The defense was out of whack, Embiid hadn’t played in weeks, and Tyrese Maxey was passive while Boston shot 45% from three on 53 attempts.

And yet… here we are!

Funny enough, it turns out the Celtics are kinda shit when the three pointers aren’t falling, and when guys like Payton Pritchard exit the Artemis II lander upon returning to Earth. He looked like prime Reggie Miller in Game 4, but is 2-13 from deep ever since, a good snapshot of the Celtics bench and the low floors than accompany high ceilings. Boston doesn’t seem to have an off-ramp to Plan B when the threes aren’t falling. At the same time, the Sixers have played a cohesive team game, the defensive commitment has been stellar, and offensively they’re moving the ball and getting everybody involved.

Is this finally it? Is this the season they finally get over the Boston hump and beat this team in the playoffs?

The Sixers are 0-3 against the Celtics in the postseason since exiting the Process era. Most recently, they were humiliated at the Garden in 2023, when they were run entirely off the court in Game 7 by a 112-88 score line. For a lot of fans, that was the game that really broke them. Embiid shot 5 for 18 and was a -28. James Harden had more turnovers than made field goals despite two earlier performances in the series when he went nuclear. The team as a whole shot 8-37 from three while Jayson Tatum exploded for 51 in one of his greatest individual showings of all time. The Sixers folded in the second half and quit outright, offing no fight, no resilience, no guts, no grit, no drive, no determination, no mettle, no nothing.

I’d imagine that’s still fresh in most people’s minds. It’s one of many reasons why we’ve kept the Sixers at arm’s length for several seasons now. Heck, even back then people were in the “wake me up when the playoffs begin” mindset because they were still scarred from Ben Simmons passing the ball to Matisse Thybulle instead of just dunking on the 4-seed Hawks and sending them rightfully home.

Back then, by the way, in 2023, the Sixers played a Game 5 against the Celtics in which they looked like the team we saw this week. They were focused, energetic, and, most importantly, unflappable. There was no crap body language or sagging of shoulders. That’s why Games 6 and 7 in 2023 were so deflating, because that group of guys totally disappeared and left us with images like this burned in our head, like a movie that was paused for three whole weeks and ended up permanently damaging the pixels on your TV screen:

The question on Saturday night: Which Sixers team shows up? Is it the tenacious and decisive team of the last two games? Or is it the nervy and disorganized group of Game 4? All we can do is cross our fingers and hope for the former and not the latter, because the latter was pretty devastating. There’s a lot on the line Saturday night. A chance to undo some of the Celtics-inflicted damage of years past. Losing three times to these guys is bad enough, but losing four times? There’s no coming back from that. Imagine Joel Embiid retiring with an 0-4 record against the Cs in the playoffs. You get past these guys on Saturday night and all of a sudden you’re back in the 2nd round again and with the support of the city. Lose, and it’s another first-round exit while attention shifts back to the Flyers.

I personally believe that the Sixers must heed the words of wisdom that Hatebreed penned many years ago – THIS IS NOW!