Whether they win or lose, fans can always count on the Celtics to reply to a common post-game query with, “We’ll watch film tomorrow, and…”
Even if we can all agree that putting down the shades and watching movies is an essential part of a well-balanced NBA preparation diet, sometimes it sounds dismissive, like simply a throwaway statement. But now is the perfect time for the Celtics to watch a movie, if they ever would. Game 6 of the Eastern Conference playoffs takes place at the Wells Fargo Center on Thursday night. The Celtics should review their exciting, take-that, series-tying 95-86 victory over the Philadelphia 76ers, and then they should watch it again, and again, and again.
They should watch it not to remind themselves what they did to win — such as outpointing the Sixers 14-3 over the final 4 1/2 minutes — but to remind themselves what they didn’t do. Which is to say, they didn’t quit. Not this time, not in a Philadelphia minute … or in 12 minutes, as in the fourth quarter, which is when it all seemed to be slipping away.
You can counter that too much of this game was oh-so-typical Celtics, what with those 16-point third-quarter leads disappearing. Surely, Celtics fans everywhere, either in the building or on the couch, were bemoaning that they saw this happen too many times during the regular season. Losing big leads was the Celtics’ secret sauce of ’22-23, right?
But when those leads disappeared, as when the Celtics were suddenly, horribly trailing by five points and looking at having to climb aboard the longest and saddest Philadelphia-to-Boston flight in history, that’s when they mounted a couple of comebacks and took the lead, and held the lead, and forced a Game 7 on Sunday at TD Garden.
The Celtics’ poster child for all this was, of course, Jayson Tatum. A no-show for most of the evening, at least in terms of putting the ball in the basket, Tatum emerged with an eye-popping vengeance in the final quarter, hitting on three 3-pointers and scoring 16 of his 19 points. It’s hard to believe — stunning, really — there was a point in the third quarter when Tatum had fewer points (3) than the 76ers’ P.J. Tucker, a 38-y
