BOSTON – As the third quarter began in the Sixers' Game 7 win on Saturday night – completing a 3-1 series comeback victory over the Boston Celtics – Joel Embiid approached Tyrese Maxey.

"I need you to go," Embiid told Maxey.

Maxey was thrilled to hear the message. After a first half in which he just "played to the flow," Maxey felt ready to play with more assertion. He gave the Sixers a significant jolt; helping them expand their lead to 18 points – and it eventually became clear that they needed such a significant margin to escape after Boston's late comeback effort. The only reason the Sixers did not blow that entire lead: Maxey scored the two most important baskets of the game to put it away in the final minutes.

From Maxey's closing act to all of the moments that led up to it, a breakdown of Game 7's most important plays and performances:

Tyrese Maxey calls game

What was Maxey thinking right before he certified the Sixers' series win?

"I just really wanted the ball. I just wanted the ball," Maxey said. "Early in the fourth we went to Joel, and I just felt like it was time for me to step up and make a play... I knew I would need to step up and make plays down the stretch for us to win the game, so it just happened that way."

All series long, Boston was unable to find a fix against Maxey, whose combination of blazing speed and lethal pull-up three-point shooting makes him one of the most dangerous perimeter scoring threats in the NBA. Drop coverage did not work; Maxey walked into jumpers. Nail help did not work; Maxey found open shooters. Icing screens did not work; Maxey casually flowed into mid-range looks.

However, bringing the bigs closer to the level of the screen did not work either. And Maxey, whose improved decision-making with the ball in recent years became a topic of conversation after Saturday's win, torched that coverage en route to two successful downhill drives:

Maxey is mastering a tough balancing act: deferring to Embiid and taking over himself. He acknowledged that it has been a challenging balance to strike, but with the help of the former NBA MVP, he is figuring it out. He knew he had to be the one to put Game 7 away.

"It’s a growth, because I had to learn when to be aggressive, when not to be aggressive. I'm always going to be aggressive, but, like, when to pick my spots," Maxey said. "And it got difficult a little bit in the middle of this season, because I was basically being first option, first option, first option, every single night. Then he comes back, and I’ve got to find a way to do both. And he does a really good job of just keeping me engaged and keeping me confident and keeping me like, ‘Hey, listen, I need you to do what you do and go out there and be yourself.’ And kudos to him for having that trust in me. I appreciate him having that trust in me. And I think we have to trust each other as far as VJ [Edgecombe] and Paul [George] and everybody else as well."

MORE: Behind Embiid & Maxey, Sixers' bond that 'feels pretty different' helps in Game 7

Joel Embiid raises the floor

For the first three games of this series – and much of the season when Embiid was sidelined – it has been such a chore for the Sixers to simply create a high-efficiency shot attempt. Maxey can do it, and this team has enough high-caliber three-point shooters to score points without Embiid. But it is always at least somewhat reliant on the kind of shooting luck the Sixers experienced in Game 2.

For three games, Embiid touches were automatic quality looks for the Sixers. Every time he got the ball in even halfway decent position, the Sixers were either getting an Embiid mid-range look, an open kick-out three for someone else or a foul. The Sixers enjoyed quite a bit of playing in the bonus in this series because of Embiid, yet another way he uplifted the offense and gave it a much more reliable floor.

Embiid finally (mostly) found his groove again in the mid-range in Game 7, though Sixers head coach Nick Nurse said he still thinks Embiid is missing a lot of makable shots. The ultimate security blanket for any offense is a shot as reliable and easy to produce as Embiid's mid-range jumper:

After Embiid posted 17 points, five rebounds and five assists in a completely dominant first half, Boston's clear panic only intensified. Celtics head coach Joe Mazzulla, after already overhauling his starting lineup in a do-or-die game without Jayson Tatum, first took his center off of Embiid, asking Jaylen Brown to man the assignment with helpers ready, allowing Neemias Queta to roam a bit. Then, for a brief period, Mazzulla abandoned his entire struggling center rotation, playing lineups of five perimeter-oriented players and asking Brown, Jordan Walsh and Hugo González to guard all the way up on Embiid.

Instead of fooling around in any capacity, Embiid just put those players in the basket for easy points. He went back and forth with Brown; the two leading options in this game exchanged words after and during their battles. Embiid was the victor, and despite seeing an unusual defensive coverage, he kept the game simple. Embiid looked to score, and when Boston sold out to stop him from doing so he made them pay:

Embiid is playing with incredible trust in his teammates, and it establishes an offensive identity built around ball and player movement. It is clear how much faith Embiid has in his supporting cast right now.

"I mean, it's huge, Embiid said. "Obviously over the years – there's no shade to anybody that has played in this organization – I've always taken the blame for everything that's happened, the situation that we're in. Sometimes I've been in those positions where I've come up short, and that's fine. But to be in a position where you can relax one or two possessions because you trust the guys... PG: big shots. VJ: rebounding, big shot. It means a lot. I've always said you can't win alone. You need a team to be able to win and everybody [is] doing their job. I think the way we're playing right now is [so] insane. Offensively, defensively, I think guys understand what they have to do, and that's beautiful to see. And that's what I've always wanted: playing winning basketball, sharing the ball, defensively, everybody being locked in on what they have to do, and that's really it."

Whether it was pure exhaustion, a funky Celtics zone defense which finally gave them some ability to consistently get stops or a raucous Boston crowd trying to will its team into a win, the Sixers lost their rhythm on offense in the fourth quarter. But before Maxey drove for that series-ending pair of layups, Embiid connected on two critical jumpers. The second of which – only three-point make of the night – came immediately after he appeared to hurt his knee. Yet Embiid still gave off the appearance of calmness and it helped everybody stay settled in:

The most important individual effort Embiid has ever put together was not just limited to offensive production, though.

The best block of Joel Embiid's career?

From the opening tip on, it was clear that the Sixers were the more comfortable and confident team playing with more swagger. 

"You know, we've had this weird swag about us all year. Like, this confidence and just the fact that we know who we can be we know who we are," Maxey said. "I kind of said it early on [at] Media Day: this team is going to fight every single night, and we've done that. We've gotten beat a couple times pretty bad, and that just happens in this league. But we never wavered. We always believed in each other, and I think I've been saying this all year, we really, really, really like each other. This group really likes each other and likes to see each other succeed, and that's big-time."

But after an 18-4 Celtics run early in the second quarter, the Sixers' strong early lead had been narrowed significantly. And with the first half nearing its end, Boston had a chance to pull in front and head into intermission with a lead and significant momentum in front of an incredible crowd. Brown went up for what would have been a massive poster dunk on Embiid that would have secured a two-for-one and trimmed the lead to one point.

Instead, Embiid met him at the summit for what has to be near the top of the list of the best blocks of his NBA career. Then Maxey targeted Sam Hauser in isolation and scored with ease:

In games of this sort, this kind of swing over the span of even two or three possessions can determine a winner. And instead of potentially going down at halftime, the Sixers held a five-point lead, setting the stage for their barrage of baskets early in the third quarter.

MORE: Embiid's dominant performance helps Sixers avoid Game 7 collapse

Quentin Grimes makes an unnoticed swing

Only once during the entirety of Game 7 did the Celtics lead. A Payton Pritchard triple put Boston ahead five minutes and change into the second quarter, punctuating Boston's first haymaker of the game. From a team-wide perspective, the most impressive thing the Sixers did on Saturday was continually find ways to respond to Boston's punches with such a rabid crowd working against them.

"The first thing I want to say is that it's really good for us to go through that, and respond to it," Nurse said. "It's good to have that experience. You know it's going to be like that in the playoffs. You're going to be in a tight game and it's going to be super loud... You just have to play through it. I think we handled it just enough, but I think it's really good for us to experience it."

And while his line in the box score of three points, six rebounds and four assists will not draw much fanfare, it was Quentin Grimes who, in all phases of the game, summoned what the Sixers needed to absorb that very first blow and move past it. When Embiid missed a pull-up jumper, Grimes flew in from out of nowhere to draw a foul and keep the possession alive. Grimes paid it off by throwing down a two-handed dunk curling around a screen. Then he got a one-on-one stop against Pritchard, which led to an Edgecombe transition three:

"Do-or-die, Game 7 on the road. Even in the regular season, I probably would have gotten back on defense," Grimes told PhillyVoice, "but you try to put as much pressure on the defense as you can, and eventually you'll get rewarded."

When did Grimes realize that this team had the sort of makeup to muster such mature responses in situations like this one?

"I've known since the beginning," Grimes said. "We did have some unfortunate breaks during the regular season, but we knew once we got everybody back healthy, we had everybody on the same accord, that it was going to work in our favor." 

VJ Edgecombe fires away

George, who logged 42 minutes on his 36th birthday despite dealing with a tough illness and getting very little sleep, hit some important shots for the Sixers on Saturday. But all season – particularly when he served a 25-game suspension in the second half of the season – George has poured into Edgecombe. He teaches him and tries to make sure the rookie's confidence remains high.

So, it was especially gratifying for George to see Edgecombe shine on a big stage yet again. The 20-year-old rookie was brilliant in Game 7, scoring 23 points to go with six rebounds, four assists and a lights-out defensive performance against Derrick White in the second half after Edgecombe demanded the matchup in an effort to cool White down.

But, George wanted to make one thing clear.

"I can't take no credit for none of that," George said. "He's special, and he's been special, and he's shown it since day one, game one, way back when we started this [season]... He hit the ground running this year. It's a good thing when the veteran guys expect so much out of the rookie. You can't even say the young guy, man. The rook. It just says a lot. And throughout the game – he's young. It's his first experience in the playoffs, and I think the most important thing is: he's going to make some mistakes, but he just comes back and he's ready and he just makes those adjustments and he picks up where he left off. When he does make a mistake, he makes 10 plays that kind of counter the mistake. He's very coachable, he's a student of the game. He's just learning. He's getting better."

In order for Embiid and Maxey to truly leverage the attention Boston was devoting to them in this series, they needed teammates to play off of them with extreme confidence. Enter the rookie Edgecombe, whose calling card is his ability to react to every play through a simple lens: what is the right basketball play?

That is how, in the biggest game of his life, a fearless Edgecombe ended up shooting 11 three-pointers. He made five of them, and the Sixers needed each and every one of those triples:

Asked about his backcourt mate, Maxey used the same word to describe Edgecombe as George.

"He got up 11 threes, so let's just start with that. That's somebody who's shooting the ball with confidence," Maxey said. "After he didn't really shoot the ball great this entire series, to come into Game 7 and shoot 11 threes, he shot the ball every time he was open. That's, like – that's special."

MORE: Edgecombe can 'feel the flow' at TD Garden