May 02, 2026
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Would a Game 7 victory in Boston mark the biggest win of Joel Embiid's career?
BOSTON – Before the 2026 NBA Playoffs began, the Sixers announced that for every home game, they would don their black throwback jerseys and play on an accompanying court honoring the 2001 Sixers. Two home losses and two road wins later, the Sixers' black jerseys were taken out of their locker room. The black jerseys, which have been sources of nostalgia for fans all season, were replaced by the Sixers' white jerseys typically reserved for road trips. Nobody will say who specifically elected to make this change, but maybe it worked.
"I don't know," VJ Edgecombe said before the Sixers' morning shootaround on Saturday when asked who suggested the change. "I just show up and do my job. That's not my job. That's above my pay grade."
Playing in white jerseys on their traditional floor, the Sixers outclassed the Boston Celtics on Thursday night to force a Game 7 on Saturday at 7:30 p.m. in Boston. On Saturday night, the Sixers will once again wear white. If they win to complete a 3-1 series comeback and shock the basketball world, it would probably be safe to assume they will be in white as often as possible moving forward.
Jerseys aside, there are many potential swing factors in the final game of what has been an intense and unpredictable series so far:
A common belief: the biggest games in the NBA are won by the highest-end players. It has often been true that elite talent trumps depth in the playoffs; that is why the Sixers are going back to Boston for Game 7. So, it is worth asking exactly how much each team can ask for out of its stars.
If Sixers head coach Nick Nurse wants to play Tyrese Maxey all 48 minutes, he probably could. And if the Sixers are trailing early, that is not out of the question. But Maxey has been between 40 and 43 minutes in every game this series. Edgecombe certainly has the endurance to do whatever is necessary, too. The same is probably true for Jaylen Brown; he has less experience than Maxey logging enormous minutes totals but – barring another run-in with foul trouble – there should be nothing stopping him from playing as much as Celtics head coach Joe Mazzulla deems fit.
Even Paul George, whose minutes have been carefully monitored all season, has logged 83 minutes across the last two games. At 1:00 p.m. on Saturday, the Sixers downgraded George to probable due to an illness, but it is hard to imagine that holding him out from a game of this magnitude.
This discussion is rather black and white – until it turns to Embiid and Jayson Tatum.
Embiid, now 23 days removed from an appendectomy, was surprised to be able to play 34 minutes in his return to action in Game 4 last week. Then came a 39-minute outing in Game 5 in Boston in which the former NBA MVP only got better as the game went on. He played 34 minutes in Game 6. Assuming a blowout is not in order, Embiid seems set to exceed the 40-minute threshold for the third time this season. Embiid played 45 minutes and 36 seconds in an overtime win in January, 17 days after playing 40 minutes and three seconds in another overtime game. Embiid's highest regular-season minutes total this season: 39 minutes and nine seconds against the San Antonio Spurs on April 6, just three days before he was diagnosed with appendicitis.
Playing without Embiid has not been as much of a struggle for the Sixers in these playoffs as it has been in years past – largely thanks to Maxey and George – but this team will always be better with him on the floor, particularly given the level at which he has protected the rim in this series.
Tatum, meanwhile, barely played in the second half of Game 6 and appeared to be experiencing a calf issue of some sort. The Celtics' claim is that it is not actually an issue at all; Tatum is not listed on the team's injury report at all as of this writing and Mazzulla made it clear that Boston's best player would not miss this game. But still not a year removed from a ruptured Achilles, the Celtics have to consider potential problems stemming from overcompensation (Tatum's calf in question is not on the same leg that he injured last year).
Boston staggers Tatum and Brown to ensure that one of them is always on the court, even if it limits the amount of time the two star wings spend on the floor together. And in this series, the Tatum-centric lineups without Brown have crushed the Sixers, while lineups built around Brown with Tatum resting have struggled quite a bit. If this calf issue even cuts into Tatum's minutes load by a small fraction, it could swing the game.
Neemias Queta had a terrific regular season as Boston's starting center, one of the league's genuine breakout players this year. He has spent the entirety of this series in foul trouble, and even when he has been on the floor his impact has been pretty limited. Given the makeup of Boston's roster, Queta is locked into the starting role and will be given every chance to prove he can handle the spotlight that comes with a Game 7. But if Embiid's foul-drawing tactics continue to work against Queta, Mazzulla has a challenging balancing act to figure out.
Nikola Vučević, Boston's primary backup center, has caused the Sixers some issues during this series – particularly early on – with his ability to space the floor. But he is a major weak link defensively, and as the series has gone on the Sixers have been more deliberate about targeting him. He cannot contain Embiid one-on-one and has been crushed in the post. But he also struggles mightily in space; Maxey's eyes light up when he gets the chance to put Vučević in the action. Boston's other backup center, Luka Garza, has a very similar set of strengths and weaknesses as Vučević.
Boston has not gotten enough out of its center mix, one of the primary reasons the series is tied after six games. The Celtics boast terrific wing depth; rookie Hugo González has barely played at all in this series and standout reserve Baylor Scheierman's role has been limited.
One adjustment Mazzulla should consider, particularly because none of his bigs have proven capable of handling Embiid in single coverage: going super small, tasking Tatum or Brown with fronting Embiid before he gets the ball, and if the Sixers can funnel it inside, immediately swarming. It comes with risk, of course, but Tatum is such a strong rebounder that the Celtics might not be outmatched on the glass, and the Celtics would have a better grouping of players on the floor that is also more versatile defensively. Mazzulla has done it before; Brown, Jrue Holiday and Marcus Smart have all taken cracks at defending Embiid before.
Nurse's likely counter-adjustment, with no poor shooters for Embiid to guard, would be to use a zone defense of some kind. Sometimes the best reason to use a zone defense is to throw an offense out of rhythm for a few minutes by showing it something it has not seen before.
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Back in 2022, the Celtics hosted the Milwaukee Bucks in a Game 7. Grant Williams, whose season-high in shot attempts was 20 that year, ended up taking 18 shots... from three-point range. Seven of them went in. Williams scored 27 points, to this day his career-high in any playoff game. Williams was the leading scorer and shot-taker in a game that included Tatum, Brown, Holiday and Giannis Antetokounmpo.
That is to say: nobody ever knows which player is going to step up and swing a game. Anecdotal evidence suggests that the home team is oftentimes the one to experience an out-of-body experience from a role player, and Boston certainly has more depth pieces capable of getting hot.
Payton Pritchard comes off the bench, but he is too good and plays too many minutes to be an "unlikely" hero. Boston's true candidates for this include Vučević and Garza, and even defensive ace Jordan Walsh. If one of Mazzulla's reserves emerges and swings this game, the guess here is that it will be Scheierman, a confident and accurate three-point shooter with a flair for the dramatic. But, to the Sixers' credit, the water has largely been turned off on Boston's secondary sources of offense in this series.
"We know that, obviously, they're a really great shooting team," Edgecombe said. "Everyone on their team can shoot. So honestly we try our best to just take that away. Obviously you're not going to hold them to zero threes, so we just try to make it physical, contest every shot."
On the Sixers' side, the obvious answer would be Quentin Grimes, whose two-way brilliance in Game 5 helped extend the series. Grimes has otherwise been unproductive against Boston, but if he finds his stroke from beyond the arc and Kelly Oubre Jr. struggles, Nurse will have no hesitation closing with three guards and asking Grimes to defend Brown in the biggest moments of the game. Andre Drummond will play, too, and he continues to knock down corner triples at the perfect times, but he will only be on the floor when Embiid needs rest.
It is difficult to imagine him playing enough to become a hero, but Justin Edwards' performance in Game 6 earned him the right to see the floor in Game 7. Edwards did not have any plays of significant note, but held strong amid a physical game, and while guarding elite players never looked out of place while also contributing on the glass. Edwards is a confident three-point shooter who can get hot. He has done it against the Celtics before.
All year long, Sixers fans have been frustrated with Nurse's aggressive defensive schemes. Sixers perimeter players have constantly helped off of three-point shooters in hopes of cutting off driving lanes, only for the ball to be kicked out and an open triple to be knocked down.
But for much of the season, it seemed like Nurse did not believe his team had the requisite defensive personnel to defend without gimmicks. They needed to gamble for turnovers to have any chance of hanging in.
Now, the Sixers have their best defensive alignment possible, particularly because Embiid has returned to acting as a true stalwart at the rim despite his limitations from a mobility perspective. At the center of that has been the wing pairing of George and Oubre, two players with very similar defensive mindsets who have been tasked with manning the Brown and Tatum assignments.
George has typically guarded Tatum, Oubre has spent most of his time on Brown, and both have done a fantastic job, particularly when it comes to, as the Sixers often say, "guarding their yard." The more the Sixers can trust their top two perimeter defenders to get the job done in one-on-one coverage, the easier it is for them to stay home against shooters and force long-range misses. George and Oubre have made that possible. Even Edwards has made the most of his limited opportunities, which Edgecombe pointed out at shootaround.
"They've been great. They've been great. Like I've said, they're also great players," Edgecombe said. "Tatum and Brown are great players, and you won't hold them scoreless. So we just try to make it difficult for them, and I feel like Kelly, P. and J.E., they've been doing a really good job."
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A wild ride over the last month has led Embiid back to this point: on the road, playing in front of his favorite rival crowd, with a chance to earn the most significant win of his career. And, while that being said about a first-round game this deep into Embiid's career is damning, it is undeniably true.
Everybody knows that Embiid has never won a second-round series. Consider this: in Embiid's entire career, the best team the Sixers have ever beaten in a playoff series was the 2021-22 Toronto Raptors, who went 48-34. These Celtics, after winning 56 games and doing most of their damage without Tatum, are the gold standard in the Eastern Conference. They represent Embiid's most infamous opponent; he has suffered three playoff exits at the hands of Boston in eight appearances. It was seven years ago that Embiid said Sixers-Celtics was not a rivalry because "they always kick our ass," and now he has the chance to finally make it a rivalry again.
Embiid has been at the center of the Sixers' comeback effort in this series, literally and figuratively. He has played with tremendous force and intent inside, dominating against one-on-defenders, forcing double-teams and then making quick passes to beat them. With his intensity, decisiveness and willingness to pass, Embiid has set a tremendous tone for the Sixers, something he has often struggled with in his career.
As Sixers-Celtics Game 7 gets underway, Nurse should do all he can to establish Embiid's rhythm as a force multiplier inside rather than cross his fingers that Embiid connects on an early pick-and-pop and stumbles into such a groove. If Embiid is assertive and confident early on, his teammates will take after him. If he plays with passivity or uncertainty, it will be palpable.
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