VJ Edgecombe, 76ers get hot, steal Game 2 against ice-cold Celtics

Boston Celtics

Jaylen Brown mentioned Edgecombe by name three times without warning as he explained what went wrong with the Celtics.

VJ Edgecombe and the 76ers shook off their blowout in Game 1 and pummeled the Celtics again in Game 2, posting a 111-97 win against a stunning TD Garden to tie the series at 1-1.

Here are the takeaways.

VJ Edgecombe changed the look of the game (and the series)

The Sixers rookie made a statement in the team’s season opener against the Celtics, so Tuesday’s outburst may have looked uncomfortably familiar to Celtics fans who have been watching since the beginning of the year.

Edgecombe started strong, exploding to the rim on his first basket and knocking down two mid-range jumpers before unleashing a barrage of 3-pointers that helped the Sixers build a lead with little breathing room heading into halftime. He was quieter in the second half after scoring 21 in the first, but his hat-trick with three minutes left was the dagger that sent many Celtics fans off.

Edgecombe finished with 30 points on 12-for-20 shooting, including 6-for-10 from behind the arc, and — as a rookie — brought the Sixers back into contention in the series. We’ll get to how the Celtics defended next, but in his postgame comments, Jaylen Brown mentioned Edgecomb by name three times without warning as he explained what went wrong for the Celtics.

“I thought Edgecombe was very comfortable, built a rhythm and was able to make a big impact on the game,” Brown said. “Also, he had six 3-pointers, and he’s a capable shooter.

“We just have to adapt and be ready to protect him. He’s a ballplayer. He’s a rookie but he can play. We’ve got to be better with him.”

The Celtics will struggle in fall coverage

Edgecombe wasn’t the only Sixers guard to have a blast. Tyrese Maxey came out in the fourth, scoring 12 of his 29 points in the fourth quarter as the Sixers pulled away.

The Sixers’ guards celebrated the Celtics’ drop coverage on a pick-and-roll, with the bigs backing up behind the play to contain the drive as the Celtics’ guards tried to navigate the screen. A lot of the Sixers’ 3-point attempts looked like this:

“I’ll be honest, I think we all knew where the shots were coming from,” Edgecombe said after the game. “We knew where we were going to get the doses, and where the help was going to come from.”

Joe Mazzola He called it “low-hanging fruit” to note the drop coverage, but there couldn’t be any lower hanging fruit than Neemias Queta in the screenshot above, looming at the free-throw line as Maxey navigated Drummond’s screen and drilled into an open three. Both Maxey and Edgecombe enjoyed acres of space to work with the Celtics’ big set up in the lane, and they both enjoyed all that space immensely.

The Celtics have been really good at defending touchdown coverage this year, but there are two things working against that strategy here.

First, Andre Drummond is an elite film screener; Mazzola described the show as “one of the best things he does,” which seemed appropriate.

Second, despite his stellar defense this season, Derrick White has struggled with Maxi one-on-one. Drummond’s show added a second layer to those conflicts.

Getting out of drop coverage is also difficult, since Maxey is too fast for Queta, and too fast for Nikola Vucevic, who didn’t have a particularly good game.

“Obviously there are things that we will do differently in the next game and be prepared to do differently in the next game, but at the same time, we have to be aware of what is on the other side of that,” Mazzola said.

As a team, the Sixers shot 19-for-39 (48.7 percent) from deep after going 4-for-23 in the first game.

Two questionable shots from Jayson Tatum were costly

We’ve spent a lot of time writing about wonders Jayson TatumBack to Earth – and we will repeat that his being in this position is a medical miracle – but that means we also need to acknowledge when he suffers.

On Tuesday, Tatum had two particularly costly fouls.

The first was with 7:37 remaining and the Celtics trailing by seven. The Celtics spent a surprising amount of time stuck around that range, struggling to dig themselves out of a relatively shallow hole due to their cold three-point shooting (more on that in a minute), but after Maxey missed a layup, Tatum grabbed the rebound and raced down the floor. With only Payton Pritchard on the offensive side with him and four Sixers around him, Tatum stopped and lofted a particularly difficult 3-pointer that crashed off the back rim.

One possession later, Tatum hit a 3-pointer after an offensive rebound by Pritchard, and the Celtics were able to cut the deficit to two. Maxey missed a 3-pointer, the Celtics got the rebound, TD Garden was swinging, and suddenly it looked like the Celtics might have a chance to steal the win after all.

The Celtics then ran eight seconds of the offensive set, and the ball found its way to Tatum on the wing. He shot another 3-pointer too quickly with his hand in his face and missed it too short. On the next possessions, Maxey buried 3-pointers from the pick-and-roll against (you guessed it) drop coverage, and the lead went back to eight. He never seriously challenged the Celtics again.

“Maxi just went into two big buckets in a row when we cut the deficit to two,” Brown said. “So we’ll watch that and see what we can be better at there, but it was a lot of momentum that helped them pull away.”

Small margins can change a playoff game. If the Celtics scored on any of the aforementioned possessions that ended with a humbling look early in the shot clock for Tatum, the game could have a very different feel down the stretch.

Tatum finished with 19 points on 8-for-19 shooting to go along with 14 rebounds and nine assists.

The Celtics couldn’t afford a bucket

Tatum certainly wasn’t alone in missing shots. The Celtics were 13-for-50 from 3-point range (26 percent). Tatum and Sam Hauser were 2-for-8, Vucevic was 1-for-4, Pritchard was 0-for-4, and White was 2-for-10. Only Brown, who got hot in the second half, saved the Celtics from their worst shooting night of the season by going 5-for-12.

“We trust in Payton. We trust in Sam. We trust in Baylor,” Brown said. “We trust all these guys to come in and impact the game. We just have to continue to stay consistent with that, and we’ll be fine.”

Mazzola agreed with a reporter who asked if missed shots put pressure on the defense.

“I thought we got a great look,” Mazzola added. “I thought we missed them, and you look at that, 91-89, they ran, we missed a lot of good shots, we couldn’t make them. You’ve got to be able to score in close games against a team like that, and they hit us with more shots.”

Jaylen Brown scored a lot

The Celtics’ offensive struggles had little to do with Brown, who finished with 36 points on 11-for-24 shooting. Brown’s 5-for-8 shooting from three helped in the second half, but he also got to the free throw line 12 times while recording seven rebounds and four assists.

Now it’s the Celtics’ turn to get a gut check

The Sixers hit a haymaker in the jaw in Game 1 and countered with a sharp kick.

Now the Celtics need to show they’re made of tougher stuff than they looked in Game 2. The loss had shades of last year’s series against the Knicks before Tatum’s injury, as the Knicks stole both games in Boston when the Celtics went cold and blew a double-digit lead. Game 3 suddenly seems uncomfortably important for a first-round series.

However, the Celtics say they’re ready for it, and their history in the playoffs suggests we can believe them.

“I’m looking forward to it,” Brown said. “I’m looking forward to the film session. We’re still learning and growing as a team, so you can look at these opportunities as a negative or you can look at them as a positive. So we’ll learn from them and then we’ll get back to Celtics basketball.”

Both Brown and Tatum, and perhaps especially Tatum, have had huge games against the Sixers in the playoffs before.

“The playoffs are a roller coaster,” Tatum said. “I think what I’ve learned over my nine years in the playoffs is to stay balanced all the time, right? I think a team that sticks together and does that emotionally will be good.”

What’s next

The Celtics and Sixers have two days off before Friday’s game at Wells Fargo Arena, which will be on Amazon Prime — the third completely separate network for the same number of games — at 7 p.m. Game 4 will take place on Sunday at 7pm before the series returns to Boston on Tuesday.