Hoops Tonight - Celtics-76ers Prediction: Jaylen Brown & Jayson Tatum outduel Maxey & Paul George w/ no Joel Embiid
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All right, welcome to Hoops Tonight here at The Volume. Happy Friday, everybody. Hope all of you guys are having an incredible week. We are continuing our set of series previews today with the Boston Celtics and the Philadelphia 76ers. You guys know the drill. Before we get started, subscribe to the Hoops Tonight YouTube channel so you don't miss any more of our videos. Make sure you like this video and hit that post notification button so you get notified every time we go live or we have a new video go up. We are on the road to 150,000 subs in this postseason run. It would mean a lot to me if you guys would take those steps to help us and our channel grow. as we try to grow. All right, let's talk some basketball.
So the season series between the Celtics and the Sixers tied at two, but the first three games were all in the first month of the season. In fact, the 76 or second win over the Celtics, the season dropped them to five and seven. Remember that poor start that the Celtics had this year, the The Celtics ended up turning their season around really right after that game. They won 10 of their next 12 after dropping that second game to the Sixers. Then they played again on March 1st, several months later.
What is the Celtics vs. 76ers playoff matchup overview?
Obviously no Tatum, no Paul George, no Embiid, but the Celtics kind of dominated them. The Sixers took a little bit of an early lead as both Vijay Edgecombe and Tyrese Maxey hit some threes against drop coverage. Definitely take that and file it away because it's going to be one of the main kind of swing factors of the series. But the Celtics just kind of methodically took over from there and really dominated that game. Obviously, no Tatum or no Paul George in any of the four games. No Joel Embiid in all but one of the games, a game early in the season where he looks terrible, super immobile. It's very early in the year. They got crushed when he was on the floor and then dominated when he was off the floor.
So we don't really have any good look at what Embiid would look like in this matchup. The series prices, again, all of our lines are provided by our partner Hard Rock Bet. The Celtics are a minus 900 favorite. with the Sixers at plus 550. Another one where I don't really like the underdog line just because I think I have a really hard time seeing the Sixers winning this series. Now, as of right now, we have basically no idea as to whether or not Joel Embiid will play in this series. I'm going to proceed today under the impression that he does not. Now, if for whatever reason he gets announced as returning to the series at some point, we will cover that when that happens. My only thought as of right now is that how it could look in the event that he does return is that it would both help and hurt them.
To be clear, the numbers clearly show that the Sixers are a better team when it beats on the floor versus when he's off, including on defense. I just think in this particular matchup, it gets a little more complicated, especially now that he's older, more banged up, and less mobile than he used to be. This series, in many ways, is going to come down to attacking drop coverage looks for both teams, but especially the Sixers. And Joel Embiid just gives you another side of the drop coverage look. to attack. The Celtics drop is designed to protect the paint. We're going to dig more into that here in a minute. They do concede pops. That's something they've conceded all year long. And so Joel and beads ability to credibly pop out of ball screens and hit threes would be a huge asset as well as just giving them an additional ability to attack outside of ball screen.
So for instance, elbow ISOs, post-ups things along those lines without him, it's pretty much just Paul George post-ups and ISOs, which aren't going to be nearly as efficient as Joel Embiid post-ups and ISOs. So again, that's just my initial take on it on the offensive end of the floor. He's going to be a help on defense though. I think it would dramatically downsize like Philly's aggregate foot speed on defense.
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