Philadelphia's hot start was always going to get stress-tested the first time it ran into a real contender, and on Tuesday night it failed that test in the most embarrassing way a team can fail: by getting out-whistled and out-played at the same time.
The box score tells most of the story. The Sixers shot 28 free throws. The Celtics shot five. That kind of discrepancy usually buries the team on the wrong end of it in a one-possession game. Instead Philadelphia got all those trips to the line and still lost by 22. A defense that needs that much help from the stripe and still can't stay competitive has been getting bailed out by whistles while its actual guarding falls apart, and Philadelphia's defense got caught the moment Boston started making shots from distance. Eight different Celtics hit a three. Three of them hit four or more. That's a sustained beating, built around a third-quarter run that turned a one-point game into a laugher.
The responsible parties aren't hard to name. Philadelphia's defense couldn't contain the perimeter without reaching, and Jaylen Brown, playing his first game against the team that traded him, spent stretches of the night in foul trouble and finished as the worst plus-minus player on the floor. If this was supposed to be his big night against his old team, the other team stole it. Paul George, in his 17th NBA season and still without a Finals trip, beat the player he was traded for head to head, on national television, with a 36-point night built on efficient shooting inside and from three. Tuesday he looked like the better player, and the Celtics front office that pulled the trigger on that trade got to watch the receipts come in live.
Rating
RatingNone of this means Boston has solved the season. It's still November, and most of the schedule is still ahead for both teams. One lopsided result, even a 22-point one, is a thin reed to hang a verdict on for either side. That argues for patience about the standings. It doesn't erase what we watched. Boston has two players who can go get a bucket whenever it needs one and shooting depth that can bury a team in a single quarter, plus the gear shift, like that 17-0 third-quarter run, that playoff teams lean on when a game tightens. That's real, and it travels.
Philadelphia's record, by contrast, now has an obvious hole in it. A team that needed 28 trips to the free-throw line just to keep a game respectable against a real contender was playing below the level its record suggested. Philadelphia has defensive work to do, and Brown has more to prove against his old team than a tense night and a minus-27 rating. Until that changes, Philadelphia's fast start looks like what it looked like Tuesday: a number on paper that cracked the instant a real contender showed up.
