Celtics brush off Embiid's return to take control of series

PHILADELPHIA -- Joel Embiid returned to the court less than three weeks after an emergency appendectomy Sunday night, but it didn't stop the Boston Celtics from pushing his Philadelphia 76ers to the brink of elimination.

Though Embiid's return brought a fresh dose of excitement to the sellout crowd at Xfinity Mobile Arena, once the game started those feelings were gone under a barrage of Celtics offensive rebounds, 3-pointers and missed shots by the 76ers.

As a result of the 128-96 loss, Embiid and the 76ers will head to Boston for Game 5 Tuesday night down 3-1 in the Eastern Conference first-round series, knowing another loss will see yet another season end at the hands of their rivals.

"It's tough," said Embiid, who finished with 26 points, 10 rebounds and six assists in 34 minutes. "It's tough. But you try to do the best job possible with the conditions. Still got to go out there and try to play well and win a basketball game and we didn't do that tonight. We didn't play well."

Embiid was listed as doubtful for Game 3 Friday and ahead of Game 4 Sunday but was upgraded to questionable a little more than an hour before tipoff. He was then announced as available a half-hour before tipoff and reclaimed his customary place in the starting lineup in place of second-year center Adem Bona.

The return capped a long three weeks for Embiid, who said he initially thought he had a bout of food poisoning when his stomach bothered him in Philadelphia's loss to San Antonio -- only to discover a few days later as his symptoms worsened, that it was appendicitis. He then said there were some complications from the surgery, which he didn't detail, and that he'd been on the court scrimmaging only once before Sunday.

"I was like, 'Something is very wrong here,'" Embiid said, recalling the night he wound up in the hospital. "I don't like the hospital and all those MRIs and CT scans, but it got to a point where it was really bad where I was like, 'All right, something, I don't know what a stomach virus is supposed to feel like, but yeah, something else is going on.'

"And then that's when we had to go to the hospital and that's when we found out that was going on."

Although the game quickly got out of hand, it didn't take Embiid long to make an impact. The one-time NBA MVP scored Philadelphia's first eight points, drawing a pair of fouls on Celtics counterpart Neemias Queta, resulting in four free throws, as well as a fast-break dunk and a nifty post move over Nikola Vucevic.

But that early flurry was about the extent of the good feelings. After Paul George hit a 3-pointer for a 13-12 lead with 4:41 to go in the first, Payton Pritchard banged home a 3-pointer 11 seconds later in response.

It would be the last time the 76ers held the lead. Pritchard's triple kick-started a 22-5 run to end the first quarter -- one that was powered by five Celtics 3-pointers, including a running 3 off one leg by Pritchard at the buzzer to make it 34-18 Boston.

"I don't know if I saw anything different," said Pritchard, who led the Celtics with 32 points Sunday and made 11 3-pointers across the two games in Philadelphia after going 2-for-13 from deep in Boston. "It's just more playing with that aggression, playing with that spark.

"I felt it in Game 3. I was telling some of the coaches I thought it was a step in the right direction as far as, like, my aggression and getting my rhythm back."

As for Philadelphia, the 76ers didn't hit their fifth 3-pointer or grab their first offensive rebound until midway through the third quarter. Add in that Tyrese Maxey took only three first-half shots, something he took responsibility for and said was "absolutely unacceptable," and this game -- like Game 1 -- felt over not long after it began.

"It just didn't seem like any matchup could guard anybody one-on-one tonight," 76ers coach Nick Nurse said. "We had them pushed out and bottled up and physical and really off kind of rhythm for a couple games, and there was none of that tonight."

As a result, Embiid's return was overshadowed by how lopsided the game was. Embiid's latest ailment is the just the latest one he has dealt with during the playoffs during his star-crossed career. He had Bell's palsy during a first-round series with the New York Knicks two years ago, in addition to returning from a knee injury late in that regular season; a right knee sprain in 2023; a fractured orbital bone in both 2022 and 2018; a meniscus injury in 2021 and knee tendinitis in 2019.

All of that, though, is secondary to Philadelphia trying to keep its season alive. Doing that will require winning in Boston on Tuesday -- the same place Philadelphia thoroughly outplayed Boston without Embiid a week earlier to get its lone victory of the series.

But outside of Game 2, when the Celtics shot 13-for-50 from 3, it has been Boston -- the East's second-seeded team for a reason -- that has controlled the run of play.

"That was a point of emphasis," said Jayson Tatum, who had 30 points, seven rebounds and 11 assists, of winning both road games. "They were the more desperate team in Game 2 after we blew them out, and it showed. Game 3, we wanted to bounce back. That's just kind of what we talked about over the last 48 hours.

"We want to be the more desperate team. Nine years in the playoffs, it never goes how you think it's going to go. However long it takes, four, six, five, seven games, just be prepared to do whatever it takes for however long it takes. And that's just the kind of mindset that we try to have."

The question now is whether Philadelphia can do anything to get back into the series. Boston has a staggering plus-87 edge at the 3-point line through four games, and has taken 65 more 3-pointers than the 76ers. That's an unsustainable number, and had Nurse imploring his team after Game 4 to continue shooting when open -- even if shots aren't falling.

Still, Embiid's return at least gives Philadelphia a different pitch to throw at Boston to potentially change the dynamic, even if it didn't work out that way in Game 4. And with a game under his belt, Embiid and the 76ers will be hoping to push the series back in their direction in Game 5.

"Down 3-1, it's been done before," Embiid said. "Getting one in Boston is going to be tough. That's a really good team. We know what they do well, we know some of the mistakes we made tonight, so now it's on us to try to figure out how to fix them."br/]