That was GARBAGE...

Let's flashback to 3-19 left in the third quarter last night. Tyrese Maxey nails a three, pulled the game even at 79. Things seemed like they had turned around. The Sixers had been on a run. It was looking good. And then Boston nails a three. And then another. And in the words of DJ Khaled, another one, another one. And it got out of hand there. Seven baskets in a row for Boston. Every single one of them from beyond the arc. 21-3 run to put the game ostensibly out of reach. And unfortunately, Paul George being the man behind so much of the carnage in the ultimate. I submit. Awkward X kind of moment. What's going on, everybody? Christian Pedersen back with another episode of Sixers Digest. Let's recap the hot garbage that was last night's game. For Jalen Brown, his first true game of the regular season against his old team finishes with a minus 27 on the night, his worst mark of the season. And I want to grade this one on the let's just throw it away scale. And yes, some really, really high highs and some really, really low lows. So I'm not going to crash out, but we do need to dive into the numbers. The Sixers came into the night allowing just over 11 threes per game, one of the best marks in the entirety of the NBA. And I said this was going to be a live-by-the-three, die-by-the-three kind of the moment, given how well the Celtics had been shooting from beyond the arc. Boston made 22 threes, which just is absolutely unlikely from them, but also unsurvivable for the Sixers. Boston led by 11 at halftime, but adjustments were made. Joel Embiid came out shooting well, hitting a three. Then it seemed, though, that every time that we had a punch, Boston had a counterpunch. Tatum, Queta, George. All of them scoring well from beyond the arc. The Sixers, they did go on a 23-10 run in less than seven minutes to open up the third quarter. And that's what I'm talking about. They pulled it even. LeBron James, seven points in that stretch. Dean Wade getting in on the three game. Tyrese Maxey, like we said, tied it all up at 79. But then Peyton Pritchard just goes nuts. Sam Hauser hits him. There was some back and forth there, but ultimately they pulled away. We're letting Baylor Schneiderman or whatever the heck his name is. I'm sorry. I'm bad at names. They go crazy through that stretch to end out the third and then into the fourth. And it was just unsustainable, like I said, for us to play that kind of poor defense from beyond the arc. So while there was stretches where the Sixers were a better team, there was that singular nuclear meltdown that just let it get away. Boston, the lead got as big as 29. The Sixers only led for technically 1% of the entire night. Even at halftime, it was already looking bad, though, from beyond the arc, with Boston having already made 13 of their 22 threes in the first half of the game. And that's tough. What else was really tough was the bench play. Tatum finished with 21. Paul George was in double digits. No one else, though, on that starting rotation for Boston had more than eight points. If you look, though, at the bench scoring, Peyton Pritchard, like I said, he was going nuts. The overall bench play, Boston outscored... The Sixers bench, 49-29, and when that's coming from Sam Hauser making threes, Hugo Gonzalez making threes, it just is really tough. Anthony Simons, he had 17 of those 29 points. KCP did not score. So this was where I'm saying, I don't want to crash out about this game. It was statistically unlikely that Boston would be that overwhelmingly good, and that We would be that overwhelmingly bad on the same night. It just kind of happened to line up. But this does, you know, it does. We got outplayed in everything. They had more assists than us, 28 to 23. With all of their threes. You have to ask, was this an exceptional shooting night for the Celtics, or was this a collapse or exposing of the defense from beyond the arc, which is a weird conversation given how we had just talked about so much of the rebounding and center and defensive interior shortcomings. My verdict, hot night for the Celtics. I'm not necessarily going to panic, but in... You look at it, like I said, they were averaging just over 11. Nobody had made more than 14. So it is a large, large increase. And you could underline the talk about how that was an issue. But I think, though, if you do the math and this is revisionist history, yes, but this is my copium tonight. Take their threes down by a couple. Not even saying 22, cut that in half down to our average, but if you take some of those threes away, or if you turn some of those threes into... It overwhelmingly could still be a very close game. And so I think that the matchup, if you level things out and you shoot better... We lost this one at the three-point line from both ends. If we shoot a little bit better, we only made 11 of our 37 threes. We've talked about the offensive shortcomings. Maybe it's the rebounding. Maybe it's that. But just, I'm saying if you give some mathematical averages and you cool them off a little bit, you heat us up a little bit, this game could have turned out, I think, the matchup to me is still a very even matchup. So I'm not doing the panic thing. I'm not doing the frustration thing. So let's talk about what this means for the Paul George-Jalen Brown trade. George, obviously 36 points, having himself a get-back-at-your-ex kind of night. He had 17 by halftime. He was shooting well from beyond the arc, daggers galore type of things. In the fourth, he had a 25-footer, got an and one, scored at the rim, hit threes. From deep to just explode. It was hard to watch his second best scoring night of the season. He's averaging 22 a night in Boston. He's looking fantastic. But I would also say that, like I said, this was singularly an exceptional night from him. He also, though, had some nice quotes and was in a... I appreciated what he said. Before the game, he said in some ways he helped them land a future piece, so he was not sure how his reception was going to be. And there were some videos of people heckling him and whatever. But I think largely for me, this was a great night for him and then a really rough night for Brown. You just kind of got to flush away. Brown, 13 points, 4 of 9 from the shooting. He had four turnovers. His 26 minutes on the court were the fewest of any of the starters. His first basket of the fourth was a three, but then Boston was already up by 20, so kind of largely in slop time territory. Let me just say... It feels good to vent to you guys about it, but I'm leveling out and I am not panicking on this one. It's a long season. It just was a rough night to endure where both of these things line up, where one half of the trade that we gave away goes absolutely nuclear up and then we go absolutely nuclear down. I don't think this settles the trade. I think that this just means we got to keep going. So we got a couple of games still coming up. We got to get ready for the Raptors. We got two more games this week. I am trying to look at the positive of let's now focus our efforts on how are we going to rebound from this literally in the rebounding sense, but also how are the Sixers going to rebound from this night in terms of just the mentality. Every loss that they have suffered so far this season, they have bounced back and done exceptionally well the next game. So now it's just a question of. On the next one, because Toronto, decent team, or as our boss at Digest says, best team in the NBA. How can we prevent this one from going from bad to worse? It seems to be that when things go bad, they go way bad, and then they just get out of hand with letting a team go on a run. I get basketball is a game of runs, but we just got to prevent, it seems, that singular one from letting this get all away. Let me know what you think, as always. Let me know if you think that this is a blip or if this is a trend. Like, is this one bad night and don't panic at all? Or is this a greater indication of larger problems? And I guess in closing also, Embiid, despite not shooting well from the field, did get back to the line a bunch. So was scoring a ton more. So that's what I got. So that's what I got for you. As always, like, subscribe, comment, share, follow all those other YouTube buttons. Until next time, go Sixers. Talk to you soon.