{"id":182577,"date":"2026-05-03T03:03:08","date_gmt":"2026-05-03T03:03:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/182577\/"},"modified":"2026-05-03T03:03:08","modified_gmt":"2026-05-03T03:03:08","slug":"76ers-embiid-vanquish-celtics-to-complete-3-1-comeback","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/182577\/","title":{"rendered":"76ers, Embiid vanquish Celtics to complete 3-1 comeback"},"content":{"rendered":"

BOSTON — It took 44 years, but the Philadelphia 76ers<\/a> have finally beaten the Boston Celtics<\/a> in a playoff series.<\/p>\n

Behind arguably the best playoff performance of Joel Embiid’s career, the 76ers came into TD Garden and not only claimed a heart-stopping 109-100 victory in Game 7 of their Eastern Conference quarterfinal series against their conference rivals, but Philadelphia also became the 14th team in NBA history to come back from down 3 games to 1 to win a best-of-7 series.<\/p>\n

Prior to Saturday’s win, the 76ers held the NBA’s record by having gone 0-18 in that spot in their prior history. Boston, on the other hand, had been 32-0 when holding a 3 games to 1 lead in a series. That record is now 32-1.<\/p>\n

It also marked the first time since 1982 that Philadelphia managed to beat its rivals, snapping a streak of six consecutive series losses — the last three of which Embiid has taken part in.<\/p>\n

But behind 34 points, 12 rebounds and 6 assists from Embiid and 30 points, 11 rebounds and 7 assists from Tyrese Maxey<\/a> — making them the first two teammates in NBA history to each have 30-10-5 in a Game 7 — the 76ers finally found a way to break through against their bitter rivals.<\/p>\n

And, as a result, Philadelphia will now travel to New York and play the Knicks in the Eastern Conference semifinals beginning Monday night.<\/p>\n

But the craziness in the latest installment of one of the league’s most historic rivalries — the two teams have played each other in 23 different series, more than any other matchup in NBA playoff history — began in the hours leading up to Game 7 Saturday afternoon, when Tatum was put on the injury report and then ruled out with left knee stiffness.<\/p>\n

“He just came in today with knee discomfort,” Celtics coach Joe Mazzulla said during his pregame media availability a few minutes after Tatum was ruled out. “And we decided, the medical staff and myself, that he would not play.”<\/p>\n

Mazzulla, who added that Tatum had discomfort behind his knee and was day-to-day, started a lineup of Derrick White<\/a>, Baylor Scheierman<\/a>, Jaylen Brown<\/a>, Ron Harper Jr<\/a>. and Luka Garza<\/a>, a grouping that had never played together before starting the biggest game of Boston’s season.<\/p>\n

It then looked like a group that hadn’t played together before, as Philadelphia raced out to an early lead and quickly forced Mazzulla to start making changes. From there, the game fell into a fairly steady rhythm back-and-forth, with Philadelphia – outside of a brief stretch in the second quarter – staying in the lead, only for Boston to keep pulling back within striking distance again.<\/p>\n

When Philadelphia – primarily with Embiid on the bench – went on a 14-3 run to break the game open to an 18-point lead in the third quarter, it looked like, for a moment, the 76ers may have created enough separation to start to look ahead to the conference semifinals.<\/p>\n

But, in fitting fashion for a rivalry with this much history, Boston immediately struck back at the start of the fourth quarter, cutting the lead to one on several occasions – including when Jaylen Brown cut the lead to 97-96 with 5:02 remaining in the game.<\/p>\n

Over the next few minutes, though, Boston missed nine consecutive shots – including five that would’ve either tied or given the Celtics the lead – before eight straight points from Maxey inside the final two minutes finally put the game away for Philadelphia.br\/]<\/p>\n

Copyright \u00a9 2026 ESPN Internet Ventures. All rights reserved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"BOSTON — It took 44 years, but the Philadelphia 76ers have finally beaten the Boston Celtics in a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":182578,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[81470,9512,1421,4794,139,69,1002,71,70],"class_list":["post-182577","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-philadelphia","tag-81470","tag-boston-celtics","tag-espn","tag-nba","tag-news","tag-philadelphia","tag-philadelphia-76ers","tag-philadelphia-headlines","tag-philadelphia-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/182577","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=182577"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/182577\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/182578"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=182577"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=182577"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=182577"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}