PHILADELPHIA — The Philadelphia 76ers found themselves in a familiar position on Friday against the Boston Celtics. They were down by 24 points in the second quarter and needed to dig deep in order to give themselves a chance to get it done.

The Sixers did just that as they clawed their way back into it as they did end up tying the game, but the Celtics eventually walked away with a 109-108 win to hand Philadelphia its first loss of the year. The Sixers trailed by 15 in the opening quarter before it ballooned to 24 in the second. The Celtics were off to an excellent start and the Sixers had a tough time responding in coach Nick Nurse’s eyes.

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“Give them a lot of credit,” Nurse said after the loss. “Obviously, they came in here pushing it pretty hard and playing pretty aggressive and, I don’t know, we were just back on out heels a little bit. I didn’t really like where our pickup points were on defense.”

The Celtics scored 10 points in the paint and knocked down five triples in the opening quarter as it was a lot of 3s and layups for them. The Sixers had a tough time stopping Boston’s ball-handling, but it then changed midway through the second quarter to give themselves a chance.

“We shook out of it with about five minutes to go in the second,” Nurse added. “We finally got up, started meeting the ball. Getting into the ball a little bit. One thing we couldn’t shake out of was the long rebounds tonight. They just kept chasing and chasing all the long rebounds tonight. I would say that the lack of pickup point defensively led to the slow start.”

Tyrese Maxey, who led Philadelphia with 26 points, 14 assists, and eight rebounds, echoed Nurse’s sentiments after the loss.

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“We wasn’t into the ball,” Maxey said. “We wasn’t aggressive like we have been for a couple games, but I mean, it definitely was a slow start, but after that, we picked it up. We won the last three quarters. That was a good effort by us.”

It was a good effort which led to the Sixers having a chance to win it late. Philadelphia had the ball down by one with 3.5 seconds left and it ended being a Joel Embiid heave at the buzzer after the Celtics doubled Quentin Grimes at the top. Nurse wanted a better look, but gave Boston credit for stopping the play he designed.

“It’s got a few things going on there. It’s got Joel going off a flare screen,” Nurse explained. “You got Tyrese coming off a pindown and VJ heading to the basket. Tyrese and VJ (Edgecombe) got hung up a little bit and, obviously, there was a couple guys open. Q kinda didn’t handle it cleanly. I think it wasn’t great. Obviously, when you don’t make those, you wish you could’ve done something different, but it’s a good play and we had all our right guys in there, obviously. I thought they did a good job of holding us through it. We couldn’t quite shake them to get free.”

The big fella stated afterward that he didn’t like the shot he got, but it is what it is and the Sixers now just have to move on.

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“Terrible, because I had .5 on the clock? Something like that,” Embiid said afterward. “I just felt like I just had to throw it. I could have done a better job, but we should have been winning at the end, but it is what it is.”

The Sixers will now begin a 3-game road trip when they pay a visit to the Brooklyn Nets on Sunday.

This article originally appeared on Sixers Wire: Nick Nurse, Sixers explain slow start, final shot in loss to Celtics