Doc Rivers preparing Sixers for emotional Game 6 battle vs. Celtics
CAMDEN, N.J.–The Philadelphia 76ers are on the doorstep of reaching the Eastern Conference finals for the first time since the Allen Iverson days in 2001. They were able to do so with an impressive Game 5 win over the Boston Celtics on Tuesday night in order to be in this position.
With the series now shifting back to Broad Street for Game 6 on Thursday, coach Doc Rivers knows this will be a battle. The Celtics were in a similar spot in the 2022 postseason after dropping Game 5 at home tot he Milwaukee Bucks in a 2-2 series. The Cs then went into Milwaukee and won Game 6 before rolling in Game 7.
Rivers reminded his team that the Celtics have been here before.
“Oh God, yeah,” said Rivers on Wednesday. “Listen, we all look for stuff. We openly talk about it as a group. What do they have to lean on to be confident about? Well, they’ve done this and so they’re gonna come in with confidence. We gotta be ready for that. You still gotta get to four. No matter what. No matter how it is, you gotta get to four. We haven’t done anything and we talked about that a lot.”
Philadelphia’s Game 5 win on Tuesday was impressive for a couple of reasons. One of them is because of just how tough the Celtics are, but the other reason is because the Sixers had to overcome a lot to get that done. The playoffs offer what Rivers likes to call “emotional terrorism” and his team is handling things very well.
“It is an important word for every team,” said Rivers. “You see it throughout teams, throughout moments, getting over a mistake. Paul Reed had a great play last night (Game 5). He bobbled the ball, clear turnover, should’ve been, but he got to the ball first.”
Reed made the play in the second quarter when it looked like the Celtics were going to go the other way. Instead, he dove onto the floor for the ball, forced a jump ball, and the Sixers got a James Harden triple out of the play.
“We win the jump ball with five seconds left, and then James makes a 3,” Rivers beamed. “You talk about single possession games, those are plays–Joel’s (Embiid) run down. Early in the game, he turned the ball over, emotional terrorism would have been he would have just (stopped). Instead, he runs a guy down, we get the ball, those are plays, man. Those are team growth.”
The Sixers have grown as a team. Game 6 is going to be emotional. The Celtics don’t want to go home after they reached the finals in 2022. They want to reach their ultimate goal just as the Sixers want to and Thursday is going to be a tough battle.
