For most of Monday night's 108-103 loss to the Philadelphia 76ers, the shorthanded Celtics put forth a valiant effort. But the late collapse felt almost inevitable.
For starters, these Celtics have been a poor fourth-quarter team, ranking 26th in the NBA in fourth-quarter point differential. And on this night in particular, they had no answers for Sixers star center Joel Embiid.
Al Horford remains in health and safety protocols. Robert Williams missed the game for personal reasons. That left the Celtics with Enes Freedom as their primary defender on Embiid, with a sprinkling of Bruno Fernando mixed in.
Unsurprisingly, Embiid scored 41 points, including 17 in the fourth. Those 17 all came in the final six minutes, as he completely took over and scored 17 of the Sixers' final 20 points to turn a seven-point deficit into a Philly win.
Still, the Celtics may have been able to hang on had they been able to execute offensively themselves. They couldn't. They scored just six points over the final four minutes, getting outscored 18-6 during that time. There was a Jayson Tatum offensive foul, a Jaylen Brown travel, another Brown turnover, and several blocked shots mixed in. To cap it all off, Marcus Smart made a poor inbound pass with the Celtics down three with 3.9 seconds to go, never even giving them a chance to attempt a game-tying shot.
Despite the Celtics' continuing inability to close out games and a loss that drops them to 15-16 on the season, Brown insisted after the game that he still believes in this team and has faith they can be better than they've been.
"Absolutely. No question. That's an obvious answer for me," Brown said. "I know people are tired of hearing it and people probably have lost belief and faith, but mine is unwavering. I think we still can be a good team. I think we showed it in spurts. I've been out for an extended period of time. I'm trying to get back. We've got guys that have COVID. It's not an excuse or anything -- other teams do as well. But if the question is, 'Do I still believe?' One hundred percent, regardless of if anybody else does or not."
The skepticism from the outside is warranted until the Celtics actually show they can be that kind of team on any sort of consistent basis, but Brown sees fixable problems that could swing some of these fourth-quarter collapses into wins.
"One, you have to get stops," he said. "Two, you have to take care of the basketball. Three, you have to execute. And those are three things that we were inconsistent on tonight. Sometimes you get away with it, sometimes you can't. Embiid put pressure on us by making those tough baskets, and [Seth] Curry as well. We weren't getting away with some of the things we normally get away with with our defense. We played a solid defensive game, but we have to do more to get those guys off the line, slow those guys down. We had to take it to the next step and it wasn't there."
The Celtics return to action at the Garden Wednesday night against the Cleveland Cavaliers before then traveling to Milwaukee to face the Bucks on Christmas Day.
