👋 Good morning! Boston sports the past few weeks…

About time that city’s sports fans faced some adversity. Hey, at least they’re gonna get A.J. Brown in a few weeks.

Beating the Penguins and the Celtics in a few days? It’s Exorcism Week in Philadelphia, baby!

In honor of this momentous occasion, this is one of two free newsletters this month. If you would like to upgrade to get The Broad Street Bulletin every weekday on the monthly or yearly plan, you can click below. Alright, let’s boogie.

You can reach me at [email protected]

🏀 Sixers 109, Boston 100: So much more on the local basketball team below.

And if you want to hear me blab about the big win, I joined my friends Sheil and Cliff on The Ringer’s Philly Special. How about Cliff having Ben Stiller’s phone number? Renaissance man!

Philadelphia sports is a team effort, though. And on the day that the Sixers were looking to break a 44-year streak, they needed the other two teams to lose to even out the juju. It’s what the Sixers would do if the Phillies or Eagles were in the playoffs.

⚾ Phillies win two of three: And the Phillies handled it perfectly. Three things they did in Saturday’s 4-0 loss:

So, all of that was pretty bad. Well done Phils, taking one for the team.

The Phils won the other two games, to make it five of six under Donnie Baseball.

And in both of those games, the Phillies got solid starts. On Sunday, that came from Jesús Luzardo. Pitching back home in South Florida, The Lizard got into a little bit of trouble in the seventh inning but was yet again very efficient.

Over his last two games, Luzardo’s combined line: 13.1 innings, 2 runs, 10 hits, and the key ones, 18 strikeouts and no walks. For Luzardo, the counting stats are starting to catch up to “the periphs.” One more good start, and that pesky ERA will be under five!

But I thought Zack Wheeler’s start on Friday was even more encouraging. Wheels sat in the low to mid-90s with his fastball, but the dude just knows how to pitch. He allowed one run in six innings and started to cruise as he settled in.

And in both of those games, the Phillies got Bryson Stott three-run homers. Same type of swings, golfing out a breaking ball to right field.

This is just another chapter added to the legend of South Beach Stotty. From Todd Zolecki: Stott is batting .340 with eight doubles, five homers, 27 RBIs and a .985 OPS in his last 27 games in Miami.

🟠⚫ Carolina 3, Flyers 0: I gotta be honest gang, I did not pay as much attention to this one in real time when it was up against Sixers-Celtics Game 7. I will do a much better job tonight, since the Sixers are not in an elimination game.

After tonight, the rest of these two series are on different days. Finally.

Oh, you were looking for some words on the actual game?

I do not have a ton, because the Flyers did not give me a lot to write about. They got their butts kicked. You watch that first period, and Carolina just has the puck all the time. To be clear, that is not all that surprising. That is the Hurricanes’ style of play, and they do it very well. A relentless amount of puck possession.

Some stats from that first period:

So yeah, it was not great. I did not love the spot that the Flyers were in for Game 1. Carolina was rested, the Flyers had a short turnaround after the Pittsburgh series and Carolina is a very good team. I do not know if the Orange and Black have any shot in this series — we will find out more about that tonight — but Saturday felt like a spot where they were gonna have to adjust to Carolina’s pace.

The same line scored the first two goals for Carolina. Dan Vladar had no chance on Logan Stankoven’s deflection, but he’s gotta do better on the Jackson Blake goal.

If the Flyers do shift things for Game 2 tonight, the two former London Knights teammates could be involved. Denver Barkey has been in the lineup consistently, but he played a little bit at center the other night and Rick Tocchet said unprompted that he liked him there. Barkey is smaller than a typical center, but maybe you shake some things up against such a relentless opponent.

And after a bad Noah Juulsen turnover that led to Stankoven’s second goal, maybe Oliver Bonk gets in on the third pair in his place. That would be a helluva spot to put a kid in who has one NHL game, but it seems like the Flyers are considering it.

It seems as if Payton Pritchard was the one that finally poked the bear.

The poke in question happened after Game 4, and it sure felt like Pritchard had reason to talk. He had just dropped 32 points on the Sixers’ heads, in a 32-point Boston win to go up 3-1 in the series. Joel Embiid had valiantly returned in that game, a little over two weeks removed from an emergency appendectomy. The big fella put together a decent, if uneven performance. But it did not matter that night. The Sixers got smoked.

When asked about the former MVP’s introduction to the series, Pritchard said that the Celtics did not talk about it at all. By doing so, he volunteered that he and his teammates thought that Embiid’s presence fundamentally did not matter.

Fast-forward six days. The Sixers roared back from that 3-1 deficit, while Pritchard was left to stat-pad after the game and series were both over. Joe Mazzulla got asked a generic question about what went wrong for his team. The Celtics head coach immediately volunteered that, “What changed in this series is Joel Embiid came back, and they’re a completely different team.”

I guess it mattered after all.

There were lots of individual winners from the Sixers’ 3-1 comeback against the Celtics — Daryl Morey and Nick Nurse are both way up there — but come on, none bigger than Mr. Joel Hans Embiid. And I do not know if Pritchard understood this at the time, but that little rascal was channeling how unseriously everyone in Boston took Embiid and the Sixers. After Game 4, the online hordes of Celtics fans were remarking that adding Embiid to this series actually made the Sixers worse. Oh no, Joel Embiid is coming back? I’m shaking in my boots! They have a better chance with Adem Bona out there!

Hard to blame them. The only way to shut ‘em up is to beat ‘em, and Embiid and the Sixers had not done that. Just against Boston in his career…

I have written this before, but Joel’s famous and heavily-memed “This is not a rivalry, they always kick our ass” line was from October 2018! Think about how much more ass-kicking that he and the Sixers suffered at the hands of this single franchise since then. A whole lot of ass-kicking!

Well, it’s at least not always anymore. And the breakthrough happened when you least expected it, when the Sixers spotted the Celtics three games entirely without Embiid and then another one when he and the team were not on the same page.

That is largely because, with no margin for error, Embiid played great:

Not perfect games (poor rebounding in Game 5, poor shooting in Game 6), but Joel showed up all three times. His presence completely changed the series.

And to be clear, it’s never supposed to be perfect. The NBA playoffs are hard work, it’s a completely different sport than the regular season. And the difference between those two sports has summed up Embiid’s career to this point.

I have had a front-row seat for most of Embiid’s regular-season exploits. I have seen him score 50 points in his sleep five or six times. The combination of that size and skill level — the footwork, the ball-handling, the shooting touch that he and Drew Hanlen worked incredibly hard to refine over the years — is just majestic when it is going good. Joel played a legitimately perfect game against Utah 3.5 years ago that might have been the wildest thing I have ever seen on a basketball court.

But very few people are gonna remember that Utah game. You know why? It was in November!

No, Joel needed a moment against a real team in April and May. He needed a moment when that real team was throwing the kitchen sink at him, and he was exhausted, and he got over the hump when the conditions were far from perfect. Joel has not had any such moments in his career, and we can argue how responsible he is for them another day. But the fact of the matter is that Joel did not have a postseason series win in this same stratosphere in his career. Now he does.

Obviously the stat line looks very good, but I think I will mostly remember two things from this Joel performance:

Find a way to win when the conditions were adverse, that is what the Sixers needed from Embiid. He did it, and like we saw with that jab at Pritchard, he deserves to enjoy it.

And look who chimed in, with a perfect GIF.

(Off-topic, but Charles Dutton really is a great character actor.)

At the end of the game, Embiid was gassed. He was 2-9 from the field in the fourth quarter. And after the Sixers dodged three absolute bullets while up 99-98, it was clearly time for someone else to take them home.

Enter Tyrese Maxey, with two big-boy driving layups:

It was the same exact set: Kelly Oubre screening (because Neemias Queta was guarding Oubre), Embiid in the right corner, VJ Edgecombe on the right wing, Paul George in the left corner. That is Game 7 playoff hoops for you. Everyone is dead tired and the other team knows every play you might run, so you do not run anything fancy. Just a simple set, for one of your best players to get you a bucket.

That player had to be Maxey. It was Maxey.

That was fitting. After all, Maxey falling to the 21st pick in the 2020 draft saved The Joel Embiid Era. If the Sixers do not land him, none of these people — the players, coaches and front office — might be here. Maxey was also the guy in training camp who said, “We are not having that bad of a season again!” and backed it up. Was it pretty at times? No, in part because Embiid and George played less than 40 games. But Maxey took on an insane workload over 70 games and is probably gonna make Second Team All-NBA because of it.

After Game 1, I did not know if Maxey was physically capable of dominating because of the pinky injury on his shooting hand. He just did not look comfortable taking 3-pointers in the series opener. Oops. Here were Maxey’s averages in the final six games: 28 points (50 percent on 2s, 43 percent on 3s), 6 assists to 1 turnover, 5.5 rebounds.

Incredible stuff. Zach Lowe pointed out that the Celtics threw every defensive coverage in the book at Maxey, and he’s right. Maxey solved all of them. They played that deep drop, and he shot them out of it. They sent help from the wings, and he found teammates for open shots (46 assists to 9 turnovers for the series). They sent him baseline with what is called “Ice” coverage, and he drilled mid-rangers. And finally, with the big man Queta up near the level of the screen, Maxey blew right by him like the Road Runner. Beep, Beep.

Maxey is experiencing a different type of career arc than Embiid. While he admittedly has not had a ton of team success (Maxey plays for the Sixers, after all), his individual playoff résumé is pretty darn good:

Big Game Max.

You guys have already seen the defensive rebounding numbers in this series, so I will not drag them out again. But the Sixers beat the Celtics in large part because they dramatically cleaned up the defensive glass issues in Games 5 through 7. Everyone deserves credit there, but nobody more than Embiid (10 boards in Game 6, 12 boards in Game 7) and Maxey (10 rebounds in Game 5, 11 rebounds in Game 6). The smallest guy on the team came up big on the boards!

We need to mention VJ Edgecombe. Entering the series, when I thought the Sixers were gonna lose handily, the one silver lining was gonna be that Edgecombe getting playoff reps. Good, bad or up-and-down, it would be good for Young Valdez.

Well, VJ had an up-and-down series. After the monster Game 2, VJ could not buy a shot. In Games 3 through 6, he went 4-23 from beyond the arc. And while that poor shooting was certainly making life harder for the Sixers, I do not think a single Sixers fan was angry at VJ. He is a young kid that needs to become a more consistent shooter, but that is more of an offseason project. And more than anything, everyone still wanted VJ out there. Even when his shot is not falling, he is a Winning Player.

Well, the Winning Player showed up in Game 7. Just like Maxey in Atlanta five years ago, VJ clearly does not care one iota about this franchise’s baggage. He was not here for any of that! In the same building where he dropped 34 points in his NBA debut, he had 23 big ones to close out the Celtics. And oh yeah, VJ went 5-11 from beyond the arc. Even when his shot was not falling, he never got too gun-shy. That is important.

Paul George is gonna get way too little ink for a monster series, but unfortunately he gets fourth billing. That’s alright, he makes $50 million per year. PG scored an incredibly efficient 17 points per game, knocking down some stone-cold jumpers at crucial times. He defended Jayson Tatum and Jaylen Brown incredibly well one-on-one, with the Sixers offering less and less help as the series moved on. He made some money passes in the pick-and-roll. Absolutely crucial stuff, all of it. And the question must be asked: Was that the most important 25-game suspension in NBA history?

Against all odds, I say the following with absolutely no snark: Playoff P.

I did not know if the Sixers were going to finish the series off, but there were signs all throughout that the tide was changing. Some of them that come to mind…

I’ll add one more that came in at the buzzer: Jaylen Brown is now running his mouth on Twitch like a sore loser, which is something that Embiid (very frustratingly, I may add) would absolutely have done. Down is up, up is down.

All of a sudden, a lot of stuff just seemed to flip. And I guess that is how it happens sometimes, when you least expect it. That is what makes sports fun. Even in the most predictable league, you really do never know.

The community is what makes sports fun, too. This Sixers fan base has not had a lot to smile about at this time of year. When I covered the team full-time, like clockwork, the season ended in the middle of May. And maybe that happens again this year, but just like with the Flyers beating the Penguins, this is a group of fans who deserved to have a real moment. It is just a first-round series win, but considering the recent history here, it sure feels like more than that.

One last piece of history for you, from Nate Duncan: In NBA history, there have been 198 teams that faced a 3-1 deficit while having to win two of the remaining elimination games on the road. Only four of them won the series. They are:

All three of those teams went on to win the championship, but you can also see that they were closer to a championship when they pulled the trick. I would be surprising if the Sixers became the fourth, but even if they do not, this was a historic feat.

It would be nice to reflect on all that for a few more days, but there is another game tonight. More on that below.

The news and notes of the day…

Stuff: The Eagles had a busy-ish weekend with rookie camp and DeVonta Smith’s charity softball game.

Too much stuff going on to go in-depth on the Birds right now, although we will go deeper on the draft picks over the next few weeks.

J.T’s back: The Phillies reactivated J.T. Realmuto and DFA’d Dylan Moore, which is fine.

What is not fine is the Phillies bench outside of Edmundo Sosa: Rafael Marchán, Garrett Stubbs and Felix Reyes. What do you do with Marchán? You do not expect much from a backup catcher at the plate, but that dude is 4-51 with a walk this year. He is an automatic out.

Anyway, the answer is clearly not to carry three catchers.

Owen Tippett: One guy the Orange and Black could use tonight against an incredibly speedy team? Their fastest player, Tippett.

The Red Rifle, who was banged up the entire Pittsburgh series, was scratched for Game 1 against Carolina. It sounds like he will be back at some point in this series, but will it be tonight?

Nick Nurse post-game speech: “Let’s see, what time is it? 10:10, you got ‘til midnight. Enjoy this one ‘til midnight, but then you got to shift gears. That’s Game 7 of a possible 28.”

Not the same level of joy as Brett Brown getting doused with water when the Sixers won their first-round playoff series in 2018. But that was a different time, this is a different team.

Speaking of Nurse, he is a huge winner from this series. If they lose in five games, I do not know if he is back next season. After running circles around Mazzulla, he is now absolutely back next season.

(Speaking of Mazzulla, I know he loves the The Town. But there are a bunch of great movies set in Boston. Instead of watching that same flick over and over, I wonder if he would give Gone Baby Gone or Mystic River a shot this offseason. Expand the repertoire, Joe!)

Joel talking about the tickets: This was awesome from the big fella, imploring Sixers fans to not sell their tickets for the Knicks series. “And if you need money, I got you.”

There are probably only three NBA franchises — Celtics, Knicks, Lakers — that have enough fans to make a noticeable impact at Sixers home playoff games. Unfortunately, you drew two of them in the first two rounds. And even more unfortunately, the Knicks fans can make the largest impact. Biggest fan base, shortest trip, completely bonkers Madison Square Garden prices.

But Joel is right, the dynamic for those games in Philadelphia two years ago was untenable. I went to a Phillies-Mets playoff game later that year and it was nothing like that. It seems like the Sixers are trying to restrict tickets to Philly-area residents only, like the Nationals used to do to Phillies fans. I hope that works, but I am skeptical.

Elsewhere in the NBA: Two Game 7s got decided on the other side of the East bracket, which set up a series between…

Insanely quick turnaround for this one.

I think it could be a great series. It was certainly great two years ago, even if the bad guys came out on top. There were some legitimately awesome games.

If you want me to make the bull case for the Sixers compared to two years ago, it’s this:

This version of the Sixers is better, but the Knicks are the betting favorites heading in. Not nearly as much as Boston was in the first-round series, but I think that is right.

One key difference for the series is that the Knicks have more to throw at Embiid defensively than Boston, but less to throw at Maxey.

Mitchell Robinson is the x-factor. He is a huge guy and an incredible offensive rebounder, but he does not usually start or play big minutes for the Knicks. He is generally a good matchup against Embiid, though. Karl-Anthony Towns starts at the 5, and that presents a very difficult offensive look to deal with on the other end of the floor. But throughout their careers, we have seen Joel put fouls on KAT in milliseconds time and again. Remember when they fought? That was a fun night at the arena, but I think they have made up since then.

The Knicks might also try to put OG Anunoby on Embiid. OG had some success on Joel when the big fella could not move two years ago, but that did not really work when Nick Nurse tried it in Toronto. I would be curious to see how Round 3 goes.

On the other hand, the Knicks do not have the same perimeter defenders to guard Maxey. Mikal Bridges will get that chance to start, but I dunno if he is a great fit against Maxey’s speed. And the problem for the Knicks is that the Sixers are gonna hunt Jalen Brunson with Maxey relentlessly. CJ McCollum just had a big series attacking Brunson, and Maxey is a whole lot better than McCollum.

On the other end of the floor, Brunson is really good. VJ Edgecombe had some strong moments defensively against him in the Sixers’ two wins at MSG this year, but Brunson had a monster series against the Sixers last time. He will look to attack Embiid in space time and again, and he is gonna have some success. Can VJ at least keep that success in check a little bit?

Another big question is who Embiid guards. When Robinson is in the game, it will be him. But defending KAT is tough for Joel, because KAT can shoot and KAT can move. The Sixers dared Josh Hart to make 3s last time by sticking Embiid on him, but as everyone remembers, that did not work out all that well for the Sixers.

Everyone also remembers all of those offensive rebounds from a few years ago. That was such a demoralizing way for the Sixers to lose. The Knicks are still quite good at crashing the boards, but so are the Celtics. The Sixers finally solved the defensive glass against Boston. Can they keep it up?

As much as the tactical battle should be a blast, the Sixers’ biggest worry is attrition. Is Embiid feeling OK after Maxey fell into his knee at the end of Game 7? The Sixers are not mentioning that knee on the injury report, but there will be no hiding it tonight.

And even if Embiid’s knee is in decent shape, can he hold up through another grueling series? That is always the worry, but he and the Sixers earned the right to find out.

Another monster night of Philadelphia sports:

Let’s make it a good one.