How did the Philadelphia 76ers contain Boston Celtics snipers?

The Philadelphia 76ers forced the Boston Celtics to shoot a whooping 20 percent from beyond the arc on the March 19, 2017 afternoon matchup.

The Philadelphia 76ers stunned the Boston Celtics with a surprising come-from-behind victory. Our standout stat line retrieved from Sunday’s Celtics-76ers matchup wasn’t Al Horford‘s season high points total. It wasn’t Dario Saric‘s 23 point performance, or even rookie Shawn Long‘s impressive five foul 3rd quarter stunt. The Sixers forced the Celts to shoot an awful 20 percent from three point range. That is something of a rarity given Boston’s improvement this year in that area.

So how exactly did they do it? The easy (and acceptable) answer is with the injury absence of Isaiah Thomas. Thomas plays the main distributor, space provider, and scoring threat, Beyond all that, he is the willful “shot chucker” in the offense which breeds immense outside success.

However, the more appropriate answer would also include emphasis on the surrounding cast.

With the absence of Thomas, the Celtics appeared as if they were able to successfully run their screen heavy “catch and shoot” offense rather fluidly. Though lengthy defenders like Robert Covington and Richaun Holmes were just as easily able to contest, the physicality that Boston implements in their offense led to more than enough separation through hard screens and aggressive play.

Yet rather surprisingly, outside buckets did not fall.

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Perhaps this could be attributed to the lackluster shot creators that typically surround Horford and Isaiah Thomas. Advanced metrics from Basketball-Reference.com show that an astonishing amount of players from the likes of Horford, Crowder, Smart, and rookie Jaylen Brown see over 90% of their success from beyond the arc drawn from immediate assists in their catch and shoot offense.

Take away Thomas (who accounts for almost a fourth of the Celtics’ assists this year) and the Boston Celtics face a potentially alarming issue.

Though shot creators like Gerald Green and Avery Bradley can hold the load from time to time, Bradley was 0 for 5 from three and Green struggled to get in offensive rhythm in general. When shots simply did not fall, dependency turned to bully ball in the hands of Marcus Smart and Al Horford; who just did not get it done against scrappy defenders in McConnell, Saric, and Holmes.

Maybe the Sixers’ uptempo energy and transition oriented play is finally paying off. More likely, the reason was the Sixers’ relentlessness on the other end of the court. Exploiting Celtics‘ deficiencies was surely the focal point in Brett Brown’s huddle through every minute endured.

Fortunately the Celtics weren’t able to get it going, and for that we may have struck a bit of late St. Patrick’s Day luck. Yet credit has to be dispersed; as it’s not an easy task to absorb bumps and bruises and break down a defensive barrier like Boston’s.

Next: 76ers Must Extend Robert Covington

Let’s hope we can keep striking gold.