The Boston Celtics and its season are hanging off a cliff heading into Game 6 of their Eastern Conference semifinals series with the Philadelphia 76ers on Thursday night.
Quickly becoming a trend in Boston’s latest chase to Banner 18, the Celtics never fail to make its journey harder on themselves, failing to take a commanding 3-1 lead in Game 4, then falling for a second straight to give Philadelphia all the momentum due to a substandard effort in Game 5. But, despite the daunting position the Celtics put themselves in, they’re embracing the challenge, as guard Derrick White explained.
“Backs against the wall but we seem to play our best when we’re like that so everybody’s looking forward to it and it’s gonna be a challenge and it ain’t gonna be easy but gotta go out there and compete,” White said before tipoff, per team-provided video. “… We understand that we gotta be the harder-playing team, the physical team, the team that goes out there and competes for more than 48 minutes. It’s do-or-die and we gotta go out there and do it.”
The Celtics, while on the brink of underachieving yet again, aren’t unfamiliar with trailing 3-2.
Last season, they battled back from this exact same predicament in Round 2 against the Milwaukee Bucks, taking that series in seven games and eventually punching their ticket to the NBA Finals. But then again, last season was last season. The Celtics have been out-coached, out-played and out-worked for the better part of their last eight quarters played against the Sixers, leaving them in desperation mode, even causing a last-minute lineup change from head coach Joe Mazzulla prior to 7:30 p.m. ET. tipoff from Wells Fargo Center.
“You got no tomorrow, ” White said. “It’s win or go home. So we just gotta go out there and trust in each other and trust that things that we need to, if we do it, we’re gonna win.”
