By: Kylan Watson

After beating the Washington Wizards on Tuesday night, the Philadelphia 76ers faced the Boston Celtics in the first round of the 2025-26 NBA Cup. Boston used a first quarter explosion from Jaylen Brown, Payton Pritchard, and Anfernee Simons to beat the Sixers 109-108 to hand Philly their first loss of the season.

For the second straight game the Sixers started off too slow to keep up with their opponents. This time it was the Celtics who sliced and diced Philly’s defensive scheme, Brown (32 points), Pritchard (19 points), and Simons (15 points) combined for 66 of Boston’s 109 points. Philly had no answers for either of them, they are desperately in need for the return of Paul George to improve their perimeter defense.

Brown was able to get whatever he wanted from the floor and the Sixers defenders could not stop him in this contest. Combined their inability to stop him with giving away 18 turnovers in this contest and you have a recipe for disaster for Philly in this contest they just could not overcome.

The Sixers have been able to keep their turnovers down in their previous four games, but bad defense has been a trend in all five games. They are either overhelping on their defensive assignments which allows for easy baskets at the rim, or too small on the wings which allows average and above average scorers to put up numbers that would make Michael Jordan or Kobe Bryant blush.

Despite the offensive explosion from Brown, Pritchard, and Simons, the Sixers had multiple chances to win this game win their fifth straight game. Tyrese Maxey (26 points and 14 assists) and Joel Embiid (20 points) combined for 46 of the Sixers 108 points, in the third quarter Philly really went on a tear and were able to erase an 11-point Boston lead to single digits. However, every time the Sixers made a run Boston was able to put a scoring run together to keep Philly at bay in this contest. A late fourth quarter run allowed the Sixers to cut the Celtics to lead to one point and both Maxey and Embiid missed two opportunities to give the Sixers the lead in this contest.

The Sixers have shown an impressive toughness in their first five games, but the turnovers and bad perimeter defense was just too much for them to overcome in this game. With Paul George slated for a return in the next two weeks that should improve and give the Sixers a reliable defender and ball handler to help them on both sides of the court and limit the mistakes they make that an opponent can take advantage of. With Jared McCain getting close to returning to the court as well, they should be getting some more weapons to add to an already explosive team very soon.

Philly will now prepare to face the Brooklyn Nets on Sunday evening, and they will need to stay connected to their defensive assignments and trust their teammates. The Sixers have either been caught out of position or napping on the defensive end which has allowed them to be down by double digits in four of their five games. Additionally, the Sixers will need to continue to use ball movement to create and make high percentage shots. Implementing these things into their game plan on Sunday should put them in great shape to win their fifth game of the season.