Joel Embiid Says 'Dumb Mistakes' Led to 76ers' Game 3 Loss to Celtics

The Philadelphia 76ers fell 101-98 to the Boston Celtics in Game 3 of their Eastern Conference Semifinals series, and center Joel Embiid blamed it on some "dumb mistakes" down the stretch.

"It sucked to lose this way. I felt like we had control of the whole game," he said, per Ian Begley of ESPN.com. "We made a couple of bad mistakes at the end."

The result gave the Celtics a 3-0 advantage in the series. In NBA history, teams facing a 3-0 deficit in the postseason are 0-129 in those series.

A slew of errors in crunch time cost the Sixers. There was JJ Redick's pass to no one with just eight seconds left in regulation, on an apparent mixup with Embiid and Ben Simmons. That set up a go-ahead layup for the Celtics, though a Marco Belinelli long two as time expired bailed the Sixers out and sent the game to overtime. 

"I was just reading [Marcus] Morris. He was overplaying, and I was trying to go behind the screen and look for the lob like we did against Miami [in the first round]," Simmons explained. "I guess we were just on a different page."

Then with 19 seconds remaining and the Sixers up a point, Simmons pulled down a rebound on an Embiid miss. But instead of pulling the ball out and forcing the Celtics to foul, Simmons immediately shot the ball and missed. The Celtics pulled down the rebound, and Al Horford scored on a layup at the other end.

"It was just natural instinct. That's a shot I take every practice, every game," Simmons said. "Every day I take one of those, and I missed it. That's the game. You miss shots, and you make them. You win, and you lose."

On the ensuing inbound, Horford stole Simmons' pass to Embiid, sealing the win for the Celtics.

Sixers head coach Brett Brown noted that "our young guys at times look young," though he didn't want to make excuses for the team.

"Last thing I want to do is lean on youth. I don't want to do that. I give credit to the Boston Celtics," he said. "I will think in many ways it is...Joel is going to learn a lot, Ben Simmons is going to learn a lot. Painful admitting that now, but there is some truth to that. There's a lot of truth to that."

The Sixers exceeded expectations in the 2017-18 season, finishing 52-30 with a rookie (Simmons) and two second-year players (Embiid and Dario Saric) in the starting lineup. They then beat a gritty and chippy Miami Heat team in five games in the first round. 

But given the young talent of the Sixers—paired with the injuries the Celtics have faced to Kyrie Irving and Gordon Hayward—it appeared they had a path to the Eastern Conference Finals.

Instead, costly mistakes and a disciplined and defensively sound Celtics side have left the young Sixers in a hole that has historically been insurmountable.