Celtics Boston Celtics’ Jayson Tatum, front, dunks the ball with Philadelphia 76ers’ Kelly Oubre Jr., left, defending during the second half of an NBA basketball game, Sunday, Feb. 2, 2025, in Philadelphia. AP Photo/Chris Szagola

By Tom Westerholm

February 2, 2025

Jayson Tatum led a massive rally in the third and fourth quarters on Sunday, helping the Celtics overcome a 26-point second-half deficit and beat the short-handed 76ers 118-110. 

Here are the takeaways. 

1. Jayson Tatum and the Celtics showed some mettle.

The Celtics haven’t always been the most focused bunch this year, and for much of the evening, Sunday’s game looked like yet another big step back after a couple of small steps forward with consecutive wins against the Bulls and Pelicans. 

Then the Celtics started hitting 3-pointers. A 16-4 run to end the third quarter cut the lead to 14, and that momentum carried into the fourth. Sam Hauser hit a pair of big triples that brought it even further down to 11 with 10 minutes remaining.

Then Tatum took over, scoring 13 of his 35 points in the final frame and dishing out three assists. With the Celtics trailing by five at the 7:30 mark, Tatum scored eight points as part of a 10-0 run that lifted them to a five-point lead. In the middle of that run, he got switched onto Tyrese Maxey and stayed with the Sixers star step for step as he danced, then swatted Maxey’s 3-pointer away. When the Sixers started doubling Tatum, he quickly shifted back into his role as a playmaker – drawing the defense away from teammates and distributing. 

Tatum finished with 35 points on 13-for-20 shooting (5-for-8 from three), as well as seven rebounds and 11 assists. 

“We just had to be honest with ourselves at halftime,” Tatum said. “They had 20 points in transition. Our competitive spirit wasn’t where it needed to be. Joe [Mazzulla] was like, ‘Yo if you’re tired, just tell me. I’ll sit you guys down, let the Stay Ready group play.’ We just had a choice to make.”

On the one hand, the Celtics looked lackadaisical defensively in the first half, and they were ice cold from deep — two factors that helped the Sixers build their 26-point lead. 

On the other hand, the rally showed some real resilience and a hunger to win as a team, and it marked their second straight win in somewhat trying circumstances (although the trying circumstances on Sunday were admittedly self-inflicted).

“I told the guys, in the NBA, you get a few chances to where you really see your guys do something special in the regular season and I felt like their approach to that was there,” Mazzulla said.

In an ideal world, the Celtics wouldn’t dig themselves into a 26-point pit against a Sixers team missing Joel Embiid and Paul George. Still, the doggedness required to dig themselves out and win — which marked the largest rally for a win during the Joe Mazzulla era — is the type of mentality a championship-quality team needs to show from time to time. 

2. The Derrick White counter.

When Tatum made it abundantly clear that he was going to have a special evening on Sunday midway through the fourth quarter, the Sixers wisely decided to do whatever they needed to take the ball out of his hands. Rather than simply suffering death by a thousand Tatum cuts, Nick Nurse started doubling the Celtics’ star. 

That meant that as impressive as Tatum was during the Celtics’ big rally, they still needed other players to hit shots to close out the win down the stretch. 

Enter: Derrick White, who has proven over the last two years to be arguably the Celtics’ best countermeasure when teams start doubling Tatum. His two 3-pointers in the fourth quarter — one with 4:29 and one with 2:12 remaining — both pushed a one-point Celtics lead back up to four, giving the Celtics some much-needed breathing room. 

White also hit two of the most important 3-pointers of the night – triples on back-to-back possessions in the third quarter when the Sixers pushed the lead all the way to 26, which prevented the game from getting even more out of hand. 

“I think we’re getting good looks and shooting them with confidence,” White said, in a quote that simultaneously is objectively true and also enormously undersells his importance to the team. “[…] JT, JB, KP all get a lot of attention, so it kind of leaves us to get those looks.”

Jaylen Brown often picks up the slack for the Celtics on nights when Tatum is off, but White might be the team’s best option when opponents start clamping down on the Celtics’ superstar forward.

White scored 17 points and dished out nine assists on Sunday. He shot 5-for-9 from three, marking his fourth straight game in which he topped 40 percent from deep.

3. Jaylen Brown pitched in late as well.

Tatum will get the headlines (like this one!), but we would be remiss if we didn’t mention Brown as a crucial part of the Celtics’ rally. Brown scored six points and dished out three assists (including a 3-pointer, a dunk and a layup) in the fourth quarter, and finished with 21 points on tidy 9-for-17 shooting. His 14-footer with eight minutes remaining tied together the Celtics’ run in an important moment, and his dish to Luke Kornet with 6:20 left helped the Celtics push a one-point lead to three.

Brown added 10 rebounds and six assists overall and was +17 in the box score.

“[In the] first half, it was too many things that were not important that were affecting us, affecting me,” Brown said. “Like, I was expecting calls, even against a team like this. They can’t stop me. What am I looking around for? Just play basketball and let the rest take care of itself. I felt like our team kind of took that mindset in the second half.”

4. The Celtics nearly didn’t make a push.

With 5:21 remaining in the third quarter, Brown buried a 3-pointer that cut the lead to 18, and the Celtics got a stop when Kristaps Porzingis swatted his fourth block of the game. 

White, however, missed a layup, and the Sixers pushed the ball quickly, finding Guerschon Yabusele for a triple. 

After the game, a reporter relayed that sequence to White and asked if he thought there was a moment that Mazzulla might pull the plug on the starters. 

“Yeah probably about then,” White quipped. 

Mazzulla, however, let the starters play out the quarter, and they were glad he did.

“We were able to make that run at the end of the third to cut it to 14, and I think we were all pretty confident at that point that we could get back in this game,” White said.

5. Defending Tyrese Maxey

Maxey tore the Celtics up in the first half, scoring 23 points on 7-for-14 shooting. The Celtics struggled to stay in front of him (even Jaden Springer let him get loose for a 3-pointer on his first possession with the assignment), and Maxey has been on a heater from three recently; he was 4-for-5 in the first half.

In the second half, however, the Celtics held him to 11 points on 2-for-7 shooting. 

According to Brown, who called Maxey a “great player,” the biggest difference was physicality. 

“That’s probably one of the harder positions for me to guard,” Brown said. “[…] So just do your best to stay close to his body. That’s what I was trying to do in the second half, and that’s what I told our guys to do, just stay on his body because if you let him run free, if you let him get space on you, that’s when he’s really tough.”

6. Jrue Holiday won the Celtics two challenges.

Players can’t always be trusted when they call for a challenge. Just ask the Sixers, who lost their ability to challenge in the first half when Kyle Lowry coaxed them into one after he bumped Al Horford’s elbow on a shot and vehemently protested the subsequent foul call. 

But Jrue Holiday got Matt Reynolds and the Celtics a pair of challenge wins in the fourth quarter. The first came with 8:41 remaining. After a made basket that cut the Sixers’ lead to six, Holiday pressed the inbounds pass and forced a turnover, which the official initially called out on Holiday. A review, however, showed that it was off the Sixers. 

Then, with 35 seconds left, Holiday — who had just hit the game-clinching 3-pointer — cleanly defended Maxey as he drove to the hoop, but the officials whistled Holiday for a foul. Once again, Holiday called for a review, and once again, the Celtics won it. 

Holiday finished with nine points, five rebounds and five assists. 

7. Guerschon Yabusele had a great game. 

Celtics fans of a certain age — especially those who possess a certain level of online footprint — may remember the Yabusele craze after he was drafted in 2016 by the Celtics. Yabusele seems to be a real NBA player in his second go-around in the league, and he looks like he’s having a great time. 

The bad news for the Celtics is that Yabusele has everything necessary to be a Celtics killer in 2024-25 – tons of energy and a point to prove, great size and footwork (former Celtics assistant Micah Shrewsberry, you may recall, nicknamed him “The Dancing Bear”) and a 3-point shot that he is now hitting at 40 percent for the season. 

On Sunday, Yabusele scored 21 points on 8-for-13 shooting, and he was a key part of the Sixers’ big run in the second and third quarters. His massive one-handed slam — and subsequent chest-beating — was perhaps the final happy moment Sixers fans had on Sunday and would have gone viral multiple times on Weird Celtics Twitter, back when the community was alive and thriving. 

Yabusele’s big night was the best of both worlds for Celtics fans; he looked great, and his performance didn’t actually cost the Celtics a win.

Tatum said he “loves” Yabusele and is happy he’s getting an opportunity.

“It looks like he’s really taking care of his body,” Tatum said. “He looks like he’s in great shape, he looks like he’s lost some weight, and he’s getting an opportunity to play. He’s playing aggressive with confidence. So I’m happy he’s back in the league and thriving.”

8. A huge matchup looms.

The Celtics have one more game remaining on their road trip, and it’s a big one – they travel to Cleveland on Tuesday for a showdown against the Cavaliers, which tips off at 7:30 p.m. The Celtics still trail the Cavaliers by 5.5 games in the standings, but the Cavs have looked a little shakier recently.

On Thursday, they return home for a Finals rematch against the Dallas Mavericks, which — you may have heard — will look a little different this time around.

Tatum admitted the news was “shocking” but offered little else. 

Brown, however, said he didn’t find it too surprising. 

“Maybe a little bit,” he conceded. “But the NBA is the NBA. Behind closed doors, you don’t know what’s going on. People fall out, people don’t see eye to eye, people have disagreements, so I think some of that can lead into it.”

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