Behind Joel Embiid and Tyrese Maxey, a Sixers team with a bond that ‘feels pretty different’ wins a Game 7 in Boston

The Formula 1 Miami Grand Prix came to an end. Embiid pumped his fist as Kimi Antonelli became victorious.

Elsewhere in the visitor’s locker room at TD Garden on Saturday evening, Jabari Walker was shadowboxing. Trendon Watford was making a whole lot of noise, with his voice and with a speaker. He messed with everybody he could, from teammates to Sixers staffers to media members. The only person who was not laid back was Paul George, sitting with his feet in an ice bucket and his face repeatedly falling into his hand-held towel as he grappled with an illness and very little sleep.

While the Boston Celtics were ruling out their best player and making panicked changes to their starting lineup, the Sixers were at ease. More importantly, they were ready to enjoy the moment with each other. That, the team would argue, was just as important as locking in on a pick-and-roll coverage or executing an after-timeout play. After the calamity that was their 24-58 campaign last season, the Sixers enjoy a noticeably stronger off-court bond these days.

So, after the biggest win of his basketball life, Tyrese Maxey made sure to shout out a group of players he called the “Bench Mob.” Watford, Walker, Dalen Terry, Johni Broome and Kyle Lowry, he said, kept the spirit of the team high. They talked through the defensive coverages and adjustments they were noticing on the floor with players too winded to process all of it. The Sixers set a benchmark for how many three-point attempts they wanted to take per game in this series, and Maxey said Watford updated the team of its progress at every timeout.

It speaks to something that, even before the Sixers staged a stunning turnaround and won three games in a row – completing the first 3-1 series comeback in franchise history, the 14th in NBA history and the first in the league since 2020 – had become apparent. Nobody that was part of the 2024-25 Sixers wants to say it outright, but that team did not have good chemistry. This team does.

“No shade to the guys that I’ve played with,” Embiid said, “but yeah, this is different. The fight is just there… We’ve had good teams, but this feels pretty different.”

The Sixers put together one of the all-time character wins in the recent history of the franchise on Saturday. Even against a Jayson Tatum-less Boston team that was clearly in scramble mode, they knew the punches would come. And Boston landed two haymakers. Once, the Sixers responded with their offense. Later, it was their defense. Most Sixers teams would not have withstood even one of these blows. The Sixers took all of them in stride, even a disastrous stretch in which their 18-point lead was trimmed to just one.

“The first thing I want to say is that it’s really good for us to go through that, and respond to it,” Sixers head coach Nick Nurse said. “It’s good to have that experience. You know it’s going to be like that in the playoffs. You’re going to be in a tight game and it’s going to be super loud… You just have to play through it. I think we handled it just enough, but I think it’s really good for us to experience it.”

This team never looked like the one that was going to be able to muster these mature moments time and time again. Six days before conquering the Celtics once and for all, these same Sixers looked dead in the water. Embiid came back for Game 4, but the Sixers got blown out. What has transpired since has been hard to understand – except for the players themselves, whose regular-season comments about needing to establish more continuity incited eye-rolls.

They believed and they were right. And, Maxey said, the fact that this team experiences a genuine camaraderie has contributed to that steadfast belief.

“You know, we’ve had this weird swag about us all year. Like, this confidence and just the fact that we know who we can be, we know who we are,” Maxey said. “I kind of said it early on [at] Media Day: This team is going to fight every single night, and we’ve done that. We’ve gotten beat a couple times pretty bad, and that just happens in this league. But we never wavered. We always believed in each other, and I think I’ve been saying this all year, we really, really, really like each other. This group really likes each other and likes to see each other succeed, and that’s big-time.”

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