The Celtics pulled off another insane comeback against the 76ers

Ben Simmons hit a jumper with 6:56 left in the second quarter to put the 76ers up 49-27. Ben Simmons was hitting actual jumpers. There’s no way the Celtics were winning this game, right? Wrong.

The Celtics and the 76ers put on quite the show for the NBA’s London Showcase game. This game was wild. It was like an opera — it had its buildup, a huge twist, a climax, and then a crescendo to let us all down gently. We knew what the outcome would be by the time this one was over, but the journey through the 41-point swing wasn’t any less wild.

The Celtics came back from a 20-point deficit for the second time this season and joined the Warriors as one of the only two teams to do so multiple times this year:

The @celtics beat the 76ers 114-103 after trailing by 22 points.
Boston joins the Warriors as the only teams this season with multiple 20-point comeback wins.
Philadelphia joins the Knicks as the only teams this season with multiple losses after leading by 20 points.
— ESPN Stats & Info (@ESPNStatsInfo) January 11, 2018

This game was a roller coaster. Let’s go through it.

Act I: JJ Redick and Ben Simmons did what they wanted in the first half

Simmons and Redick combined for 30 points on 12-of-16 shooting in the fir. Redick was on fire from deep making four of five three-pointers including ones like this:

His offense propelled the 76ers to an early lead, and Boston couldn’t keep him under wraps. Meanwhile, Simmons put even more pressure on the Celtics by making his jumpshots early.

He was doing it on the Celtics’ best defenders, too. Here’s one over Al Horford:

And here’s one over Jaylen Brown:

But the Celtics will gladly live with those shots, and they did. Unless you’ve been under a rock this season, you know these Celtics never die. A 20-point lead for them is like a five-point lead for everyone else — their defense is just that good.

This lead felt different at first, but then you realized it was just more of the same. The comeback was honestly inevitable. Here’s why.

Act II: Jayson Tatum found a rhythm

Kyrie Irving and Al Horford are the Celtics’ two best players in whatever order you’d like them to be in. But Tatum is the glue that holds everything together. When he doesn’t play well, the Celtics don’t play well and that showed itself today.

The Celtics fell down by 22 points and Tatum finished the first half with a plus/minus of minus-22. He had only two points and hadn’t hit a three.

But then the third quarter came — Tatum went off with 11 points in the quarter. And it wasn’t so much about the point total as much as it was how he arrived there.

For example, he made Dario Saric dance with this killer hesitation move:

He made plays like this, finding Kyrie Irving for a deep three:

And even made jumpers over Joel Embiid’s insane wingspan:

Tatum’s uptick pushed the Celtics right back into the thick of things and eventually gave them the lead — and once they took it, they didn’t look back.

Act III: The Celtics closed the game out with threes

They were down by nine to start the quarter but with just under seven minutes left, they completed a 75-39 run to take a 102-88 lead. Much of that run stemmed from an impossibly good shooting stretch for the Celtics.

They hit nine threes in the second half, including this one off a ridiculous scramble:

The Sixers tried to fight their way back into the game, but they could never quite corral the Celtics. The Celtics were trading twos for threes and never managed to return to the same form they had in the first half. They shot 36 percent and couldn’t get anything going outside of the rim.

This is just what the Celtics do

The Celtics’ defense does it again. They were down by 22 but had a 19-point lead before the end of the game. That’s a 41-point swing.

They’ve done it so many times this season. Just a few weeks ago, they did the same thing to the Rockets. We can go back as far as the beginning of the season when they did it to the Thunder. They just have a habit of spotting big leads and taking them away.

47-19 run here for the Celtics, who love 20-point deficits more than any team should.
— Jay King (@ByJayKing) January 11, 2018

It’s not a healthy habit, but it’s one that we should be used to by now. The combination of their elite defense and tough shot-makers makes it impossible to stay comfortable against them. No lead is safe against these Celtics.