The Herd with Colin Cowherd - Hoops Tonight - Celtics-76ers Prediction: Jaylen Brown & Jayson Tatum outduel Maxey & Paul George w/ no Joel Embiid

Episode Date: April 19, 2026

Jason reacts to the NBA playoff matchup between the Boston Celtics and Philadelphia 76ers. He predicts that Jaylen Brown and Jayson Tatum will be too much for Tyrese Maxey and Paul George to overcome without Joel Embiid. All lines presented by Hard Rock Bet.  #VolumeSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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friday everybody hope all you guys are having an incredible week we are continuing our set of series previews today with the boston celtics and the philadelphia 76ers you guys know the drill before we get started subscribe to the hoops tonight youtube channel so you don't miss any more of our videos make sure you like this video and hit that uh post note of button so you get notified every time we go live or we have a new video go up. We're on the road to 150,000 subs in this postseason run. It would mean a lot to me if you guys would take those steps to help us in our channel as we try to grow. All right, let's talk some basketball. So the season series between the Celtics and the Sixers tied it too. But the first three games were all in the

first month of the season. In fact, the 76ers second win over the Celtics this season, drop them to five and seven. Remember that poor start that the Celtics had this year. The Celtics ended up turning their season around really right after that game. They won 10 of their next 12 after dropping that second game to the Sixers. Then they played again on March 1st, several months later. Obviously, no Tatum, no Paul George, no Embed, but the Celtics kind of dominated them. The Sixers took a little bit of an early lead as both Vijay Edgecombe and Tyrese

hit some threes against drop coverage. Definitely take that and file it away because it's going to be one of the main kind of swing factors of the series, but the Celtics just kind of methodically took over from there and really dominated that game. Obviously, no Tatum or no Paul George in any of the four games. No Joel Embed in all but one of the games, a game early in the season where he looks terrible, super immobile, very early in the year. They got crushed when he was on the floor and then dominated when he was off the floor. So we don't really have any good look at what Embed would look like in this matchup. The series prices, again, all of our lines are provided by our partner Hard Rock bet. The Celtics are a

minus 900 favorite with these Sixers at plus 550. Another one where I don't really like the underdog line just because I think I have a really hard time seeing the Sixers winning this series. Now, as of right now, we have basically no idea as to whether or not Joel and Bede will play in this series. I'm going to proceed today under the impression that he does not. Now, if for whatever reason he gets announced as returning to the series at some point, we will cover that when that happens.

My only thought as of right now is that how it could look in the event that he does return is that it would both help and hurt them. To be clear, the numbers clearly show that the Sixers are a better team when it beats on the floor versus when he's off, including on defense. I just think in this particular matchup, it gets a little more complicated, especially now that he's older, more banged up, and less mobile than he used to be. This series in many ways is going to come down to attacking drop coverage looks for both teams, but especially the Sixers. and Joel Ombed just gives you another side of the drop coverage to attack. The Celtics drop is designed to protect the paint. We're going to dig more into that here in a minute. They do concede pops.

That's something they've conceded all year long. And so Joel and Bede's ability to credibly pop out of ball screens and hit threes would be a huge asset, as well as just giving them an additional ability to attack outside of ball screen. So for instance, elbow isos, post-ups, things along those lines. Without him, it's pretty much just Paul George post-ups and ISOs, which aren't going to be nearly as efficient as Joel Mb postups and ISO. So again, that's just my initial take on it. On the offensive end of the floor, he's going to be a help.

On defense, though, I think it would dramatically downsize like Philly's aggregate foot speed on defense. I think that could be a problem, especially against a team that's going to put them in the blender a lot, that's going to put them into rotation a lot with driving kick attacks. I don't like the matchup for Mbid as much against Boston on the defensive end of the floor. as I do against some other teams in the league. So again, we'll dive deeper into that concept if it gets announced that he returns, but moving forward in this episode,

I'm going to just primarily focus on the idea of him being outside of the series. Let's start with the Sixers on offense. One of the biggest swing factors in the series is just going to be Tyrese maxi's ability to hit the pull-up three in pick and roll. The Celtics run a ton of particularly deep drop coverage. It's a big part of why they've been the best paint defense

in the NBA this year. and I'm not worried about Maxi's ability to hit floaters in in ball screen coverages and the occasional mid-range jump shot. It's more of the pull-up threes where he's been very hot and cold this year. He actually shot in the aggregate, a pretty mediocre 34% this year on pull-up threes in pick and rolls. The one kind of wrinkle that I would add to that is handoffs as an alternative way to attack drop coverage, but file that away. We'll get to that in just a minute. I would extend this to all of their drop coverage attacks. So let's include Vijay Edgecombe.

Let's include Paul George in every method of attacking drop coverage, you know, trying to draw some fouls at the rim, mid-range jump shots, floaters, pull-up threes, everything. I'm just specifically emphasizing Maxi because he takes a ton of them. And he's going to have to take a ton of them in this series. As a matter of fact, in the four games against the Celtics, he took 16 pull-up threes off the dribble and did not shoot well on them. He shot just four for 16.

So he's going to have to shoot better. but he was three for three on threes against Boston's Bigs and Drop coverage off of dribble handoffs. This has been kind of a wrinkle with Tyrus Maxie throughout his career. He's always been a better shooter off the catch than he is off the dribble. For whatever reason, he's struggled to kind of connect those two. Once he really connects those two, that's when the sky's the limit for him, especially with how fast he is driving the basketball to the rim. He hit one on Vucevich off of like a double drag action in Boston off the left wing.

and then he hit two of them on Xavier Tillman early in the season. But in general, that's a way that I would look to try to counter that issue with maxi scoring and drop coverage from the three point line without having to worry with some of his struggles off the dribble. Just have guys like a Dembona and André Drummond just start at the top of the key with the dribble handoff and have Maxi come off of like Chicago action out of the corner or some sort of action that gets him sprinting up into the basketball to catch, get his one two down without even having to put the ball down

and he could just shoot it quickly off the catch. That was something especially earlier in his career before he really became a dominant on ball player. He was just a really gifted movement shooter and he used to kill teams with Embed off of those dribble handoffs. And so that's something that I'd love to see a little bit more over the course of this series. Today's show is brought to you by presenting sponsor Hard Rock Bet,

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although he wasn't making the shots. But I think we'll also see the occasional attack from Kelly Ubre against a smaller Boston guard or just ripping a close out trying to get to the basket. But I don't expect them to be super efficient on those. And they'll do some work on the offensive glass. They've been a pretty good offensive rebounding team this year, but Boston was literally the best defensive rebounding team in the league post all start break, in large part because of the return of Jason Tatum and the way he anchors them on the defensive glass. So it really does come back to that drop coverage battle. On the Celtics front,

if the Celtics perimeter defenders can do a great job of staying attached, chasing over the top, funneling Maxi and Edgecombe and Paul George into tougher pull-ups in the mid-range, lower percentage, lower value shots, because the rim will be shut off, it's going to be tough sledding for Philly. But if they can shake free of those guys,

Dembona and Audra Drummond set really good screens, they could get some good looks at pull-up threes and some cleaner looks in floater and mid-range territory, which could allow them to have hotter nights attacking the drop coverage. That's basically going to be the swing factor of the series when Philly's on offense. How successfully does Philly score against Boston's drop? I think they're going to attack a lot two on two. Boston, I don't think is going to over-pursue in terms of helping and digging in those situations.

I don't think Philly is going to get a ton of quality three-point shots on kickouts. That's not a huge part of their game anyway. I don't think we'll see Tatum guarding centers in this matchup. just because of the circumstances. Like, I don't think they'll need to, first of all, just by the way they kind of match up. But secondly, I wouldn't want Tatum banging with a guy like Andre Drummond and just burning his legs out and wearing himself out in a first round series.

Now, where it gets interesting, again, is if Embedd comes back, it puts more emphasis on Kada and Vooch's ability to guard at the elbows, more emphasis on like dig downs and doubles, things that Embed can struggle with. But again, let's just file that away. And if Embed gets announced that he's returning, then we'll have an episode where we cover that concept. except probably in one of our game reactions or one of our adjustment episodes.

Moving to Boston on offense, they just simply have far more actions that they can attack Philly's defense. For starters, the way that Philly defends is very different than the way Boston defends. And this has kind of been a Nick Nurse philosophy forever. They run more aggressive pick and roll coverages. They bring the big up higher. They use more digging and they use more tagging,

meaning they're having guys from off the ball sink into the lane more as the guys trying to work downhill in that drop coverage. So that's just the way Nick Nurse has been playing coaching ever since he was in Toronto. He wants to make life harder on the stars. He wants to try to force turnovers and he wants to try to spark his transition attack. And so as a result, his opponents tend to be high three point attempt teams. They tend to be high as a team. They tend to force a lot of turnovers.

They tend to get a lot of points off of turnovers and in general score a lot in transition, especially with all the speed that they have in their lineups. The problem is, is this kind of basically, plays directly into the strengths of the Celtics offense. The Celtics don't turn the ball over. They're the third lowest turnover percentage team in the league. And they'll burn you for helping. And the best example of this was their most recent game on March 1st.

The Celtics this season averaged 25 spot-up opportunities per game, which is right in the middle of the pack on a per possession basis. They logged 37 spot-ups in the game in March against Philly on March 1st. They just absolutely torched them in terms of kicking out to shooters and those guys burning them with hitting threes and driving closeouts. And so like we know that they're going to have other ways to attack too, but I think Boston's going to be able to just run about any action, draw two to the ball and ISO post up. Like I think we're going to see plenty of Jason Tatum and Jalen Brown attacking Philly's smaller guards and ISOs and postups as well. But regardless of what they run, whether it's postups, ISOs, ball screens where Philly's defending three on two, or post-ups ISOs where it's two-on-one,

they're going to draw multiple defenders, the kickouts are going to be there. And as long as Boston doesn't revert to some of their old bad habits of forcing the issue in traffic, and that'll probably be what it looks like when Philly goes on runs, like some bad processing from Boston

mixed in with good drop coverage scoring for Philly. But Boston's evolved past a lot of that. They've grown up. There's a lot of growth in that offense. Like we talked about with Derek White when he came on the show. It's just a matter of just continuity and them just being in this system for a long time.

as long as they do their job, methodically move the ball to the open man, they should consistently get better shots than the Sixers do. The best way to look at it is just the difference in efficiency. Like it's a bad combination of the Celtics on one hand are just a better, more talented team, but the way they match up against each other trying to score against each other is where the bad matchup really shows up.

So for instance, like, Philly is a good pick and roll scoring team, but not a great one. They're 12th in efficiency shooting out of pitchers. pick and roll with the ball handler. Tyrese, he's actually very good. He's 0.93 points per shot attempt when he's the ball handler and pick and roll. That's very good, but it's not great. And it's just going to be really hard to compete with the quality spot-up opportunities

that Boston is going to generate on the other end of the floor, where Boston has all year long, basically every year, but all year long been in that top two or three in spot-up efficiency in the entire NBA. So it's going to be drop coverage shots versus high quality spot-up opportunities. And that's just going to be a very difficult efficiency gap for Philly to close. So I think Boston wins relatively easily. I'm going to pick the Celtics in five games. Again, Philly's chance to keep things close, close comes down to maxy-going nuclear versus drop coverage

and getting good contributions from VJ Edgecom and Paul George on that front. controlling the offensive glass, just, you know, whether it's Dominic Barlow, whether it's Andre Drummond, like, just their forwards and their centers just crushing on the offensive glass. And then hoping for the Celtics to have bad processing games, bad processing stretches versus their defensive aggression. And like, again, like, if you can get a couple games early in the series and maybe you take it to your home court and you can put the pressure on them, that's their pathway. But it's just really difficult, again, like when you start to look at those large sample size efficiencies. It's just really difficult. You're asking Tyrese

to just hit a bunch of really tough pull-up threes and really tough mid-rangers while you're getting clean looks for guys like Sam Houser and Baylor Shireman and Jason Tatum off the ball, Derek White off the ball. And like, it's just going to be really difficult for them to keep up with the shot quality dynamic that's going to plague them over the course of the series. All right, guys, that's all a half for today. As always, I sincerely appreciate you guys for supporting us and supporting the show. We have two more series previews. We have three more. We have the Cavs Raptors one, and then we have the two 1-8 matchups that'll both

be coming out on Saturday morning. Then we're getting into it. Then we're getting into our playoff live episodes at the final buzzer of the final game each night, starting with the final buzzer of that Lakers Rockets game on Saturday night. It's been a fun week. I appreciate you guys for supporting us and supporting the show. I'll see you guys. Hey guys, it's us and the Jonas Brothers. I'm Joe. I'm Kevin.

And I'm Nick. And guess what? We created our own podcast called Hey Jonas. We invented a podcast. Well, we didn't invent it. We We just contributed to it out. We're the first people to do podcasts. We get to ask other people questions because we're sick and tired of being asked questions. Well, sick and tired is a strong way to put it, but, you know, tired and sick. Tired and sick.

Listen to Hey Jonas on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. Just listen. We don't care where you hear it. Another podcast from some SNL late night comedy guy, not quite. Unhumor me with Robert Smygel and friends. Me and hilarious guests from Bob Odenkirk to David Letterman help make you funnier. This week, my guest, S&L's Mikey Day and headwriter, Streeter Seidel, help an acapella band with their between songs banter.

Where does your group perform? We do some retirement homes. Those people are starving for banter. Listen to humor me with Robert Smigel and friends on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Last night, a blown call changed a game. This morning, the internet lost its mind, and nobody's telling you exactly what happened. That's where Sports Slice comes in.

I'm Timbo. In every episode, we're cutting through the noise, breaking down the biggest moments in sports and giving you the real story behind the headline. And we're going straight to the source, the athletes themselves, their locker room stories, their reactions in the moment,

and the stuff nobody gets to hear. Listen to Sports Slice on the Iheart radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcast. And for more, follow Timbo Sliced Life 12 in the TikTok podcast network on TikTok. I'm Michelle McPhee, and I've been unraveling the strangest criminal alliance I've ever reported on, a Mormon polygamist and an Armenian businessman.

Multi-million dollar house, Ferraris and Lamborghinis, private jets, a billion dollar fraud. But how long can this alliance last? Tell me what you know. Is somebody coming after me? Listen to Kingdom of Fraud on the I-Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This is an I-Heart podcast. Guaranteed Human.