James Harden bounce-back rescues 76ers in Game 4 to tie series
The Philadelphia 76ers’ coach Doc Rivers opted to remind his star guard of who he is going into Game 4 after James Harden had the two worst consecutive shooting performances of his entire career in Games 2 and 3 of the series against the Boston Celtics in the Eastern Conference semifinals.
“I sent him a gospel song,” Rivers later said with a laugh. “The title of it is, ‘You Know My Name?’”
Harden explained it all later.
“I’m on my way to the game, and I get a text from Doc,” Harden said with a laugh. “It’s a gospel song, and I’m like, ‘All right, whatever.’ So, I just tell my homies, ‘Let’s play the song.’ It’s a seven-minute song, but I let the whole song play.
“I was like, ‘All right, there’s got to be some kind of good juju in this song, or however he’s feeling, I want to feel like that.’ And I guess it worked.”
It undoubtedly did. With 42 points on 16 of 23 shooting, including 6 of 9 from 3-point range, eight rebounds, nine assists, four steals, a block, and just one turnover in 47 minutes, Harden concluded with a stellar stat line. And on Sunday at the Wells Fargo Center, he made the game-winning shot in the final seconds of regulation before sinking a corner 3-pointer with 19 seconds left to give Philadelphia a dramatic 116–115 overtime victory.
As a result of Harden rediscovering his magic from Game 1, when he scored 45 points to lead Philadelphia to victory sans Joel Embiid, the Eastern Conference duel, which was tied at two games apiece, will now resume in Boston for Game 5 on Tuesday. He then combined to shoot 5-for-28 from the field in Games 2 and 3, which was the worst two-game shooting performance in his career.
Sunday was devoid of these problems.
“That’s what he needs to do every night,” said Embiid, who finished with 34 points, 14 rebounds and four assists in 46 minutes in just his third game back from a sprained lateral collateral ligament in his right knee. “Not think about anything.
“It’s not about taking a lot of shots. It’s just about being aggressive, attacking the rim, finding guys, and he was fantastic tonight.”
Embiid in particular seemed to run out of gas in the last minutes of the game, so Philadelphia needed Harden to be. Three times in the final few minutes of the fourth quarter, Embiid’s jumper was blocked by his longtime foe Al Horford, which led P.J. Tucker to give the freshly crowned MVP an impassioned pep talk on the court to try to get him going. Embiid subsequently acknowledged that he didn’t play well and that he wasn’t happy with his performance.
“Nobody can guard Joel one-on-one,” Tucker said. “There’s no way. I’m sorry. It’s no disrespect to [Horford] or anybody else. But I’ve guarded him for a lot of years, and when he’s aggressive and assertive, it’s impossible. And I seen him two, three plays in a row not do that. And we can’t have it. We can’t have it. Not with the season on the line. We can’t have it.”
Fortunately for the 76ers, they had Harden turning back the clock to his own MVP days for the second time in a week. Harden buried a runner to tie Game 4 with 15 seconds to go in regulation, only for Marcus Smart to miss a potential winning 3 at the buzzer. Then in overtime, Harden’s go-ahead 3 came off a terrifically designed out-of-timeout play by Rivers that got Embiid matched up with Jayson Tatum inside, causing Jaylen Brown to react with a double-team that left Harden wide open in the corner
“Just a bad read,” Brown said of his decision to double-team Embiid down low, leaving Harden open for the winning shot. “That’s it. A gamble at the wrong time. Big shot by James Harden, but that’s my fault. I take full accountability. Just a bad read.”
Two of Harden’s three career game-winning field goals have come with fewer than 30 seconds left in a playoff game, including the one on Sunday and the one he made in the final seconds of Game 1.
At that point in the series, Harden was 1 for 10. He has now scored twice in this series.
