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6 takeaways from Sixers-Celtics opener

Brian Babineau / National Basketball Association / Getty

The 2018-19 NBA regular season is officially underway.

The Boston Celtics started the year right by dismantling the Philadelphia 76ers at TD Garden. Both sides produced plenty of highlights and the first half was tightly contested, but the Celtics eventually pulled away for a convincing 105-87 victory.

Here are six takeaways from the first game of the season:

It's personal between Celtics, Embiid

Joel Embiid is the most intimidating defender in the Eastern Conference, yet Boston made a point to seek him out.

The Celtics took turns clowning Embiid. First, it was Al Horford blocking him in the post early in the first quarter. Then it was Terry Rozier putting Embiid on skates before sticking a pull-up jumper. Jayson Tatum pulled the same stunt on Embiid and made sure to rub salt in the wound with some trash talk, and Jaylen Brown capped it off by making Embiid somersault after powering through him for a rookie Blake Griffin-esque poster finish.

It's clearly personal when it comes to Embiid and his Twitter fingers, which only adds another layer of intrigue to the revived rivalry between Boston and Philadelphia. The Celtics humbled Embiid in last year's playoffs, and they sent another reminder on opening night.

Tatum will hold down the fort

After a shaky preseason, Gordon Hayward had a bit of a shaky regular-season opener. While he played under control and didn’t really make mistakes, he was erratic with his jumper and looked somewhat tentative and mechanical when he put the ball on the floor. In his first official NBA game since breaking his leg a year ago, he shot just 4-of-12 from the field for 10 points. Kyrie Irving, returning from an injury of his own, was even further off-kilter in this one, shooting 2-of-14 and struggling to puncture the defense at the point of attack or get to the rim.

Fortunately, the Celtics had Tatum to carry the offense. The precocious 20-year-old kicked off his sophomore season with a healthy dose of moxie, combining step-back jumpers with on-a-dime pull-ups and decisive drives. He finished with a game-high 23 points on 9-of-17 shooting to go along with nine rebounds, three assists, and just one turnover. Irving should rediscover his form in relatively short order and Hayward will presumably get there eventually, but in the meantime, the Celtics look like they'll have a budding star to lean on.

Sixers still don't value possessions

Different year, same problem.

The Sixers opened the season with another sloppy effort mired by a slew of unforced errors that featured 11 turnovers in the first half alone. Of course, this is hardly news for Sixers fans since their team finished last or second-last in turnovers in each of the last five seasons.

Much of it comes down to a lack of discipline from the younger players. Embiid turns petulant when things don't go his way (they definitely didn't tonight) and he lashes out by conceding obvious offensive fouls. Ben Simmons loves to take off for a leap of faith without having an actual target in mind, and Markelle Fultz was just an all-around mess on Tuesday - so much so that Embiid screamed at him for a miscommunication in the second quarter.

Philadelphia won't reach its potential until the team fixes its turnover issue. One solution could be having a steady point guard in T.J. McConnell running the show as a secondary ball-handler. McConnell doesn't force plays and does a good job of organizing the offense compared to Fultz, so it's no surprise that the Sixers stopped coughing it up after McConnell took on an expanded role in the second half.

Baynes still quietly vital

Nobody batted an eye when the Celtics re-signed Aron Baynes to a bargain two-year, $11-million deal this summer, even though he made 67 starts last season.

Baynes is worth that money for the Philadelphia matchup alone. He relishes getting under Embiid's skin, and he's among only a handful of defenders (along with Horford) who can stand their ground against Embiid on the low block in single coverage - a must when playing against the Sixers.

Boston won this game at the start of the fourth quarter because Baynes bullied Embiid. He snuck around him for offensive rebounds, he caught him off guard by popping into the corner for threes, he baited Embiid into elbowing him in the neck (which was whistled for an offensive foul), and he even delivered a slick backdoor feed when the Sixers got crossed in their coverages.

Baynes is the perfect role player. He sets bone-crunching screens, he locks down the defensive glass, he's impossible to score against in the post and can handle the bigger assignments on behalf of Horford, he's light on his feet and always in the right places on defense, and best of all, he never needs the ball on offense. That's a valuable trait on a team full of scorers.

Philly still avoids pick-and-rolls like the plague

The earliest of impressions suggest the Sixers will remain an outlier in a pick-and-roll-heavy league, as they continue to orient their half-court offense around dribble-handoffs, post-ups, and off-ball screens and cuts. It looks fluid and pretty when it works, but it can also be easier to defend for teams like Boston that play with discipline, don’t fall asleep away from the ball, and don’t over-help. Part of the rationale for the Sixers' pick-and-roll aversion is their lack of a traditional pick-and-roll ball-handler, and if this game was any indication, Fultz is still not that guy. Philly tried a side pick-and-roll with him early, springing Fultz toward the middle of the floor with a mega double-screen from Simmons and Embiid. That got him a clean look from the elbow, but he clanked it. Later on, he and Embiid ran a pick-and-pop from the top of the arc, but Fultz didn’t pull the trigger on the jumper, or find Embiid on the pop, or drive downhill against Baynes. Instead, he did this ...

It still feels like the Sixers could work harder to create mismatches, even if they're just using ball screens to get smalls switched onto Simmons and Embiid. In this one, the Celtics were mostly able to play those two straight up, stay home on shooters, and jump passing lanes. The Sixers couldn’t collapse the defense in the half court, and as a result attempted just 26 threes, making only five of them. Incredibly, not a single one of those attempts came from the corners.

The open floor was Philly’s salvation

Just about every team scores more effectively in transition than in the half court, but for Philadelphia, in Game 1 of 82, that disparity felt particularly stark. The Sixers looked terrifying when they were running off misses and live-ball turnovers, but got gummed up any time they slowed it down even a little bit. Simmons was typically devastating in the open floor and did most of his damage by pushing the pace, gathering steam, and flying to the basket unimpeded. Fultz looked a whole lot more functional in that context, too. Even Embiid got in on the act.

The Sixers are very big and very fast. They should take advantage of that as often as they can. Officially, they got 16 of their 87 points on the break, but they scored a bunch more by attacking scrambled defenses in semi-transition. If they're intent on playing Fultz and Simmons together, then forcing turnovers and running at every opportunity is probably the most viable way to keep the offense afloat.

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