Jayson Tatum delivered the moment that swung the series. With the shot clock dwindling and the Boston Celtics clinging to a narrow lead in the final two minutes of Game 3, Tatum hunted Sixers rookie VJ Edgecombe in a switch, found the mismatch he wanted in centre Joel Embiid replacement Adem Bona, and rose for a three he had no intention of passing up.
Nothing but nylon. The Celtics took the air out of the building, ran out the clock, and walked off the floor with a 108-100 win that gave Boston a 2-1 lead in their first-round series with Philadelphia.
It was the kind of poised execution down the stretch that veteran Celtics teams have made a trademark, and Jaylen Brown — who scored 25 points and carried the Boston offence on his back through a critical four-and-a-half-minute fourth-quarter stretch — credited that experience after the win.
"Big-time players make big-time plays," Brown said. "Big-time shot by Payton, big-time rebound by D-White, and then JT finished it off."
Brown himself was the constant in a quarter where Boston's offence threatened to stall. From the six-minute mark to the 2:30 mark, he was the only Celtic to score, going on an eight-point individual run that kept Philadelphia from snatching back the game.
"That's what it comes down to," Brown said when asked about those stretches. "All your preparation comes down to those moments. Both teams are tired. Your team is offensively in a little bit of a rut. You got to figure out how to get a basket. I felt like I did just enough to shift things in our favor."
Brown was clear-eyed about the stakes after Boston dropped Game 2 at TD Garden.
"This was like a game seven for us," he said. "Even though it's a long series, we definitely wanted to come back and respond after dropping one in our home floor. Can't lose two games in a row in the playoffs. That's tough. So this was a big win for us."
He also defended Derrick White, who had a frigid night offensively but produced two crucial rebounds in the closing minutes that bled clock and starved Philadelphia of possessions.
"It's a long playoff, so I thought he still had a really good game," Brown said. "His shot didn't fall as much as he would have liked, but he took some really good shots and he made some big-time plays. And it's the experience. We trust Derek in those moments, and he usually always delivers."
Brown also pointed to White's defensive work on Tyrese Maxey, chasing the Sixers guard over screens and contesting late at the rim. "He's had some great second contests and block shots, and then those rebounds at the end of the game — just winning plays. They add up."
Asked about how this version of the Celtics is built to win when the threes aren't falling, Brown framed Boston's identity shift this season as a forced evolution rather than a stylistic choice.
"This whole year we've had to play a different style from the beginning to the end just because we lost a bunch of players that we had an identity with, and we had to reform a new identity," Brown said. "Our players have adapted to finding other ways to win, getting to mid-range shots, getting to the free throw line, offensive rebounds. So in the playoffs, you got to be versatile. It's not always going to be pretty, but you just got to find a way to get it done."
For Tatum — limited to just 16 regular season games this year as he worked back from a significant Achilles injury — the dagger was a statement. Boston now has home court back, and the Sixers, still without an injured Embiid, have to find a way to steal Game 4 in their own building before the series shifts back to TD Garden.
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*Originally published on [NBA News Global](https://nbanews.global/article/tatum-dagger-celtics-76ers-game-3-2026). Visit for full coverage.*
