Celtics blow a 3-1 lead and lose to the 76ers

Just a little while ago I was talking about how incredibly rare it is for a team to come back from being down 3 games to 1 and how unlikely it is that this sort of gap will be overcome but that is exactly what happened just a little while ago.

This has only happened 13 times in the entire history of the NBA resulting in a 4.4% chance of this happening. It has only happened once in the finals, but that is not important now.

The reason why this is so eventful is because tomorrow we very well could be looking at this happening a second time as the Detroit Pistons were down 3-1 against the Orlando Magic and they have brought it back to 3-3 and are expected to win the 7th game.

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This is especially hurtful to yours truly, because I don't really follow the NBA very closely except for the Boston Celtics, which are a team that I have been a fan of through thick and thin starting when I was a child and my father was a very big fan of the famous Celtics team that featured the likes of Robert Parish, Kevin McHale, and of course, the infamous Larry Bird.

Other than this one team, I am kind of indifferent to the rest of the NBA other than, ironically, wanting the 76ers to lose to whoever they happen to be playing at the time.

One way that you can help the other team to defeat you is to play absolutely horribly in the first quarter though, and that is exactly what the Celtics did. Then, in the 2nd quarter the Philly side started to focus a bit more on defense and slowed the pace of the game down. There was some hope of a rally in the 4th quarter and things were looking up but as you can see from the box score, it was too little too late and now Boston is going home early once again.

The last time there were two instances of a team coming back from 3-1 deficit in the same playoffs was back in 2020 when the Denver Nuggets had this happen to them twice, in back-to-back series vs first the Utah Jazz and then immediately afterwards against the LA Clippers. It happened again in 2016 but with two separate teams.

The real focus here though is that overcoming a 3-1 is extremely rare and the notion that two different teams would accomplish it is so incredibly rare that it basically is never supposed to happen. There are certain things that can influence the likelihood if this happening such as injury of a star player, of course. A lot of Celtic apologists are already attempting to claim that this is the case this year with the absence of Jaysun Tatum on the squad in game 7.

The Orlando Magic have looked rather dominant in the first 4 games vs. the Detroit Pistons going up 3-1 but in every game since then the Pistons have looked like the dominant team that got them the number 1 seed in the first place. Can Orlando dig deep to find that bit of "magic" that got them to this point in the first place or are Detroit going to cruise to the conference semifinals in an easy-looking fashion that was expected of them in the first place?

The bookies certainly think so as the Pistons are favored by nearly 10 points in Vegas.