The NBA rivalries that matter: Celtics vs. 76ers

Enmity rarely arises out of nowhere. There’s almost always some precipitating event or a history that burnishes such hostility, that fans the flame causing a conflict to turn into something much larger than the initial sparks necessitate, like, for example, meeting each other in the NBA Playoffs more often than any other two teams. It’s not exactly the Huguenots taking on the Catholics in 16th century France, but in the sports world, it’s more than enough.

The 76ers and the Celtics have one of the longest-running rivalries in NBA history, though the Celtics have definitely gotten the better end of it for the most part, winning 13 of the 20 playoff series in which they’ve faced off. Led by Wilt Chamberlain and Bill Russell, the two teams met four consecutive years in the Eastern Division Finals from 1965 through 1968, with the winner going on to win the title each of those years.

Unfortunately for Philadelphia fans, the 76ers only triumped once, in 1967. Throughout the first half of the 1980s, the teams met again several times with the 76ers defeating the Celtics to advance to the Finals in both 1980 and 1982, before losing to the Lakers both years in the Finals. Two other years, the Celtics beat the Sixers in the Conference Finals in 1981 and 1985. Since the end of the 1980s, though, both teams have fallen on harder times, with only one championship and three Finals appearances between the two of them, but now, both teams appear to be teams on the rise, with two of the best young cores in the league presumably set to battle in the Eastern Conference for years to come.

The Celtics, following the end of the Big Three era, had about a smooth of a rebuild as one could imagine, only missing the playoffs for one year before returning in 2015. They were helped tremendously by the bounty of first round draft picks gifted them by the Brooklyn Nets in the Paul Pierce-Kevin Garnett-Jason Terry trade from 2014, which gave them Jaylen Brown, Jayson Tatum, and, through a trade, Kyrie Irving. Needless to say, they won the deal.

The Celtics are also in the great position of not having to wait for these young players to come into their own, of biding their time while these players fight to realize their tremendous potential, due to the trio of veteran All-Stars they have in Al Horford, Gordon Hayward, and Kyrie Irving. Boston is the rare team that looks built both for the present and the future, a franchise potentially able to contend for the title now and in 2024, once their veterans have passed their prime.

Meanwhile, the Sixers’ rebuild was about as torturous and unwatchable as one could imagine. During The (Four-Year) Process, they went 75-253, consistently fielding lineups that would have even the most diehard NBA fan struggling to name all five players on the floor. Last season, it finally started to pay off as the Sixers established themselves as one of the best young teams in the NBA, winning a surprising 50 games before falling in the Conference Semifinals. Over the last five years, the 76ers accumulated a bevy of high draft picks and were able to leverage those into a number of promising young players in Joel Embiid, Ben Simmons, Dario Saric, and Markelle Fultz.

Embiid and Simmons are the obvious standouts here, as both look like perennial All-Stars in the future, if not more. Saric, meanwhile, appears to be good at pretty much everything, improving across the board in his second season, raising his shooting percentages and showing more comfort than he did in his rookie year. While I’m not sure he projects as a star, he absolutely promises to be a great complimentary piece for the 76ers for years to come.

However, Fultz, the number one pick in last year’s draft, remains a bit of a mystery. After being the consensus top choice by draft experts, he had the most confounding season in recent NBA history as he seemingly lost the ability to shoot due to some combination of a shoulder injury and the yips. I’ve read everything about the saga that I can, and I’m still not really sure what happened. Yet even in his abbreviated rookie campaign, he showed promise as someone who can get to the rim and create for others, and if Fultz comes even close to fulfilling his outsized potential in the next few years as originally expected, the Sixers should be set to contend for many years to come.

Of these two teams, Boston has the most depth and their veteran stars give them the overall edge — at least for the next season — but the uncertainty regarding Hayward’s form returning from injury, Irving’s potential upcoming free agency, and how well Horford will age makes their future at least a little bit uncertain. Also, while I’m higher on Jaylen Brown and a bit lower on Jayson Tatum than most, their ceilings do not seem as high as those of Joel Embiid and Ben Simmons, who both look like future candidates for MVP and Defensive Player of the Year.

Of course, easy as it is now to project these two teams having dominant runs for years to come, expecting that each franchise will garner at least one championship in the next decade, it’s just as likely that their windows close rapidly, and without warning. That’s the problem with projecting a linear trajectory for young players — it rarely actually works out that way and there’s so many variables that could interfere.

Injuries, bad management, greed and jealousy, poor luck, or some combination of them all have derailed several teams that looked to have championships in their future. Look at the 1995 Magic and the 2012 Thunder — both teams made the Finals led by dynamic young stars who looked poised to contend for years to come, making their eventual losses those years seem like just a necessary lesson that had to be learned, but neither one made it back to the Finals with those cores. Certain as years of contention for a Simmons/Embiid duo or a Kyrie/Hayward/Tatum trio may appear now, there’s no certainty that these teams won’t implode or fall apart for any number of reasons that are unforeseeable now, but could appear inevitable in hindsight.

For a rivalry to really take hold there has to be something more than just on-court competitiveness, something that makes partisans out of neutral observers and causes the already committed to grow even more fanatical in their devotion. I think that, apart from the history, part of the conflict between these two teams derives from the fact that they went about rebuilding in such disparate ways, ways that seem antithetical to each other.

While the Sixers tore everything down, informed by new age-y Silicon Valley tech-speak, creating an accidental cult in the process, the Celtics remained competitive, making smart trades and benefiting from the Nets’ high draft picks. As seen by how bright both team’s futures look, both plans worked, but that won’t keep each team’s fans from claiming that their way was better. There’s also innumerable Celtics fans mockingly imploring Ben Simmons to “shoot a 3 coward,” so that’s a point of contention as well.

Until proven otherwise, whether by a resurgent Raptors team or a spate of injuries to the Sixers’ young core or a number of Celtics fleeing in free agency, the battle between these two teams appears to be what will play a large part in determining the Eastern Conference Champion for several years to come. With a mixture of established stars, exciting young players, and a number of absurd memes courtesy of Weird Celtics Twitter, this potential rivalry looks to be entertaining, both on and off the court.