Paul George scored 36 points in his first regular-season game against Philadelphia since the July trade that sent Jaylen Brown to the 76ers. Boston won 123–101 at Xfinity Mobile Arena on 10 November 2026, breaking away with a 14–0 run at the start of the fourth quarter. George made six three-pointers and scored 14 points in the final period. Jayson Tatum finished with 21 for Boston, Tyrese Maxey led Philadelphia with 24, and Brown scored 13. The result moved the Celtics to 9–2 and left the Sixers at 9–3.

The matchup brought together two teams that had met in the previous spring’s playoffs and then exchanged veteran wings. The useful comparison on Tuesday was between their scoring opportunities. The Sixers made 24 free throws and Boston made five, yet the Celtics finished 22 points ahead. Boston’s 22 three-pointers were central to that outcome, but the visitors also scored more in the paint. Those two figures help explain why the gap proved difficult to close even on a night when Philadelphia went to the line much more often.

Philadelphia got level before Boston separated twice

Tatum scored 11 points in the first quarter, and Boston led 30–23 after 12 minutes. The visitors had made four threes by then. George took on a larger share of the scoring in the second, putting up 13 points and making two of Boston’s five threes in the period. The Celtics reached halftime ahead 62–51. By that stage, Tatum and George had each provided a sustained scoring stretch, giving Boston multiple ways to build its lead rather than asking one player to carry the first half.

Philadelphia produced its best scoring quarter after the break. It made five threes in the third and hit 57.9 percent of its shots from the floor, according to the game report carried by Reuters. Maxey’s three with 3:19 left tied the game at 79. That was the clearest sign that Boston’s strong shooting had yet to settle the result. The Sixers had found enough scoring outside the arc to catch up, and the score was level late enough in the quarter for the game to turn on the next few possessions.

Boston answered by scoring 12 of the final 15 points of the third. The 12 came from four different players, with Payton Pritchard, Sam Hauser, Tatum and Baylor Scheierman each making a three. That distribution is worth more attention than the size of the run alone. Philadelphia could account for Tatum and still face a scoring threat on several other possessions. By the time the quarter ended, the Celtics had restored a nine-point margin without requiring George to deliver the answer every time the ball changed hands.

The fourth quarter changed the game again. Pritchard hit consecutive threes to start the 14–0 run, and George supplied the next eight points. Boston’s advantage went from nine to 23 before Philadelphia made a field goal in the period. Brown finally hit a three with 7:37 remaining, his only one of the game. In effect, Philadelphia had erased the first-half deficit and then conceded two separate runs on either side of the quarter break. The late third-quarter stretch took away the tie. The early fourth-quarter stretch made the deficit much harder to recover from.

Boston scored 30, 32, 29 and 32 points in the four quarters. Its lowest-scoring period was the third, the same quarter in which it made seven threes. That combination separates the value of particular possessions from the total output of a period. Philadelphia scored 31 in that quarter and cut the halftime deficit by two, even though Boston finished it strongly. The fourth was the only period in which the Celtics outscored the Sixers by a double-digit margin. The game therefore turned on the timing of the extra scoring as well as the amount.

George’s shot mix and Pritchard’s role

George’s 36 points came on 14 makes from 22 field-goal attempts. Six of those makes were threes, worth 18 points. Eight were twos, worth 16, and he added two free throws. Half his scoring therefore came from beyond the arc, while the rest came largely through baskets worth two. The total is a useful reminder that a big three-point night does not require a player to get all his points in the same way. He still converted eight shots inside the line.

His best quarter was the fourth. He went five for seven from the floor in the period, including three for four on threes. Boston’s team account noted that much of the decisive burst came while Tatum was on the bench. George’s contribution in that window had a rotation consequence. Boston could give its leading scorer a rest while an established wing was still taking and making shots and Pritchard was adding perimeter scoring. That is a more specific takeaway from the game than the idea that George simply had an unusually hot night.

Pritchard finished with 18 points and four threes. Hauser had 12 points, all from his four threes. Together they supplied eight of Boston’s 22 makes from outside, two more than George’s individual total. The opening of the fourth shows how that balance mattered in real time. Pritchard gave the Celtics six points before George’s scoring sequence, so Philadelphia was already defending a double-digit deficit when George took over. Boston could change who was taking the shot while maintaining the pressure on the same part of the floor.

Why the free-throw gap did not save Philadelphia

Philadelphia attempted 28 free throws to Boston’s five. At the line the Sixers won the scoring comparison 24–5. From the floor they lost it 118–77. That arithmetic explains the 22-point margin: Boston’s advantage of 41 points on field goals was greater than Philadelphia’s advantage of 19 points at the line. Philadelphia’s ability to get free throws was a meaningful source of offence. The problem was the number and value of the baskets Boston kept making between those trips to the stripe.

The Celtics made 48 field goals to Philadelphia’s 33. Breaking those totals down gives Boston 26 two-pointers and 22 threes, against 22 twos and 11 threes for the Sixers. The extra 11 threes were worth 33 points, and the extra four twos were worth another eight. Boston also led 46–32 in points in the paint. The categories measure different things, with paint points included within the two-point totals. Read together, they show that Boston’s edge extended to the interior even while the biggest separation came from three-point scoring.

Maxey’s 24 led Philadelphia, but he was its only player to reach 20. Joel Embiid scored 16 on two field goals from nine attempts, and LeBron James scored 11 on four from 12. Brown had five rebounds, two assists and two steals alongside his 13 points. He was minus-27 in just under 26 minutes, while George was plus-17 in 30. Those figures record how the score moved during their minutes on the court and include the performance of teammates and opponents. They are useful alongside the scoring sequences, with the early fourth-quarter run providing the clearest example of a lineup-level shift.

Tatum’s box score adds another detail to the comparison. Along with his 21 points, he recorded six rebounds, four assists and two blocks. Eleven of the points had come in the opening quarter. Boston could therefore get a scoring start from Tatum and a different source of late scoring, while still getting contributions from Tatum elsewhere in the game. Philadelphia’s most productive response was the third quarter, when its five threes helped it stay close even as Boston made seven in 13 attempts.

The July trade and what one November game can show

Philadelphia eliminated Boston on 2 May after trailing 3–1 in their first-round playoff series. It won Game 7 in Boston, 109–100. The November game was their first meeting since that series, and the personnel had changed substantially. Brown, a 2024 NBA champion and Finals MVP with the Celtics, spent ten seasons with Boston. George arrived from Philadelphia after two seasons there, with prior stops in Indiana, Oklahoma City and with the Los Angeles Clippers. The matchup placed two familiar players on opposite sides of a rivalry whose most recent playoff chapter had ended in a Philadelphia comeback.

Boston confirmed the trade on 6 July. In addition to George, its return included an unprotected Philadelphia first-round pick in 2031, conditional rights involving the 2028 first round and two future second-round selections. Those assets matter to the overall evaluation because they can affect future roster decisions, even though they cannot influence the score of a November game. Tuesday supplied evidence about how George can function in the current rotation, especially in minutes when Tatum sits. It supplied much less evidence about how the trade will look after the draft rights are resolved.

Boston introduced George in July as a nine-time All-Star with a 38.4 percent career three-point rate at that point. Its announcement also noted his 49.3 percent mark from outside in Philadelphia’s most recent postseason. Those numbers help place the six makes on Tuesday in context. A single game offers a small sample, but this particular contribution came from a player with a long history of taking perimeter shots at NBA level. His scoring surge also fit alongside contributions from Tatum, Pritchard and Hauser, which is the part of the performance most relevant to Boston’s roster construction.

The early Eastern Conference standings now show Boston ahead of Philadelphia by one loss, with 11 games played by the Celtics and 12 by the 76ers. Tuesday gave Boston a fourth consecutive win. It also gave both clubs a clear sequence to review: Philadelphia made up the deficit in the third, four Boston players rebuilt the lead before the break, and Pritchard and George extended it immediately after. The next meetings can show whether the teams find different answers. In the first, George’s shooting was decisive because it arrived inside a broader Boston advantage in made shots.

Sources · NBA game centre · Boston Celtics game report · Boston’s rotation and fourth-quarter report · Field Level Media via Reuters · Associated Press via Boston.com · 6 July trade announcement · May playoff Game 7

Archive photograph, April 2026, resized for web display · Chensiyuan, Wikimedia Commons · CC BY-SA 4.0

Talal Osman

Source: www.nba.com