PHILADELPHIA — As each Celtic walked off the Wells Fargo Center court, gathered around their tunnel near the locker room was a swarm of Boston fans. The “let’s go Celtics” chants were noticeable on the broadcast as the seconds ticked off on their blowout 124-104 win over the Sixers.
There were some boos and murmurs from what was a restless Sixers crowd as they dropped to 20-35 on the season. On the flip side, Celtics fans had plenty of trash talk for their division rivals as they saw their team improve to 40-16. So by the final buzzer, C’s fans were more than happy to let their presence be known in what is usually a hostile environment.
“It’s awesome just seeing all the support on the road,” Payton Pritchard said after scoring a game-high 28 points. “We have the best fans in the world. Joe (Mazzulla) talks about it all the time: It’s just a privilege just to be able to play in an organization and a fan base like this. Definitely thankful and hopefully we can keep winning and bring home another one.”
The Celtics haven’t been perfect as there were some midseason struggles along the way in December and January. There are long nights and days during an 82-game schedule as the focus wasn’t there at times. But they’ve played some of their best ball of late, including Thursday’s blowout win.
The reigning champions also didn’t let the week off from the All-Star break dull their edge. They won seven of their final eight games ahead of the break, picking up right where they left off Thursday. Mazzulla said there were still some areas to improve, but there wasn’t much to complain about after raining 3s on the Sixers.
“The rest was nice mentally to kind of reset and lock back in and understand that we have 27 games left of the regular season then the playoffs,” Pritchard said. “You can mentally get prepared for it and we wanted to set the tone right away with this game and just come out defensively and set the intensity.”
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