Saying the Celtics gave the Sixers the Old Yeller treatment on Tuesday would be underselling the scope of the 135-87 loss, because at least the plot of Old Yeller was ostensibly about doing the right thing and putting a dear friend out of their misery. This was no mercy kill.

Here's what I saw.

The Good

• The Sixers got their asses kicked up and down the court for most of the first half of Tuesday's game. It's a good thing they have Joel Embiid, because the big man was the difference between the game being over at halftime and the Sixers having a puncher's chance in the second half.

While Embiid was one of the few Sixers players doing absolutely anything early on, it took until the back half of the second quarter for him to really get rolling. Embiid brought the building back to life with a spin move around Al Horford that turned into a poster dunk over Celtics forward Grant Williams, inspiring a roar from Wells Fargo Center despite the Sixers being down 25 at the time.

That play was followed by several inspired plays from Embiid, including a terrific block of Tatum at the rim, fouls drawn to get to the free-throw line, and a pull-up jumper to bring the lead down to 17 points, which seems like a low bar to clear but was certainly noteworthy with the Sixers playing as poorly as they did.

It didn't do a whole lot of good in the end, but there was certainly an attempt. If Embiid didn't create it in the first half, odds are the Sixers weren't making anything happen — the big man scored or assisted on 31 of Philadelphia's 42 first-half points despite two and three defenders hanging all over him at any given time. He can't make shots for other people, too, unfortunately. 

• The only other silver lining I can find in this game was the fourth-quarter play of Paul Millsap, who looked at an opportunity to get on the floor in a blowout and took it pretty seriously, pulling down a pair of offensive rebounds in the first minute he was on the floor before making a corner three to the delight of the home crowd.

I'm still not convinced Millsap is going to be on the team for the rest of this season, but a decent debut for him nonetheless. Deck chairs on the Titanic, etc.

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The Bad

• Good god, was Philadelphia's offense brutal to watch for almost the entire first quarter. The only good thing they had going was Joel Embiid willing himself to the free-throw line, which is not exactly an offensive strategy as much as it is a reflection of his overwhelming size and skill.

I'm not sure exactly what the strategy was, quite frankly. The Sixers kept dumping the ball into Embiid in the post with static shooters around the perimeter waiting for him to do something, and while that's fine enough in some circumstances, the Celtics are a sturdy defensive group, so you have to try to throw other things at them. They crowded, swiped at, and bothered Joel Embiid, with a lot of his passes focused on simply avoiding turnovers rather than creating real shot opportunities.

(In fairness, there were plenty of playmaking-oriented passes, too, at least if you use the word "plenty" in relative terms during a bad night for the offense.)

It's a bit overly simplistic to say the Sixers simply need to get James Harden in uniform, but having one guy who is going to control the offense from the perimeter means that everyone else falls into sensible roles around the star duo. I'll reserve any judgment or harsh criticism until we see the real version of this team take the floor, but it might be pretty ugly until that happens, presumably at the end of next week. 

• Doc Rivers is the guy who coined the term "make or miss league" as far as I understand it, and I'm sure he will glance at the box score and point to the discrepancy from deep as a major factor in this loss. He will not be wrong when he does so. But you do have to look at who is getting your looks and why, and there's one guy that jumps out — Matisse Thybulle, who put up brick after brick with the Celtics basically ignoring him beyond the arc.

No matter how good his defense is, basketball is a two-way sport, and teams are going to have to pick who they're content to let beat them when strategy picks up in the postseason. Thybulle is the obvious guy to leave alone, with Maxey, Harden, Embiid, and Harris all posing threats to make shots or beat you off the dribble. Thybulle has 

This has always been the risk of treating Thybulle as a critical piece of a contender. Will he make enough shots to make teams second guess the approach when it matters? The Sixers are simply going to have to hope he can make enough shots to justify keeping him on the floor because this is no different than the opposite problem they faced with Seth Curry, who never defended anybody. If you're a one-way player, other teams are going to find ways to exploit it, especially the sort of teams you need to beat en route to a Finals run.

(If there is any wing who can walk and chew gum available on the buyout market, they're going to have to take a hard look at the guy for that reason.)

• Shooting variance was definitely a factor in the loss on Tuesday night, with the Celtics (and Jaylen Brown in particular) getting crazy hot from deep, but the Sixers had their own role to play in Boston's hellacious first half. Namely, the Sixers did not deal with screens well at all, with individual players failing to navigate through traffic and putting the rest of their teammates in horrible positions late in the clock.

Can't exactly put this mess on one guy, because everyone from Tyrese Maxey to Thybulle struggled throughout the night.

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• Doc Rivers heaped praise on Tobias Harris for picking up Darius Garland in the second half against Cleveland on Saturday, but you would be hard-pressed to tell me what he has done well after the trade deadline otherwise. And Tuesday's first half was a different sort of clunker than the ones Harris piled up early in the season — he had just three shot attempts after the first 24 minutes of action, and that happened despite the Sixers allowing him to post up and run a lot of time off of the clock on several early possessions.

Frankly, I do wonder how much he was impacted as a result of his name being thrown around the week before the deadline. Harris was in a groove prior to the deal for Harden being made, and now he's completely out of sorts, out of the rhythm he had discovered over the last month or so. I think you can chalk some of this performance up to a simple outlier bad performance, but boy, was it stinky.

Soon enough, Harris being a secondary figure for this team is going to be commonplace, but that's not an excuse for a lack of production or a failure to make use of the possessions where he gets to operate. At least one thing should be true — we will see far fewer post-ups run through him in service of more pick-and-rolls with a spread offense, and that will be to the benefit of everybody involved.

• Furkan Korkmaz dropped at least three passes that hit him directly in the hands. Not sure exactly what the issue was with him, but he didn't exactly look dialed in.

• Shake Milton's inability (or perhaps unwillingness) to go side-to-side on the move makes it really hard for him to score unless he can simply get by somebody. There are a lot of times when he tries to get downhill and finds himself tied up with the man defending him, which leads to him putting up some brutal runners and floaters that fall harmlessly off of the rim.

• I can (and did) sit here and write about all the reasons this game doesn't matter, because there's very little we learned from this game about whether or not the Sixers can contend for a title with this group. If they don't have one of James Harden or Joel Embiid available in the playoffs, their odds of success are very low, and I don't think anyone inside or outside of the building believes otherwise.

That being said, each of these games counts the same in the standings, and choosing to go the conservative route with Harden's rehab and return ultimately left them drawing dead in this one. It may very well turn out to be the prudent move, but seeding and the playoff bracket are going to matter quite a bit in the Eastern Conference playoffs this year. 

The Ugly

• I can already tell the Embiid/Harden era is going to be a nonstop bitchfest about the officials from the people who support the team and the opponent fanbases they're up against every night. Please, have some decency.

• Joel Embiid is a guy who picks up basketball skills as quick as anyone I can remember, which made his attempt at a James Harden stepback (and the subsequent travel call) that much funnier when Embiid tried it toward the end of the first half:

Obviously, your emotional investment in this group is different from mine, but I hope you were all able to laugh at this absurdity during a brutal game for the home team. You can still find a bit of joy in an awful loss if you look close enough.

• At least they played My Prerogative by Bobby Brown at halftime. That song is a jam.

• Anybody who attended this game should qualify for a free Wendy's meal after the next Frosty Freeze Out success even if they don't go to that game. Give the people something for sitting through this.

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