The Boston Celtics beat the Philadelphia 76ers 128-96 on the road in Game 4, moving one win away from advancing to the second round. Payton Pritchard scored 32 points in 34 minutes, Jayson Tatum added 30 points, seven rebounds and 11 assists, and Jordan Walsh turned 12 minutes into a defensive stretch that fit the night Boston needed.
Walsh's role was easy to miss next to those numbers, but it was part of the shape of the game. He had already shown he could bother Tyrese Maxey, holding him to 1-of-10 shooting in direct matchups in two regular-season games, and he said before this one, 'I actually think we’ve done a great job.' He described the job as 'a lot of effort — a lot of technical things have to know but most of all just playing as hard as possible,' and added that 'everything is about balance: when to be aggressive, when to back off, when to pick up high, when to pick up low.'
That balance showed up again in Game 4. Walsh forced a shot clock violation and drew an offensive foul on Joel Embiid on one possession, small plays that rarely lead the box score but matter in a playoff game where every possession is weighed. Before the playoffs, Walsh said part of his success against Maxey came from 'taking away tendencies and then knowing the small things that get under his skin,' including, 'Like if he wants to go right and do a step back, just don’t let him do that. Make him do something else.'
The Celtics needed more than one scorer to take control, and they got it. Pritchard and Tatum drove the offense, but Walsh's brief minutes helped underline why Boston has been able to blunt Philadelphia's guards when he is on the floor. The sequence of that matchup has made his defense a talking point inside this series, even if it does not show up the way 30-point nights do.
Boston now goes home with a chance to close out the series, while Walsh's minutes suggest the Celtics may keep leaning on him for the kind of edge work that can swing a playoff game without showing up in the headline numbers.