Before the start of their first round series in the 2026 NBA Eastern Conference Playoffs, head coach Nick Nurse and his Philadelphia 76ers had a plan to take on the Boston Celtics. The end result of Game 1 – a 123-91 beatdown – told us that plan did not work out very well for the Sixers, which Nurse acknowledged after the loss.

"I mean, a lot went wrong, that’s for sure," said Nurse. "And I think it started right from the beginning, with not getting off to a great start offensively, getting in some foul trouble with both bigs. So the first quarter, obviously, was moving past us pretty quick, and we just didn’t do enough at either end to get in, to settle into the game."

"I thought, from the second quarter to about midway through the third, we finally got ourselves underneath us a little bit and played pretty good basketball," he added, "but the minutes around that (were) absolutely unacceptable."

"I think it’s one of those games where I thought we did do a pretty good job of shot creation ... probably not near enough," said Nurse of Philly's struggles with execution vs. Boston's defense. "But we certainly had our chances there, and you just can’t live in not making those, right?"

"I thought ... not making them affected us a little bit in defensive transition and a little bit defensively, and I just didn’t think we executed very well at the defensive end on some of the things we wanted to do, and put ourselves in a big hole."

This article originally appeared on Celtics Wire: Nick Nurse explains what went wrong for 76ers in Game 1 loss to Celtics