Repeated turnovers led to Sixers’ OT loss to Celtics, after premature confetti was cleaned up

The Philadelphia 76ers forced overtime against the Boston Celtics in Game 3 of their second-round NBA playoff series thanks to some highly improbable circumstances. They had the game tied inside the final 10 seconds, and looked in great position to win it, but J.J. Redick’s pass to no one was picked off by Celtics’ guard Terry Rozier, creating an easy fast break that ended in a Jaylen Brown layup to put Boston up 89-87 with 1.7 seconds left:

And that made it look like the Sixers would lose this one, and fall to a 3-0 deficit in the series. However, they had a timeout left, and after that, Ben Simmons found Marco Belinelli for a game-tying shot that sent it to overtime:

However, while Belinelli’s foot was on the three-point line, making that just a two-point shot, in-arena staff apparently thought it was a three-pointer to win it. So they released confetti that wound up delaying the start of overtime by around seven minutes:

When overtime actually began, it was still a back and forth affair. But Boston took the lead inside the final 10 seconds on a Al Horford layup, and Horford then forced another turnover off an inbounds pass to Joel Embiid and hit one of the resulting foul shots.

And Belinelli missed a potentially game-tying three at the buzzer:

The Sixers had been favored in all three games of this series, by 5, 3.5 and 9.5 points respectively. And they’ve lost all three of those games, and lost this one thanks to two painful turnovers. Making the playoffs and making the second round is still impressive for this team, but it’s really gone wrong for them against Boston. And the fan who celebrated the premature confetti release knows that all too well.

But hey, someone’s set up a GoFundMe for the confetti-release guy. (Even if they can’t spell severance.)

[Clippit]