BOSTON — It looked a lot like they imagined it would, once upon a time.

Joel Embiid was scoring buckets and drawing crowds.

Tyrese Maxey was zigging and zagging through the resulting alleyways.

Paul George was knocking down 3s and playing ironman minutes of solid defense.

That was the vision, wasn’t it? However much longer the 76ers’ season lasts, they will always have the memories of Game 5. I don’t mean that to sound sardonic. One thing you have to admit about the Sixers after a 113-97 win over the Boston Celtics on Tuesday night: They are sincere.

Some organizations would consider such a conclusion to be damning with faint praise. But the Sixers entered this postseason saddled with the perception that they are a fundamentally unserious team. The hopes and dreams of the early Embiid era had long before devolved into caricature bordering on farce. It’s hard to even dispassionately recite the order of events without coming across unfairly, whether to Embiid for the appendicitis that sidelined him for the first three games of the series, or to Sixers fans for their exasperation. While the times are always strange ones when it comes to the Sixers, over the last two years they have come unmoored from the year-to-year competitiveness that long served as a buoy. It became easy — some would argue psychologically necessary — to write off Embiid as a tragicomedy and George as a golden parachutist and Daryl Morey as the personnel executive with no clothes.

Game 5 didn’t change any of that. The long-term questions and criticisms of this team remain the same. But the Sixers did at least succeed in challenging some of those aforementioned perceptions, on an individual basis and as a collective.

Embiid, for one. He has played so sparingly over the last couple of seasons that you almost forget how dominant he can be. Yet there he was on Tuesday night, carrying the Sixers through the second half on both ends of the court, 19 days removed from emergency surgery. His first half was uneven, to put it kindly. He missed six of his first seven shots, took too many 3s. On the defensive end, he was passive and late and looked nothing like the game-changer he was through most of his career. But he did as he always has done, and he kept on going.

“I just want to give as much as I can every single time I step on the floor,” Embiid said. “I know a lot of people might have takes that I might be lazy or whatever, but every single time I’m on the floor I want to play as hard as possible. I want to do whatever it takes to win a basketball game.”

Against the Celtics in Game 5, that meant spending the second half inside the paint, bullying undersized big men Neemias Queta and Nikola Vučević. He finished with 33 points on 12-of-23 shooting, including 12 of 18 from two-point range.

“Give him a lot of credit,” Sixers coach Nick Nurse said. “He worked very hard to get back through this procedure that he had and he played a lot of minutes.”

The more attention the Celtics paid to Embiid, the more Maxey thrived. The rising superstar scored 25 on 10-of-18 shooting despite hitting just three of 10 3-point attempts. George filled in the blanks the way he does when he is at his best: steady, understated, 4 of 9 on 3s.

Together, the Sixers’ Big Three was everything their bosses have long thought they could be if they somehow managed to all get on the court together. Most of all, they were entertaining. Crisp, fluid, active, downright functional. They got a big lift from bench guard Quentin Grimes, who knocked down four 3s and made his mark, especially on the defensive end, locking down Celtics star Jaylen Brown for the full length of the court to force a bad shot on one memorable possession in the second half.

It may not mean much in the grand scheme of things, with regard to either the series or their long-term future together. But it means something on a granular level, first and foremost that the Sixers can suspend disbelief and postpone summer plans for at least another day. It means that they have a chance to make things interesting on their home court in Game 6 on Thursday. And all of that means that they have already surpassed the expectations many had for them at the outset.

The Sixers probably can’t count on the Celtics shooting 28% from 3-point range or missing nine of their 23 free throws. Boston didn’t earn itself the No. 2 seed nor three straight chances at closing the Sixers by shooting the way it did throughout Game 5. The odds are still considerable.

That being said, the Sixers did more than just live to die another day. They were coming off an ugly blowout loss in front of a disenchanted home crowd. They trailed by as many as 13 early in the second half. They easily could have shrugged their shoulders and acknowledged that everybody was right about them. Instead, they outscored the Celtics 35-29 in the third quarter and then held them to 11 points in the fourth.

“This team’s tough,” Maxey said. “It’s a tough group of guys, a connected group of guys. We just did a good job of being resilient. We’ve got to do it a couple more times.”

They more than earned the right to give it a go.

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