BOSTON -- The Philadelphia 76ers entered TD Garden on Sunday afternoon looking to make the Boston Celtics uncomfortable. It's the only way the Sixers are going to have a shot in this series as heavy underdogs and short-handed with Joel Embiid sidelined.Instead, the Celtics made it look easy. A veteran-laden team that has been there, done that, the Cs knew it was time to turn up the intensity and get going on either end of the floor.

The Sixers? Well, they looked like they were stuck in neutral.The Celtics shot 50% from the floor compared to 38.9% for the Sixers. Boston drilled 16 triples.

Philadelphia made just four. The Sixers had 15 turnovers leading to 22 Celtics points. Boston had 10 turnovers leading to just three Philadelphia points.

In the end, the Celtics took a 1-0 series lead with a 123-91 win on Sunday.Tyrese Maxey had 21 points on 8-for-20 shooting while Paul George had 17 points on 4-for-8 shooting, but Boston's star duo of Jayson Tatum and Jaylen Brown combined for 51 points and they got whatever shot they wanted against Philadelphia's defensive schemes."I’ll say this: I think this is my fifth playoffs," Maxey began. "So, losses, whether you lose by seven, 12, 100, they all hurt. They all don’t feel good.

This one sucks. We didn’t expect this at all, but we just gotta play better. Paul said something that kinda registered in my mind.

They didn’t feel like it was a playoff game. We did. They didn’t. It was an easy game.

That’s not OK. We gotta make them more uncomfortable."The Celtics got whatever they wanted on the offensive end throughout the contest. The Sixers had no answer for anything.

Boston jumped out to a 33-18 lead after the first quarter as it got into a rhythm with wide-open 3s and layups while Philadelphia was unable to match anything the Celtics did."I don’t think we matched their physicality, their toughness," added George. "Essentially, they had a lot of possessions where they just walked to the rim for an easy layup. There was just no resistance at a lot of times throughout the game, and that's not playoff basketball."The slow start certainly hurt, but the Sixers have been a resilient bunch all year as they have had to battle through injuries and so many different issues along the way.

That team wasn't there in this contest as the Celtics just really ran away with this one from the jump. The Sixers never seriously threatened in the second half."Not getting off to a great start, offensively," added coach Nick Nurse. "Getting in some foul trouble with both bigs, etc.

So, the first quarter, obviously, was moving past us pretty quick, and we just didn't do enough at either end to get in and 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, but the minutes around that was absolutely unacceptable."The Sixers won't have Embiid to save them in Game 2 on Tuesday on the road. They need to be able to dig deep and find a way to steal one before this series shifts to Philadelphia and find something that works in this series.This article originally appeared on Sixers Wire: Tyrese Maxey, Sixers explain what went wrong in Game 1 loss to Celtics