Process Trusters got a long-overdue lesson in remembering how to lose on Monday night, when for the first time in nearly two months, the Philadelphia 76ers got summarily bounced by another professional basketball team. The loss may or may not have been more pronounced than the final score would indicate, but was certainly no closer.

Four months ago, a loss like Game 1's would've resulted in a whole lot of OK Well At Least, where Sixers fans take the hard L as a given, but search for glimmers of sunlight in the darkness. These days, with the Sixers actually residing as favorites (!) in the postseason (!!), it's a lot more Yeah Fine But, where we acknowledge that the loss technically *happened*, but seek out the outlier reasons to suggest why it shouldn't have (and probably won't again).

And so, we look at the narratives that emerge from this loss and ask: How real is it? Are the elements that made Game One such an unexpected drubbing the result of a creeping Celtics superiority that Sixers fans and the rest of the NBA have simply been blind to leading up to the series? Or is it all a bunch of green-colored smoke and shamrock-graffiti-covered mirrors, destined to be exposed over the course of a seven-game series? Let's investigate.

1. Brett Brown got out-coached by Brad Stevens.

Of course, Brett Brown can't really be held responsible for the Sixers missing good looks, forcing unnecessary passes, losing their man and the ball or having Markelle Fultz on their bench instead of Jayson Tatum. He's the same coach that the he was when the Sixers were winning 17 in a row, and no proactive moves of his -- with the arguable exception of having J.J. Redick start on Jayson Tatum -- suggested otherwise.

But to a certain extent in the NBA, your coaching is what your team's on-court play says it is. If the Sixers were unprepared for the Celtics' offensive versatility, their commitment to guarding the three-point line, or their ability to take advantage of mismatches on both sides of the ball -- or if they really were all just rustier than Neil Young out there after a week off -- that ultimately comes back to the guy patrolling the sidelines. Doesn't mean Stevens is a better coach, doesn't mean it's an advantage for the whole series, but as Godner himself says, Round 1 to Stevens.

How Real Is It? 8 out of 10.

2. The Sixers were a young team believing their own hype a little too much.

Arguably some truth here, especially as concerns Ben Simmons, who had as close to a bad game as we've seen from our all-consuming rookie since before the All-Star reserve announcement turned him into an omnipotent god of vengeance. He was sloppy, he was flippant, he looked like a 21-year-old. Where this explanation doesn't track for me is in how much of the loss was attributable to our veterans playing like shit (editor's note: Andrew will use some curse words): If Ersan Ilyasova wasn't a brutal 2-9 from the field (and 2-4 from the line, with the two worst FT clanks I've ever seen), if Marco Belinelli wasn't a soggy strand of spaghetti on defense, and if Robert Covington wasn't giving RoCo haters weeks' worth of freebies with his two-way crappiness, the Sixers might've had a shot in this game. Of our car-rental-age dudes, only J.J. Redick played well; if everyone else was too busy feeling themselves, they should be snapped to humility real quick.

And for the record: Joel Embiid's offensive dominance in this game is getting etcetera'd way more than I can believe. Are we really looking 31 points (on 12-21 shooting), 13 boards, five assists and only three turnovers right in the mask and going "Yeah, and?" Joel had his foibles on defense, and a couple Evan Turner-like missed rotations late made him look particularly disinterested, but he was awesome on Monday night, and his unstoppable third-quarter run looked a lot like the one that eventually swung the momentum in the Sixers' one regular-season win against Boston. The big difference in that one was that the team was able to get a couple stops between JoJo buckets in that game, which they weren't in Game One -- partly on Embiid, but far from entirely -- but they eventually will in this series. If the Celtics' strategy is simply to let Joel eat, sooner or later they're gonna get devoured entirely.

How Real Is It? 5 out of 10.

3. Terry Rozier is actually Kyrie Irving (mixed with a little Damian Lillard).

It sure looked like it on Monday, huh? Rozier was indefatigable in Game One, scoring 29 on 11-18 shooting, throwing in eight boards and six assists for good measure, and hitting every Kyrie-copyrighted Big Bucket Down the Stretch that the TD Banknorth Commerce Free Pen Garden crowd could stand. And it hasn't been a one-game sample for this postseason: Terry was just as Scary for much of the C's Milwaukee first-round series -- particularly at home, where he averaged 22 and 6 a game and paced the rest of the postseason field in terms of fourth-quarter scoring -- and fairly excellent down the regular-season stretch for Boston as well.

Still, the only players who perform like this close to every night in the playoffs are superstars, and those traditionally don't just pop up out unexpectedly in the second season. Rozier is good, but he's due for some regression, and the Sixers might help that along by not daring him to shoot so often on the way to a 7-9 night from deep. T.J. McConnell only played six minutes on Monday, but I wonder if Brett Brown'll lean on him more if Rozier gets rolling again; at the very least, he can rest assured that T.J. won't give him an inch of extra space that he doesn't absolutely have to.

How Real Is It? 6 out of 10.

4. Al Horford is actually pretty good.

Fine, but I don't want to talk about it.

How Real Is It? 8 out of 10.

5. The Sixers were lazy on defense.

Undoubtedly! Well, fine line between "lazy," "sloppy" and "sporadically non-existent," but there were lapses that you just don't expect to see with these Sixers, or any other team with a top-five defense. Covington got snuck behind, Simmons left weaker-defending teammates marooned on the perimeter, Embiid wasn't leaving the paint, why should he leave the paint, you go leave the paint. It was undisciplined, and that's not something you've been able to say about Brett Brown's squad at any point in recent memory, even when Dwyane Wade was sinking turnaround 20-footers like he had diplomatic immunity a series ago.

Will it last? Unlikely; this seems the part of the Sixers' Monday night effort that seems all but certain to course-correct, particularly now that Brett Brown & Co. have seen what the Celtics have to offer. Nevertheless, you never like to be the team who begins the series out of sorts and progressively unravels from there; it's unbecoming of a squad with finals aspirations.

How Real Is It? 6 out of 10.

6. The Celtics shot better from three than Philly, but that's because they got better looks.

To an extent this is undeniable: The Sixers were, by Celtics design, largely unable to spring the likes of Redick and Belinelli for the clean looks they're all but guaranteed to drain, while the Celtics' shooters and non-shooters alike were given beats, if not full measures, to draw and connect. Terry Rozier doesn't go 7-9 from three by accident -- the Sixers were, as Mike pointed out on the pod, giving him the Justise Winslow treatment, allowing him to step into threes in the confidence (or stumbling hope) that a good look from three for Rozier was still a good-percentage play for Philly -- a provocative gameplan for defending a 38% three-point shooter. The same went for Marcus Smart, Aron Baynes and Al Horford, who each hit multiple bombs of their own on clean looks.

Yet the disparity in shot availability was still not enough to explain away the historic disparity in three-point percentage on Monday night. The Celtics didn't give gimmes to our best guys, but secondary shooters Covington, Saric and Ilyasova all whiffed on triples that were eminently hittable -- and even given the advantageous looks Philly offered Boston, their guys connected on a disproportionate percentage of 'em, and seemingly always when they needed one to stem a rising Sixers tide. The Sixers need to tighten up, but some leveling out on both sides is inevitable -- and it's not a coincidence that the Sixers' only other night shooting under 20% from deep in the past two months was also their only other loss in the period.

How Real Is It? 6 out of 10.

7. This is why Ben Simmons needs a jumper.

I mean... sure? Ben Simmons needs a jumper, Ricky Rubio needs a healthy hamstring, LeBron James needs better teammates. No one's arguing that Ben Simmons wouldn't be significantly better with a socially acceptable jump shot -- he knows, he knows -- but the idea that the Celtics unleashed some skeleton key defense that unlocked the secret to neutralizing a guy who's laid the league to waste for the last three months is an exaggeration at best and an insult at second-best. Ben Simmons had a bad game; Ben Simmons has no jumper; Ben Simmons did not have a bad game because he has no jumper, otherwise he would have had more than one (1) such game since it was single-digit degrees outside. Put this take on ice until at least July.

How Real Is It? 2 out of 10.

8. This is why the Sixers need LeBron.

This is why the Sixers need somebody, maybe. We definitely got to a point in the game where the Sixers were down double digits, offensively stagnant and getting killed on the perimeter, and I thought to myself something like, "Man, I wish we'd put our two-way shot-creator back in the game." This player of course does not currently exist on the Sixers, and that's arguably a problem of some degree. Fultz could resemble that player someday, or it could be a draft target for this summer, or a free agency target like Paul George (or perhaps even a trade target like oh I don't know Kawhi Leonard). There are options. Avenues to be explored.

Do the Sixers need LeBron? No more than I need The Continental when I'm hungry; it'd be great, but it's hardly the only thing that'd suffice. Even in the worst-case scenario, there's not a LeBron-sized talent gap between these two teams -- transport The King to these Sixers and the rest of the Eastern Conference Playoffs become a moot point. "EXACTLY!" you may be shouting, and fair enough, but we don't need to litigate this whole thing right now. Point is, you don't wanna be that guy yelling "This is why we NEED Manny Machado!" every time Maikel Franco strikes out.

How Real Is It? 5 out of 10.

9. The Sixers always lose to teams missing their best players.

I floated this idea to two of my co-workers, still seething about Game Six in 2009's first round, when after losing Dwight Howard to a one-game suspension, the Marcin Gortat-led Orlando Magic noogie'd the Sixers for an entire elimination game. One of them remarked that the game was a decade ago and involved precisely zero of the players or staff currently associated with these Sixers, and the other pointed out that the team defeated a suddenly Derrick Rose-less Bulls team in an 8/1 upset a couple years later. Never mind.

How Real Is It? 0 out of 10 (but fuck Marcin Gortat)

10. The Sixers are in trouble.

No matter what their thought about its ultimate implications for the Sixers in this series, all Philly fans seem to agree on one thing: This loss felt different than the Miami one. (Still great when you lose a game and have just the one other loss in recent memory to compare it to, btw.) That was another bad shooting night, sure, but it was also an unreal Dwyane Wade performance -- one needed to stave off a late-game Sixers comeback, even -- following a first half in which basically everything went right for Miami, including an uncleared Joel Embiid remaining locked to the bench. There was every reason to expect the Sixers would come back in short order, and they did. It was anxiety-inducing without being legitimately worrisome.

This time, I'm sweating a little. Only a little: Just one game, things to improve, nothing for certain. I still think the Sixers are the better team in the series, and I hope and believe that Game Two will do a better job of reflecting that. But the Celtics were the better team last night, and it wasn't particularly close. They've established that, unlike Miami, they have room for error. And we only get to add Embiid back to our roster once.

How Real Is It? 6 out of 10.