So much for Boston’s grim outlook once Rajon Rondo was lost for the season.

Avery Bradley has followed the trusted blueprint of dogged defense and impact scoring to help push the Celtics up the standings.

Bradley scored a season-high 22 points, and Paul Pierce had 18 points and 11 rebounds to lead the Boston Celtics to a 109- 101 win over the Philadelphia 76ers on Wednesday night.

Kevin Garnett scored 18 points to help the Celtics improve to 12-4 since Rondo was lost with a torn knee ligament. The Celtics entered in seventh place, but were no more than two games behind the next three teams ahead in the standings. Bradley was 10 of 15 and chipped in seven rebounds and five assists, the kind of numbers needed for the Celtics to slip into a coveted top-four spot for the playoffs.

Led by Pierce, the Celtics controlled the game and used a 9-0 run midway through the fourth quarter to seal the win. Last May, these two teams went to Game 7 of the Eastern Conference semifinals. On Wednesday, the Sixers lost for the ninth time in 10 games and are well out of the playoff race.

Jrue Holiday had 18 points and 10 assists for the Sixers, and Thaddeus Young had 19 points and 10 rebounds. Evan Turner scored 18 points.

The Sixers beat the Celtics twice this season after stretching the Celtics to seven games in last year’s playoff series. But the Sixers are a team in free-fall because of injuries and a roster ill-equipped to handle the losses of postseason standouts Andre Iguodala and Lou Williams.

Nothing much went right for the Sixers.

“We just missed too many easy shots,” said Royal Ivey, who scored 10 points.

Like so many teams over the last 15 years, the Sixers had no real answer for Pierce. He hit his first four 3-point attempts, each one more crushing than the last. When the Sixers went on a mini-run to close within eight, Pierce and Jason Terry connected on consecutive 3s to build a comfortable lead.

Pierce had averaged 21.8 points over 54 career games against the 76ers.

At one point in the first half, both teams were 15 of 32 from the field. The Celtics found other ways to separate themselves from the Sixers: Boston went to the free-throw line and made 3s. The Sixers missed nine of 11 3-point attempts in the first half and were 0 for 3 from the freethrow line.

The Sixers finished five of 21 on 3s and 14 of 18 on foul shots They did score 64 points in the paint.

But they only made 41 of a whopping 100 shots from the floor. The Celtics shot a solid 5 percent in the third (11 of 20) and 53 percent (10 of 19) in the fourth to methodically build to a 15-point lead.

Boston got sloppy at the end of the third quarter and had three turnovers in the final 90 seconds. That helped the Sixers score six straight points and slice the lead to five. Jordan Crawford opened the fourth period with a pair of 3- pointers that made it 91-76 and the Celtics never let up from there.

Crawford’s points and production off the bench were needed for a veteran team with another game Wednesday night at Indiana.