The Sixers got Joel Embiid back in the lineup and watched as their team fell short anyway, losing 108-94 to New York to fall to 0-3 in their second-round series. Philadelphia’s season is on the line on Sunday, when they’ll have to score a Mother’s Day win to avoid a sweep at the hands of the Knicks.
Here’s what I saw.
It starts on the boards…
Philadelphia’s round one matchup against Boston allowed the Sixers to put Joel Embiid on the floor with very little downside. For one, he looked better physically than he does right now, and the Celtics were a lot worse at trying to pick on him in drop coverage. Unfortunately, the Knicks have had a much different approach and have done a far better job of punishing his lack of mobility on the glass, and many of Philly’s problems in Game 3 flowed out of there.
Anyone who watched the 2024 Sixers-Knicks series has seen this play out before, and even with some different faces on both sides of the matchup, the story remains the same. New York already had four offensive rebounds after the first quarter, helping to keep the game close, and things only got worse in the second quarter, as the Knicks fans in attendance unleashed a barrage of cheers watching their guys work the Sixers on the glass. A great Philadelphia start was washed away
Early on, a good chunk of the rebounding problem came down to a lack of mobility for Embiid, which the Knicks were ready to test early and often. Credit to Mike Brown and the Knicks for their ruthlessness — Philadelphia’s initial defensive plan was to use Embiid as a roamer off of Josh Hart in the corner, and it didn’t take long for the Knicks to either bring Hart up on screens for Brunson or use him in other actions to move Embiid around. When he wasn’t directly involved in the possession on defense, Embiid also didn’t navigate traffic all that well. He wasn’t hitting bodies on their way to the basket, allowing plenty of free runs at the hoop to bail the Knicks out of some poor early offense.
Although the Knicks’ assault on the boards got going thanks to the big man, it certainly wasn’t all his fault. New York felt emboldened by their start and began attacking the Sixers in waves in the second quarter, wiping out good defensive possessions for Philly by going over, around, or even through Sixers players to rip second chances away and extend possessions. Philadelphia’s help principles always loom large in their worst rebounding moments, and they often can’t figure out whether to attack the ball or box out a man, so even when guys like Kelly Oubre and Quentin Grimes have their hearts in the right place, they end up operating on two different wavelengths and undermining each other’s efforts.
Not good enough, not deep enough
Compared to Embiid, there are fewer excuses for Tyrese Maxey’s own sleepy start on Friday night, which came on the heels of a brutal finish in Game 2 in a series that appears to be headed nowhere fast for No. 0. His carelessness with the ball has been downright shocking, with Maxey throwing away possessions under very little pressure after a season of elite ball security. Although he was hyper-efficient to start this game, 4/5 from the field at the half, he didn’t get to the free-throw line once and struggled to get free to impact the game as a scorer, failing to even attempt a three in the first 24 minutes. His injured right hand is bothering him, and it is helping to derail Philadelphia’s offense.
When Maxey and Embiid were on the floor together in the first half, the Sixers tried to run a fair amount of DHOs with the intent to hit Maxey on cuts toward the basket. But they were unable to connect on more than a couple because Maxey wasn’t able to break free from whoever was chasing him. Mikal Bridges has been the main man on Maxey for a lot of this series, and he has done a tremendous job of making him work when he has had Maxey in single coverage. If only the Sixers hadn’t traded him away all those years ago…
To the credit of their main duo, Maxey and Embiid found some solutions in the second half. New York switched how they were defending ball screens against two-man actions involving Embiid and Tyrese Maxey, often vacating the middle to play up on the guard and force the ball out of his hands, apparently convinced Embiid could not hurt them. With Maxey hitting the pocket pass, Embiid was able to start rolling a little bit on offense, catching the ball deeper and bulldozing through the Knicks for tough buckets and important free throws. When he pulled down his own miss and scored over Mitchell Robinson late in the third, it inspired one of the loudest roars of the night from the home fans, with Philadelphia sensing that perhaps this game could be stolen back. We should be long past the point where anyone should question Embiid’s toughness or desire to play. However good he was or was not, I can certainly sympathize with the big man trying once again to gut it out for his guys. But they need a healthier, more complete version of him to have any reasonable chance in this series, and he looks nowhere close.
On top of that, we are far too deep in the season to excuse a lack of shot attempts for Maxey as a problem created by everyone else. If the Knicks are going to double him and flood the zone, the Sixers need to use him as an off-ball weapon. If half-court offense is a struggle, have him pull some deep jumpers on the break early in the clock, if only to make the Knicks think about it. His volume from deep has been nowhere close to his regular-season numbers, and their offense is not good enough or sophisticated enough to survive if that remains the case.
Onto the other member of their big three — one of the only silver linings of a first half that completely spiraled out of control is that Paul George was cooking early. He was tied for the team lead in points with 15 after two quarters, putting on another shotmaking clinic without OG Anunoby to bother him in the mid-post. George has hit some shots during this brief playoff run that are frankly hard to believe, twirling fadeaways from the corners with a hand in his face that defy belief if you’ve watched most wings who have played for this franchise over the last quarter of a century, if not longer. But he completely faded from view as the game wore on. George was held scoreless for the entire second half, and the bulk of his responsibility as the game wore on was on the defensive end.
I think there are a couple of different ways to look at this series. The reality is that the Sixers have just gotten absolutely nothing from most of the rotation, while the Knicks are bringing the likes of Landry Shamet off the bench and immediately getting buckets. New York is a better and deeper team, and that’s after they lost OG Anunoby to a hamstring injury. Look down the bench, and who can you count on for Philly? Quentin Grimes has been a total disaster on offense, seemingly making the wrong choice between jumpshots and drives every time he has a chance to do either. I don’t really blame Andre Drummond for failing to succeed against either KAT or Mitchell Robinson, both of whom are better than he is, but when he isn’t contributing as a rebounder, he doesn’t have much of a purpose out there. Even Dominick Barlow, who had a strong Game 2 in small-ball minutes at the five, did little to impact the game during his limited minutes on Friday night.
Philadelphia didn’t get their first bench points until the fourth quarter, which is a crazy thing to have happen even for a thin team. Whatever you think of Jared McCain, who is doing just fine playing a bench scoring role for the defending champions, the real crime of Philadelphia’s deadline was trading away potential help and bringing nothing back that could help them right now. It’s an approach that is incoherent with doubling down on Joel Embiid with an extension and signing Paul George as your third option. If you’re not willing to push chips in to win now, what was the point of assembling a top-heavy team of stars in the first place?
But the other side of it is that their stars have gotten straight up outplayed by New York’s best players in this series. Jalen Brunson has been streets ahead of Tyrese Maxey, bringing back memories of his hellacious close to the 2024 series. Even while battling constant foul trouble, Towns has at least played Embiid to a standstill. And after Anunoby exited for at least a game, Mikal Bridges managed to meet the moment and score 20+ in Game 3, surpassing what George had to offer in his third option role for Philadelphia. Sure, you can point to missed shots from role players as help swarms toward the middle of the floor, but it’s hard to pin the way this series has gone on someone like VJ Edgecombe, who is chasing Brunson for 94 feet and trying to give them a chance on the other end.
They’re getting beaten as a team by a better team. That’s the story through three games. That is much tougher to swallow than the previous Knicks series, where at least they could point to officiating shenanigans as a cause of their plight.
Other notes
— To no one’s surprise, there were a ton of Knicks fans in the building for Game 3 despite any efforts to prevent them from buying tickets. But the bigger story was how late-arriving the crowd was across the board, with hordes of seats empty all around the building on both levels. I assume this is due to a combination of traffic and parking issues, but it was regular-season full for at least the first 8 minutes of the game.
