NEW YORK — Making their first postseason appearance at Madison Square Garden since the days of Mo Cheeks and Charles Barkley, Saturday night’s Game 1 between the New York Knicks and the Philadelphia 76ers was something this generation of basketball fans had never seen before: meaningful, tense basketball played at a high level between two would-be Eastern Conference rivals.
And yet, for Philadelphia fans who have been living and dying with their 76ers over the last decade, much of it felt all too familiar.
The Philadelphia 76ers fell to the New York Knicks 111-104 on Saturday night, losing the first game of the best of seven series. The reasons they find themselves in an 0-1 series hole include, primarily, that: they were decimated on the glass, letting the Knicks haul in 23 offensive rebounds on the night, leading to a 26-8 edge in second chance points; a woeful effort from the Sixers’ role players, including a 42-7 advantage for New York in bench scoring; a night when the Sixers were outscored by 21 points in the 11 minutes that Joel Embiid was on the bench; and a defensive game plan that resulted in Josh Hart, a 31% 3-point shooter on the season, being open down the stretch, making three 3s in the guts of the game that each felt progressively more and more painful as a dagger being shoved into the hearts of Sixers fans.
And yet, despite all of that, if any of those wind up being the true storyline to come out of Game 1, it feels like the Sixers dodged a bullet.
When Joel Embiid fell to the ground with 2:49 left in the second quarter after throwing an off-the-backboard alley-oop to himself, the Sixers’ season looked to be in jeopardy. Even the New York faithful, who had spent much of the night chanting ‘F— Embiid”, and who would resume doing so later in the game when he returned, had a sort of nervous energy in the minutes before Embiid pulled himself up off of the hardwood.
The stare that Embiid gave in the moment, with a focus seemingly a thousand miles off into the distance, looked to be that of a player less focused on the pain that he was in and more that of a player trying to contemplate what the pain meant going forward. He looked like he was bracing for the worst.
Then, with 17 seconds left before the second half was set to tip-off, Joel Embiid finally emerged from the visitors’ tunnel, the last Sixers player to come out after halftime, and walked out onto the floor. Literal minutes later he was throwing one-handed, off-the-dribble bounce passes to kick off a fast break, with the Sixers in the midst of a massive run to, momentarily at least, take back control of the game.
“It was tough seeing your brother go down, and you just kinda feel for him, pray for him, and hope he’s okay,” Tyrese Maxey told reporters after the game. “To see him when we got back to the locker room and he said he was gonna go back out there and give it a try, hats off to him, his determination and his will to win.
“Nothing with Joel surprises me now. He’s always a fighter. He’s always gonna go out there and try to give his all for the team. If he’s able to go, if he thinks he can go, then he for sure will be out there,” Maxey continued.
It was a perfect encapsulation of this era of Sixers basketball, with moments of absolute brilliance, but the inescapable feeling that you’re just one fall, one twist, one buckle away from it all crashing down.
Embiid coming back into the game last night certainly seems to suggest that the first hurdle Embiid had in front of him has been cleared. Embiid’s upbeat demeanor in the locker room, as Kyle reported last night, might be considered hurdle No. 2. Next up, and perhaps most undoubtedly the most critical, is how the knee reacts the following day.
But after watching the first Sixers vs Knicks playoff game at The Garden in 35 years, if Joel Embiid is healthy, and if the Sixers are able to clean up some issues on the glass, I still feel relatively confident that the Sixers can pull out a win in a tough, long series against the Knicks.
The Sixers’ outstanding defense on Jalen Brunson
The Sixers and Knicks played almost polar opposite games last night.
The Sixers were carried by their stars in Joel Embiid (29 points, 8 rebounds, 6 assists) and Tyrese Maxey (33 points, 4 assists), with scant offensive contributions from any of their role players not named Kyle Lowry (18 points on 5-9 shooting).
The Knicks, on the other hand, had subpar showings from Jalen Brunson (22 points, although on 8-26 shooting) and Donte DiVincenzo (8 points on 3-10), who combined to shoot 11-36 from the field. Fans of both teams are left going “If we can just clean this up…”, and both would be correct.
The very first play of the game saw the Sixers switch a Brunson screen, with Tobias Harris putting a good contest on Brunson’s pull-up baseline jumper. The Knicks, as would wind up being the defining theme of the night, tipped the offensive rebound back out, setting up a made 3-pointer from Josh Hart.
In fact, of the 16 3-pointers that the Knicks made, half of them came off of either offensive rebounds (3) or transition buckets (5). Most of the half-court 3s that New York did make outside of that came in the last five minutes of the game, when the Sixers were actively leaving Hart open to trap Brunson and get the ball out of his hands. It didn’t work, with Hart and Anunoby making back-breaking 3s to seal the game, but they were open largely by design.
“The possessions that they made their last four 3s on, I’m not sure I’m taking those possessions back. I think we were doing what we wanted to do there,” Sixers head coach Nick Nurse said after the game. “But they hit them, and give them credit for stepping into them and hitting ’em.”
The Sixers played really, really strong half-court defense last night, especially in the minutes when anchored by Joel Embiid. In fact, the Sixers averaged more than 20 points per possession more than the Knicks on first shot possessions in the half-court, 98.8 per 100 plays to 76.5, per CleaningTheGlass. That was New York’s 4th least efficient half-court game of the season.
The problem is the Knicks averaged 39.1 points per 100 missed shots. This goes without saying, but missing a shot should not yield an expected value of .4 for the shooting team AFTER THE MISS.
The Sixers came out and switched nearly every ball screen set for Brunson that didn’t involve Joel Embiid, who they mostly kept in a drop to help protect the rim. 1/2 pick-and-roll with Brunson and DiVincenzo? The Sixers switched that. Screen with Miles McBride? The Sixers switched that, too, trusting all of their perimeter defenders to handle the assignment without getting beat.
I thought all of Kelly Oubre Jr, Nicolas Batum, Kyle Lowry, Tobias Harris and even Tyrese Maxey did an excellent job of communicating, of switching when they needed to, of getting through screens when necessary, and of putting in a rearview contest on the rare occasions they were beat into the lane.
It is absolutely true that if Brunson gets these same shots again, he will have a big night or two in this series. He’s just too talented not to, and part of the reason he has ascended to superstardom is because of his ability to make tough shots at a high level.
But I also think if the Sixers make Brunson’s life this difficult for a seven game series, they will give themselves a real shot to win. They executed their scheme against Brunson perfectly, save for the rebounding, and the Sixers’ two stars got better quality looks at the basket than New York’s did. They were just let down by their disastrous effort on the glass, and by a bad bit of shooting variance.
Stray thoughts
- Tyrese Maxey’s ability to get to his spots in the second half could loom large as this series wears on, especially if you’re not sure how much Embiid will be limited with the injury. Whenever Maxey was able to draw a switch and get a big on him in the second half he took advantage in a big way with a series of left to right, downhill drives. I wrote about this the other day, but I don’t think the Knicks have a great answer for him, and Maxey was able to get to his spots even when matched up 1-on-1 with OG. If Maxey had his perimeter jumper going last night he might have been able to carry the Sixers to a win even with all of their defensive rebounding and bench issues.
- On that note, I wouldn’t have minded if the Sixers ran more of their late-game offense through Maxey, especially since it seemed like Embiid’s mobility and/or conditioning was causing him to settle for contested, isolation jumpers down the stretch, which are materially different than the in-rhythm pocket pass Js that he feasts off of. Embiid did get some stuff going towards the rim in the final two minutes, but the offensive lull right before that really put them behind the 8-ball. This is the benefit of having two stars on your team. Embrace it.
- There will be a lot made of the on/off numbers for Embiid in this game, especially since we’ve seen that script play out a thousand times before. The Sixers were +14 in Embiid’s 37 minutes and -21 (lolsob) in the 11 minutes he was on the bench. But I don’t think this one falls on Paul Reed’s shoulders, as it did on Greg Monroe and De’Andre Jordan (just to name a few) in prior years. Reed was fine, and played his role well. It’s the rest of the Sixers’ role players, who were virtual no-shows on offense outside of Kyle Lowry, who made those splits look bad.
- The one thing Buddy Hield was brought in to do was to take open shots. So please, take the open shots.
- I mentioned it above, but Kelly Oubre Jr’s defense deserves another shout-out in this section. All of the Sixers’ perimeter defenders did a good job on Brunson, but Oubre’s was at another level. Oubre Jr was tremendous moving his feet, getting through screens, and had active hands all night, forcing five crucial turnovers.
- Tobias Harris was present.
Quotables
“He got assessed at halftime and he was able to go, but just like after every game we’ll assess him and see.” — Nick Nurse, on Joel Embiid’s status.
“Obviously, we talked about it a lot. It’s a key thing that they do, and we didn’t do a very good job of it tonight. Now I gotta go find out why, and what all the problems were. I’m sure the list is long. I’m sure there’s a lot of things. It isn’t gonna be just ‘hey, just block out’.” — Nick Nurse, on the Sixers’ defensive rebounding struggles in Game 1.
“I don’t think so. I don’t think so. I think, listen, he’s really a warrior, and he’s battling, and I think he absolutely wants to play, but we’ll see how he turns out here tonight. ” — Nick Nurse, on whether there’s been any thought of shutting Joel Embiid down.
“Get a little bit tougher, get a little bit more physical with them. We know what they’re gonna do….They execute that game plan extremely well. But it’s one game, we have a game on Monday, so tomorrow, tonight, get our rest, look at the film and see where we can get better angles.” — Kyle Lowry, on fixing the defensive rebounding problems.
“Kelly did an unbelievable job tonight. We’re gonna need him on the offensive end also, but his defensive presence tonight was extremely high level.” — Kyle Lowry, on Kelly Oubre Jr’s defensive effort against Brunson.
“It was tough seeing your brother go down, and you just kinda feel for him, pray for him, and hope he’s okay. To see him when we got back to the locker room and he said he was gonna go back out there and give it a try, hats off to him, his determination and his will to win…Nothing with Joel surprises me now. He’s always a fighter. He’s always gonna go out there and try to give his all for the team. If he’s able to go, if he thinks he can go, then he for sure will be out there.” — Tyrese Maxey, on what he thought when Embiid went down in the second quarter.
“That’s a skill, being able to go in there and offensive rebound…those guys know where to crash, and know you miss it. But you gotta be ready for that, match that physicality, and kinda go above and beyond with the physicality, honestly.” — Tyrese Maxey, on matching New York on the glass.
