Sixers lose Game 2 to Knicks on botched inbounds pass

A botched inbounds pass to Tyrese Maxey doomed Philadelphia in a heartbreaking 104-101 loss to the Knicks, putting the Sixers in an unenviable hole against New York.

Here’s what I saw.

The Good

— While I had very little doubt Tyrese Maxey was going to suit up for this game, it was anyone’s guess what kind of shape he would be in for this game. Nick Nurse didn’t know about Maxey’s illness until right before their morning film session on Monday, and in his pregame media session, Nurse talked about the likelihood of playing Cam Payne more minutes with Maxey’s condition/conditioning an unknown.

Maxey cast aside any fears before anyone knew who had hit them — he canned three consecutive threes to open the game, taking control of the game all by himself. How’s that for an affirmation of how he was feeling?

Though his three-point touch evaded him as the game wore on, this game showed exactly how much growth Maxey has gone through leading this team. The Knicks threw everything but the kitchen sink at him in coverages — hedges, traps, switches, big defenders, small defenders and more. Every time they threw a counter at Maxey, he had a response, whether it was hitting a skip pass over the top or waiting out a ball screen switch to draw a big in front of him. Hartenstein and Robinson have been excellent in their roles this series, but they had nothing to offer for No. 0 in space.

After a sleepy third quarter as a scorer, it became clear that Maxey was going to have to take the game over as a scorer, with Embiid wearing down and drawing an abundance of Knicks defenders in the middle of the floor. After being scolded by his father to focus on the midrange pull-up during summer sessions, the words of his old coach rang true, with Maxey hitting a big stepback jumper over Brunson moments before hitting a beautiful layup in traffic, going off glass to tie the game at 94.

His growth can be summed up with one simple fact — Embiid willingly conceded the offense to Maxey in crunch time, trusting that his younger teammate had the cojones to see this thing out. Let’s go to the tape:

And then, well…

— Joel Embiid will tell you that he’s probably somewhere between 70-80 percent healthy right now, and even with some physical limitations (due to the knee or his conditioning) he is absolutely controlling this series. And while he has not been in the sort of ass-kicking, MVP-level form we saw early this season on offense, he is reminding everyone just how valuable he is and has been as a playoff defender.

Despite Embiid’s lack of lift right now, the Knicks are still running scared of him contesting shots around the basket. With Jalen Brunson struggling to find the basket and the Sixers doing a good job of sending late help in his direction, the “others” for New York are getting pressed into duty as late-clock decisionmakers. That plays right into Embiid’s hands, as he can sit back, assess the situation in front of him, and trust that no one will make (or often take) shots over his outstretched arms near the paint. And with two non-shooters playing the center minutes for New York, it has been rare that Embiid needs to come out to the three-point line to defend.

Offense has been a mixed bag for the big man, but he’s ending up on the right side of the ledger for a few main reasons.

• With Maxey cooking the Knicks early in this game, Embiid was freed up to leverage his size and strength on the glass, pulling down five offensive rebounds in the first half alone. One of the underrated downsides of Embiid being a prolific jump-shooter is that he gets pulled away from the basket, and his activity here on Monday was excellent
• Embiid is reading New York’s pressure and help about as well as could be expected. Even when his passes aren’t turning into direct assists, he’s keeping the offense moving and flowing instead of trying to take a sledgehammer to a wall of defenders. That’s personal growth.
• His three-point shooting has been a big weapon since his return from injury, and if he’s going to make those shots, there’s just not a whole lot the Knicks can do. Having to guard Embiid out to the three-point line opened up some backdoor cuts and slashing opportunities for Sixers perimeter players on Monday, and that’s a big deal if he can continue to punish New York from deep.

New York did everything they could to try to load up on him in the middle of the floor, and Mitchell Robinson once again deserves some credit for the work he did to stand the big man up in the second half. Embiid’s trust in Maxey and the synergy they have built over this season was essential down the stretch.

— Tobias Harris was public enemy No. 1 in Philadelphia coming out of their Game 1 defeat. There were people hoping Nick Nurse would outright bench him. Whether he heard the criticism or not, Harris came out with a purpose in Game 2, intent on proving that he would go down fighting this time around.

The days of hoping Harris will be a third option night to night are in the rearview, but the mentality he played with on Monday is what many have hoped for out of him for over the last half-decade. Harris was an aggressor on the boards, rather than a spectator, and possessions that would have snowballed into two or three shots for New York were ended because Harris pursued the ball with gusto.

How’s this for a turnaround — New York entered halftime with miserable numbers on the offensive glass. One game after rebounding half of all their misses in the halfcourt, a 100th percentile outcome, the Knicks were only able to come down with around five percent of those same misses. Harris set a great example for the group, and the rest of his buddies followed.

But Harris did more than just rebound the ball, settling down on offense to make smart, patient plays with the basketball. Knocking down a pair of open threes in the first half opened the floor for some closeout attacks, and after drawing help defenders around the nail, Harris made timely passes out to the perimeter, creating an open three for Nic Batum to go with another assist before halftime.

With Oubre playing poorly, Harris’ spot in the closing lineup was unquestioned, and he rewarded Nurse’s trust with some inspired defense on Brunson — not to mention a massive offensive rebound in the final four minutes, securing an extra possession they desperately needed. More of this guy, please.

— The Sixers may have won a title if they had been able to get Kyle Lowry in here during the 2021 stretch run. It wouldn’t have changed the fact that Ben Simmons was one of their most important players, and they might have had to give up Tyrese Maxey to make it happen. But when you watch him making big time plays in transition defense, when you see him big-dogging taller players for offensive rebounds, when you see him making smart hit-ahead passes in transition, it seems so obvious.

— Nick Nurse’s hit rate on challenges was not the best for a lot of this season. He sure nailed them on Monday night.

The Bad

— All of the above being the case, the Sixers are apparently the worst inbounding team in the history of basketball. All the good work Maxey did over the course of 47 minutes was undone by pressure defense from the Knicks on an inbounds pass.

Why didn’t they use their last timeout? Why can’t they get the ball in against a press? Great questions I’ll hopefully be able to answer for you later.

— The offensive production the Sixers got from everyone not named Embiid or Maxey was absolutely diabolical in this game. Daryl Morey has made a career out of basically saying “role players don’t matter” and pushing all in for as much star power as possible. I think he might feel vindicated for that belief and approach watching how the first two games of this series have played out.

It’s not as though Embiid and Maxey were just freezing their teammates out, either. Both stars shared the basketball adequately and even made passes I thought they wouldn’t have even considered as recently as a year ago. Maxey was hitting skip passes to the weakside corner out of pick-and-rolls, Embiid was threading bounce passes through traffic, and their general inclination was to play team-first basketball rather than hero ball.

Some of these guys clearly don’t look cut out for big moments in the playoffs. Buddy Hield has been an absolute mess in his first playoff series ever, not just missing shots but staring down opportunities that you’d pray for as a shooter in this type of environment. I don’t want to call him “shook” but he does not seem to understand that good shots are good enough at this level — you can’t always hunt for great. Shoot the damn ball!

(It’s a real cruel twist of fate that the Knicks have a terrible shooter going bonkers and the Sixers’ deadline sharpshooter has been absolutely useless from deep.)

Others have offered more on the defensive end but just as much (which is to say, zero) on offense.

It is hard to say enough about the defense Kelly Oubre is playing against Jalen Brunson. The same mentality that leads to ill-advised shots throughout the regular season is why you are okay putting him on the other team’s best player. He plays with a firm belief that he can do anything he wants to on the court, and he sure as hell looks like a guy who can keep Brunson in check for a series. But Oubre has been a complete zero on offense for most of the first two games, with the lack of trust in his right hand hurting him in a big way on drives to the basket. The much stranger thing has been Oubre’s passiveness on the perimeter — I never thought I’d have to ask for him to get a bit more reckless as a shooter, but he is playing patient to a fault right now.

— You could argue the inflection point of the game came with 4:19 left in the third quarter, when Nick Nurse opted to pull Joel Embiid with Knicks star Jalen Brunson still in the game. Philadelphia had successfully played New York to a standstill during the non-Embiid minutes in the first half, and if they had done so again here, Philly would have had a golden opportunity to seize control of the game in the opening minutes of the fourth quarter.

But the calculus was off for a few reasons:

• The Knicks were playing a bit better than the Sixers in the stretch that immediately preceded that substitution, building a bit of momentum (not to mention some noise in the crowd)
• Resting a “normal” star in that spot is understandable because you’d bank on them playing the entire fourth quarter. But I can probably count the occasions on one hand where Embiid played an entire fourth quarter, and betting your sub-patterns on him doing so was a massive gamble.

Sitting in the arena, I am ultimately dealing with some incomplete information. Did I miss Embiid gesturing that he needed a blow? Possibly? But that’s the only explanation I could think of that would make sense.

The Ugly

— In a seven-game series where you get ultra-familiar with the opponent, you have to choose which shots you’re willing to concede and which players you would be okay with beating you. The Sixers looked at season-long splits and concluded that Josh Hart is the guy who should be taking more shots than the rest of the Knicks, if they’re able to have their say.

That was all well and good for the first three quarters of Game 1, but Hart has caught the holy from the fourth quarter of Game 1 onward. Good defensive possessions and sequences are being obliterated by a bad shooter morphing into Allan Houston, and it’ll be interesting to see how the Sixers react moving forward. How strongly do they believe in the law of averages? With Daryl Morey and Nick Nurse both hyper-logical guys, I would not be shocked if they continue to let him cook in the short term in the hope that he will cool off at some point. The structure they have in place is working otherwise, but it’s real hard not to overreact.