Sixers lose Game 1 to Knicks following Joel Embiid injury scare

Joel Embiid rallied from a first-half injury scare to help keep the Sixers in the game against the Knicks, but New York pulled away for a 111-104 victory in Game 1.

Here’s what I saw.

The Good

— Knicks fans spent the 24 hours leading into this game promising to unleash hell on the likes of Kelly Oubre and Paul Reed in Game 1 at Madison Square Garden. The Sixers vaporized the home faithful in less than five minutes, rushing out to a double-digit lead before New York knew what had hit them.

As always, it all started with No. 21. Though he still doesn’t appear to have much vertical lift, Embiid controlled the game in the early going, forcing Isaiah Hartenstein to play at exactly the pace he wanted, no faster or slower than that. After nailing a trail three to open it up and settle the nerves, Embiid got to work inside the arc, torturing Hartenstein (and later Mitchell Robinson) with some excellent work while operating from the left block.

I am not exactly sure what the Knicks were doing in their preparation for this series — Embiid was allowed to catch the ball at his favored spot on the left side of the floor over, and over, and over, and over again to open this game. As we discussed in our series preview, the Knicks are a team that sticks to and believes in their defensive ethos, but the cost of that is that you might end up watching someone like Embiid cook you from their money spot. Robinson would eventually get in some solid possessions against the big guy, barreling into his back and stonewalling Embiid as he tried to get to work around the nail.

It looked like the world had come crashing down at the end of the first half, but as has happened far too many times in the past, Embiid came strolling out of the tunnel after halftime, joining his teammates on the floor right as the third quarter was about to start. Though his mobility was limited, he still managed to have a massive impact on the game, mostly because the Knicks still sold out hard to try to stop him. And unlike in some playoff games in the past, his reads were ultra sharp from the middle of the floor — Embiid generated constant open looks for his teammates, either through the initial pass or the hockey assist.

Consistent passing from Embiid is the final level for him as a playoff force, and with very few exceptions, he was masterful with the ball in his hands, punishing the Knicks for each and every gamble. They tried to cheat from the wing, the corner, and the baseline, and Embiid managed to make the right read in all of those situations.

Even without his top-end athleticism, the Knicks still had a whale of a time trying to attack him at the summit, too. Despite poor efforts from his teammates on the glass, I thought Embiid did an excellent job of following up strong defense with good effort on the glass. The numbers may not reflect that, but he was piercing through two and sometimes three Knicks to come up with rebounds, and I certainly commend him for that.

What he has left for the rest of this series is anyone’s guess. Embiid clearly wore down in the fourth quarter, struggling to do much of anything except take perimeter jumpers the Knicks wanted to concede. He is capable of being the best player in the series without his full health, but the next step will be seeing how his knee responds following this game.

— Kyle Lowry is a million years old in NBA years, but I feel more confident and comfortable with him in a playoff situation than most of the roster. He may not get to spots as quickly as he used to, he might not have the ability to get to the basket in the halfcourt, but the knowledge he has acquired in that noggin sure has a lot of use in a pressure environment.

The Bad

— This game looked like a lost cause for Tyrese Maxey at halftime, with the Knicks smothering him with long, athletic defenders for the better part of 24 minutes. But with the game in danger of turning into a laugher, Maxey found his sea legs in the second half, giving Embiid the scoring support he needed.

Some of that was a product of Embiid’s positioning in the second half — with No. 21 spending more time on the perimeter and spacing the floor, Maxey had more open driving lanes to attack, and his speed obliterated the Knicks in space. The Sixers also made a more pointed effort to force switches that worked in Maxey’s favor, daring Mitchell Robinson and Hartenstein to try to stay with him. As it turns out, that’s not a good place to be if you’re a Knicks fan, with Maxey putting together some beautiful finishing moves on his way to the basket.

(Josh Hart made excellent rotations as the low man several times, only for Maxey to blow by him with ease, using Euro steps and fancy footwork to get Hart leaning before exploding past him for a reverse.)

But with Maxey as the head of the snake, operating as the lone star with Embiid on the bench, the Sixers offense was a complete disaster. Maxey deserves a fair bit of blame for that as the guy running the show, but more pertinently, I thought his ball security was a mess for the second straight game. For the final month leading into the playoffs, Maxey talked up the idea of every possession mattering. And with the game there to be won in the fourth quarter, he was treating inbounds passes as casually as you would in a January regular season game against Charlotte, allowing Jalen Brunson to create an extra possession for New York out of thin air.

Maxey and Nurse will have to figure some things out between Games 1 and 2, whether that means switching the lineups or adding some playbook wrinkles because they shouldn’t lose a game in which Embiid is +14 and the opponent only scores 110 points.

— Philadelphia got basically nothing out of their non-Lowry role players in this game. The Knicks got 21 points out of Deuce McBride alone. Unless Embiid and/or Maxey go bonkers, that’s not a recipe for winning this series.

Give the Knicks credit for their crunch-time shotmaking, because the Sixers landed on a strategy of doubling and trapping Brunson, hoping that the others wouldn’t make them pay. Josh Hart had a monster closing stretch for the Knicks after mostly being ignored on the perimeter all game, and you have to simply tip your cap to him.

The Ugly

— As I type this, the Knicks came down with at least three more offensive rebounds. Good god, fellas, value the basketball.

— Normally, a starter for your team being in foul trouble is bad. I know that is the most rudimentary analysis I could possibly offer, but I say that to express how unique it was to watch Sixers fans breathe a sigh of relief once Tobias Harris picked up his third foul in the first half.

We are approaching rotation and lineup-shifting territory, if you’re asking me, because the Sixers have been getting the bad version of Harris for the better part of 2.5 months. When he has needed to be a featured player, he has rarely come through, and when he has needed to be an opportunistic role player working off of their stars, he has failed miserably at that job.

For many players, a contract year push inspires them to push to new heights and secure their next big payday, but the opposite has happened for Harris, who appears so deep in his own head that he can’t do basic things on the floor. Forget about making jumpers, it would have been an upgrade for him to come close to the rim on some of his shots on Saturday. And that miserable outing to open the playoffs comes after his crunch-time benching vs. Miami when his last offensive contribution was a three-point shot that he airballed with just over four minutes left.

Harris has long been looked to as an anchor for the lineups when the stars are sitting, and when Embiid first hit the bench against New York, it was Harris damn near sabotaging the Sixers on both ends of the floor. A veteran with his experience level should be one of your calm, composed players in the postseason, and he was barreling into Knicks players with no plan and no hope.

He would find his footing some in the fourth quarter, scoring some important buckets to keep them in the game. But that was the sum of his positive contributions, and those didn’t outweigh three quarters of anonymous or actively destructive play.

— Would it sting more if we hadn’t been here before with Embiid? All of us — the fans, the media, even the Embiid detractors — have grown accustomed to this march toward the inevitable in April and May. He looks to be hitting his peak at the perfect time, and then his body gives out underneath him, leaving us all to wonder how many times we can go on this journey together.

Having Embiid go down how he did on Saturday encapsulates why it is so hard to move on, but also why it’s also hard to build around him. He had spent the first 20+ minutes of the game handing the Knicks their asses, with the occasional Mitchell Robinson stop so unexpected that Robinson drew rousing ovations whenever he slowed down Embiid. And the moment that it (briefly) came crashing down was on one of the best playoff highlights we’ve ever seen from Embiid — a post move into a pass to himself off of the glass, which drew stunned shouts from Knicks fans before everyone realized he was not getting back up:

Watching Embiid stare into space before sauntering down the tunnel, you had to feel for him. Surely, he wants his playoff moment, that one fabled run more than anyone else does or could. And as he has aged and matured, he has shown a better understanding of the extra work and sacrifice to get there. But he has not been able to prevent the inevitable.

Watching him try to gut it out whenever and however he can, the decision for me is easy — you continue to take swings with him as your best player, hoping that he and you benefit from the odds tilting in your favor just one time. He is good enough to keep trying. But man, this is an exhausting way to live.