Huge Joel Embiid effort not enough in Sixers' Game 6 loss to Knicks

Joel Embiid scored 39 points before fouling out with less than 30 seconds to play in Game 6, but the big man’s effort was not enough in a 118-115 Knicks victory. The Sixers’ season is over.

Here’s what I saw.

The Good

— Joel Embiid’s mobility was majorly compromised if you couldn’t tell from how he was playing drop coverage the last few games. He was sitting as deep as is realistically possible against New York, only coming up to challenge when a Knicks player smokes their coverage on the perimeter. Unfortunately, that was quite often.

Even with that being the case, Embiid was their best player on both ends to start the game and it was not even close. As the Knicks hounded him with pressure, Embiid did his best to withstand the early New York storm by marching to the free-throw line, punishing Isaiah Hartenstein and Mitchell Robinson for bad reaches. It was the only offensive hope they had for the first eight minutes — Embiid scored their first nine and only points when he checked out of the game for the first time.

While he was on the bench, the Sixers finally managed to win minutes without him, taking a bit of pressure off of the big man when he came back in. Let’s hold that thought for a second…

— With New York selling out to stop Embiid and Maxey early in this game, Nick Nurse had to try something to build some space for his two best players. You could come up with a worse backup plan than subbing in one of the most prolific shooters in the history of the league.

At first, Buddy Hield’s sub into the game looked like a complete disaster for Nick Nurse, with Hield dropping a swing pass that should have turned into a three. But after his nerves settled a little bit, he came what he was brought here to do and shot the everloving piss out of the basketball. What started as a couple of standstill threes turned into an absolute barrage from deep, punctuated by a Hield corner three to end the first half as he fell out of bounds with a defender draped all over him.

A lot of people skipped over Hield’s impact on Tyrese Maxey at the end of Game 5, mocking the idea that his words of encouragement mattered from the bench. But what that moment symbolized was his commitment to the team and the game. Without playing a second, Hield knew he had to do anything he could to support his teammates in a big spot. Those are the sort of things your teammates won’t forget, and the home crowd certainly didn’t — it took exactly one good half from Hield for the veteran sharpshooter to draw “Bud-dy! Bud-dy!” chants that nearly blew the walls off of the Wells Fargo Center.

When you stay ready, you don’t have to get ready. Massive credit to Hield for staying locked in even when it looked like he had no chance to see the floor again in this series.

— Back to the big man. Hield getting on a roll didn’t stop the Knicks from trying to cheat in his direction, and Embiid was masterful at navigating pressure on the low block. When they loaded up against him, he hit his swing passes out to the perimeter, picking up very few assists but starting almost every important chain reaction. And when Hartenstein or Robinson stood in there to try to defend him on an island, Embiid finally showed the sort of scoring dominance that has become his calling card in the regular season.

After that horrendous start for the team, Embiid’s post work put the Knicks in an impossible position defensively. They just kept chipping away and chipping away at a huge first-half lead, until the damn eventually broke on a Kelly Oubre corner three with 1:35 to play in the second, giving Philadelphia their first lead of the game. It was a madhouse in South Philly, with the crowd bending and swaying as one giant organism after Knicks fans had stolen their joy a Sunday prior.

Even if Embiid had come out slower on offense, he was heroic on defense, battling his tail off despite the aching leg and paralyzed face. When Embiid couldn’t block a Knicks driver, he still managed to extend the long arm of the law enough to alter quite a few shots, with his effort eventually winning out after the Knicks hot start faded into the background. Certain Knicks players still have no interest in attacking him at the summit — Josh Hart is a terrific athlete, but he might as well be 4’11 the way he’s going at Embiid in this series. Even the bigger wings, a la OG Anunoby, have tried and failed fairly often when trying to go at a guy who barely looks like he can jump most of the time.

Whatever you want to say about Embiid in this series, and he had some rough moments, he put himself on the line to try to power his team through. It was clunky, it was occasionally ugly, and I’m not sure he will ever be welcome in New York again after a string of hard fouls and physical basketball. But with their backs against the wall and Maxey laying an egg, he strapped the team to his back and tried to drag them through the mud in Game 6. It just wasn’t enough.

— I am not sure if I have ever done a quicker 180 on a player than Cam Payne. I was absolutely convinced he was unplayable in the playoffs for defensive reasons. But he has absolutely changed the series with his energy and shotmaking, with the former allowing him to do much more than hit big threes.

Game 6 was all about Payne’s will to win at all costs. After missing a corner three during his first-half minutes, Payne took off like a madman down the floor, circling Jalen Brunson like a vulture until he found his angle to steal the ball. Payne turned, assessed his options, and then splashed one from downtown, drawing a standing ovation from the crowd.

And that wasn’t his last huge energy play! Late in the first quarter, Payne skied for an offensive rebound that he had no business getting, crashing from the corner to tip a loose ball to Kelly Oubre. The ensuing dunk sent life throughout the arena, and Payne continued to do everything he could to lift their spirits from there.

— Kelly Oubre was far from perfect and picked up silly fouls that left me scratching my head throughout this one. But he certainly met the energy of the moment — after a brutal Paul Reed mental mistake on an inbounds pass, Oubre flew down the floor to chase down a gang of Knicks, not only blocking the shot at the rim but knocking it out off of a New York player. Between Oubre and Nic Batum, the Sixers put up a hell of a fight against Jalen Brunson at the point of attack.

Tip your cap to Brunson, because he is a bad man (even if he’s as big of a grifter as there is in the league).

The Bad

— Kyle Lowry’s fifth foul in Game 5 ended up being something like a blessing in disguise for Philly, with the big wing lineup ultimately helping to solve their problems on the defensive glass. The lessons that ought to have been learned there were not transferred over to the next game, and I thought the Sixers paid for how much Nurse leaned on his favorite vet. Lowry was just bad for most of this game, which should not be much of a shock. Consistency from a 38-year-old player would be a major exception to the rule.

— I can’t believe Paul Reed actually played in the second half after how bad/off of the pace he was in his first-half minutes. They didn’t have many good options to turn to, and small ball probably would have been killed on the boards, but he was just completely lost.

— Tobias Harris spent this game just getting cardio. I’m done trying to figure him out.

The Ugly

— Josh Hart hitting a billion threes in this series is a painful way to lose it. The Sixers had the right gameplan based on the math, but Hart said to take the season-long splits and shove them where the sun doesn’t shine.

— I am only half kidding when I say there should be an investigation into the officiating after this game. Almost every single 50-50 call went in favor of New York. And Maxey’s whistle in the final 40 seconds reminded me of foul padding in some corrupt games of playoffs past, when the early 2000s Sacramento Kings got absolutely jobbed in a famous meeting with the Lakers.

— After Tuesday night’s win in New York, half of the fanbase (or more) was ready to anoint Tyrese Maxey as the franchise player. Two days later, the guy who is actually the franchise player was the only person to show up for the first quarter of the game. If your name wasn’t Joel Embiid and you were wearing a Sixers uniform, you were stinking it up. And while the rest of the guys (mostly) eventually picked it up, Maxey was left in the dust. He was arguably the biggest reason they lost the game after carrying them to victory on Tuesday.

A lot of the focus will turn to New York’s domination on the offensive boards, and once again, I think it’s worth steering the conversation back toward the offense. Philadelphia’s dilemma in this series is that they have two great players and a bunch of other guys the Knicks are happy to help off of. And they did so aggressively to open Game 6 — any time Maxey or Embiid touched the ball, the Knicks either hard-doubled or shaded another defender toward their path in the middle of the floor, bogging down anything they tried to get going downhill. Embiid is used to that sort of defense at this point, but Maxey is still a work in progress in that department, and he had a complete meltdown trying to make decisions against help defense in the first 12 minutes.

While Embiid weathered the storm and eventually figured out the pace of play, Maxey was chasing the game almost all night. A pull-up three in transition looked like it could give him the spark he needed in the third quarter, but he almost immediately gave that back with an overly ambitious pull-up jumper moments later. Philadelphia was having an abundance of success playing through Embiid on the blocks, and Maxey was personally responsible for the team getting away from it for a decent stretch of the third.

In the halfcourt, he never felt like he could read the coverage New York was throwing at him. The Knicks spooked him out of at least four or five drives in this game by stunting behind his man. Rather than getting downhill and finding open shooters, he just went side to side and wasted clock.

The only thing I will say to offer cover for Maxey is that the whistle he got in this game (and most of the series) was completely inexplicable. Jalen Brunson was picking up fouls for jumping backward and headbutting Nic Batum on drives in Game 6, and on the other end of the floor, Maxey was getting smacked in the hand, grabbed on the arms, and slapped all over the place with nary a whistle in sight. Somebody check to see if Jontay Porter had any money on the Knicks in this one.