PHILADELPHIA — The playoffs, just as turpentine strips paint, can gut belief from a basketball team’s soul.
Do you stick with a game plan against a fixed opponent, borne of hours of fierce, detailed study by the best coaching minds in the world, when what they tell you to do to achieve success doesn’t work with the season on the line? Do you still trust teammates who don’t knock down open shots?
For 12 catastrophic minutes, the 76ers tried, and failed, to get the ball to the NBA’s defending Most Valuable Player, Joel Embiid, in positions for him to dominate. When they did get him the ball, a ravenous Knicks defense, shorthanded with both of its top two centers unavailable, attacked Embiid with double teams, daring him to give up the rock and make the right play — passing to an open teammate.
This, he did. But the other 76ers couldn’t make the Knicks pay.
Nor could Embiid, who looked tired down the stretch after playing the entire second half and 44 minutes overall, bully his way to the basket to draw fouls, a staple of his career, and through large stretches of this series.
Combined with the Knicks’ relentless work on the offensive glass in the fourth quarter, New York held Philly to 16 fourth-quarter points and took Game 4, 97-92, for a 3-1 series lead. Embiid missed all five of his field-goal attempts in the fourth quarter and made a single free throw, the last of his 27 points. The Sixers, collectively, made just 1 of 9 3-pointers in the fourth and didn’t make a field goal in the last five minutes of the game.
Again, a 76ers’ season is on the brink of collapse, with the basketball world watching.
“I thought our pace kind of slowed down,” Embiid said afterward. “That kind of hurt us a little bit. I thought, for the most part, we got good shots. We just didn’t make them.”
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Everyone struggled in the fourth. Tyrese Maxey was just 2 of 8 from the floor. Tobias Harris missed both of his shots. Kyle Lowry missed his only one. Only the unlikely Cam Payne (2 of 3) and Kelly Oubre (2 of 4) knocked down shots consistently.
Embiid has seen every coverage there is in his eight healthy seasons. Teams send defenders at him in waves. True, the Knicks have versatility and switchability, but it’s not as if they’re the first 76ers opponent to double-team Embiid in the playoffs. Early in his career, he’d try to power through. Now, he’s better at moving the ball. But once again, as has happened with a slew of loyal seconds, from Jimmy Butler to Ben Simmons to James Harden, Maxey couldn’t force the Knicks to abandon their attack on Embiid.
And Embiid, still not close to 100 percent physically after meniscus surgery in February and a current bout with Bell’s palsy, couldn’t will himself to the foul line down the stretch, as he did in the third quarter, or as he did in his 50-point Game 3.
“In the past, I would usually try to force it and try to do it by myself,” Embiid said. “But I think I’m at the point in my career where I’m OK with it. Shots are being made, shots are not. The whole fourth quarter, they tried to get the ball out of my hands, which they did by doubling. And you’ve just go to keep trusting. I trust these guys.”
This whole season has served as Maxey’s coming-out party. The 76ers traded the mercurial Harden, in part, to clear the runway for the 23-year-old Maxey to become the best version of himself. He has. He was named the NBA’s Most Improved Player this past week, and made his first All-Star game. Maxey and Embiid have become one of the NBA’s deadliest two-man games. There aren’t five guys in the league who are faster and better with the ball in their hands than Maxey. He’s earned the nine-figure payday he’ll get from Philly this summer.
But, he couldn’t make New York pay Sunday. He needed 21 shots to score most of his 23 points.
“One thing that Joel has done is he’s built a lot of trust in us,” Maxey said. “We need that. He needs to do that. And he’s really worked on that, I think, the four years that I’ve been here. He’s gotten a lot better at that. So it was a couple of plays where he trusted me to make the big shot. He kicked one to me at the top of the key, a shot that I normally make. I feel like if I had it back, I’d probably make it now. But I missed it. And he can live with that. He can live with that being a good shot. And there was a couple of times I think when I drove and kicked it somebody else for a 3. We can live with those shots. We just missed them this afternoon.”
Embiid looked like he was on his way to another monster game after scoring 12 in the third quarter, getting to the foul line eight times. The Knicks, already down one big man with center Mitchell Robinson (sprained ankle) out, essentially lost starting center Isaiah Hartenstein for the game in the third. Hartenstein had no fouls at halftime. By the end of the third, as Embiid repeatedly attacked him on postups and drives, he had five. Hartenstein played exactly two seconds in the fourth quarter.
But Knicks coach Tom Thibodeau switched up his team’s defensive matchups in the fourth. Forward Precious Achiuwa, acquired in the trade that brought OG Anunoby to New York for R.J. Barrett and Immanuel Quickley, had served as the Knicks’ emergency big man in Game 3 after Robinson got hurt. But Sunday, Thibodeau put Achiuwa on 76ers forward Kelly Oubre and Anunoby on Embiid. Anunoby, a fierce defender, did yeoman work. As Knicks guards pressed up on Maxey, making his entry passes into Embiid difficult, Anunoby took away the easier passing angles and used his length to make Embiid work to catch the ball. When Embiid did catch it, the Knicks ran multiple defenders to him to help Anunoby.
Philly’s offense got discombobulated. Its spacing was terrible, with multiple guys standing within a couple of feet of one another. Veteran Nicolas Batum, who’s probably been the team’s best post passer since coming to Philly in the Harden trade, was subbed out at the 8:47 mark and didn’t return to the floor until there were 55.5 seconds left. Buddy Hield, Philly’s big trade deadline acquisition, was a DNP-CD after not playing the final three quarters of Thursday’s Game 3.
Sixers coach Nick Nurse had seen his team come to a stop to start the second quarter when Embiid sat. He rode his best player to the bitter end in the fourth.
This happens in the playoffs. In 2019, it was Nurse, then in Toronto, who turned the Finals against Golden State around by going to a box-and-one defense against Stephen Curry. It was audacious — because it worked. Sunday, it was Thibodeau who rolled the dice.
“It was a smart move by Thibs and then we kind of recognized it after a while,” Oubre said. “But yeah, I mean, OG is a great defender. He can guard pretty much one through five and then Precious was on me. It kind of just mucked up the game a little bit. They got him out the paint but they also were able to switch one through four and then I was in the corner. But it’s just a bigger body on me and then a smaller body on Joel, who’s strong enough to hold him a little bit, be more aggressive on on the passes and stuff.”
It didn’t help Philly that the Knicks extended multiple possessions in the fourth with offensive rebounds, making the Sixers pay when they deployed some zone defenses to try and slow down the white-hot Jalen Brunson, who blowtorched them for 47 points, a Knicks postseason record, and 10 assists.
In the midst of New York’s road triumph, Knicks fans — there is no other way to put this — took over Wells Fargo Center:
It’s INSANITY inside Wells Fargo pic.twitter.com/taufSxAbQM
— NYKTerry (@NykTerry) April 28, 2024
This sort of thing doesn’t usually happen in Philly, one of the great sports cities, with a legacy franchise and many superstar players But, on and off the floor, the Sixers and their fans got outplayed.
“I love our fans,” Embiid said. “I think it’s unfortunate. I’m not calling them out, but it is disappointing. Obviously, you’ve got a lot of Knicks fans; they’re right down the road. Never seen it. And I’ve been here for 10 years. Yeah. Kind of pisses me off. Especially because Philly is considered a sports town. They’ve always shown up. I don’t think that should happen. Yeah. It’s not OK.”
Embiid spoke bravely afterward about what comes next for his team, saying it has “no pressure” as it faces elimination at Madison Square Garden Tuesday. But his tone was hollow. Gone was the swagger following Game 2, when Embiid insisted his team was better than New York’s, and would prove it. They have not. The Knicks have been hungrier, and tougher, in three of the first four games.
Meanwhile, nearly 1,500 miles away, in Dallas, Harden was helping the Clippers, once again without Kawhi Leonard — seemingly for a while (again) — not blow a 31-point lead to the Mavericks in Game 4 of their first-round series. Harden made multiple floaters down the stretch to preserve an LA win that tied its series with Dallas at two games apiece. Harden had 33 points and 7 assists. His teammate, Paul George, long rumored to be the 76ers’ primary target in free agency this summer, had 33 himself in service to The Beard, including this bit of insanity to put the Clippers up for good.
The NBA is funny, and cruel, that way.
(Photo of Tyrese Maxey: Tim Nwachukwu / Getty Images)
