Loved how Brunson started the game with 20 in the first quarter. He took the bull by the horns and was super aggressive. Sixers simply cannot guard him one on one but they made a few adjustments with that zone which limited the iso's and drives. Randle was also super aggressive. Sixers cannot guard him one on one either but that zone and some no calls frustrated him in the fourth (what else is new?). Thibs needs to be better with that zone!

Mixed bag again from RJ. I liked how he played in that second quarter as the go-to guy but once again had some costly dumb turnovers including that killer inbound pass that ended with a Maxey three. His defense continues to be poor too. He just dies on every screen and cannot keep whoever he is guarding infront of him. There was one play where Maxey drove baseline right by him for a layup with no trouble and that should never happen. Right now RJ's motor and effort on defense is unacceptable!

But give the Sixers credit. They have as good a chance as anyone to come out of the East. Embiid is an elite player and the type you trade three unprotected picks for. He is just unguardable. Too big, too skilled, too smart. Sims tried his best but the reach in fouls were annoying. Hopefully he learns.

franco12 wrote:Maxey just reminding everyone on UK that if you think IQ is a better version of him, you are officially in the smoking crack club.

We're still at least 1 piece away from being able to go toe to toe with the likes of Philly. 7 game series, do we win 1? Assuming their guys are not injured, which with Harden and Embid are big question marks.

I guess this is the state of 'mid'.

We are simply not going to beat a guy who goes unconscious and nails 3 pointers non stop all night even when he is being defended well and/or even when he’s 3-4 ft behind the 3 point line

Sims needs to control his urge to handcheck and reach in or he will be in perpetual foul trouble

technomaster wrote:

SergioNYK wrote:This game showed us the difference between an elite tier team and an average mid tier team. We can stay with these teams if our best players play great for most of the game but in the fourth quarter these type of teams turn it up a notch that we do not have and they pull away. It's a fact we are missing that key piece and Josh Hart isn't it.
<snip>

But give the Sixers credit. They have as good a chance as anyone to come out of the East. Embiid is an elite player and the type you trade three unprotected picks for. He is just unguardable. Too big, too skilled, too smart. Sims tried his best but the reach in fouls were annoying. Hopefully he learns.

Not entirely sure I buy all of this :)

How can you say these words when we beat them 108-97 less than a week ago? In that game you would have called us the elite team and the Sixers the mid-tier team for all of the same reasons. We put them away last week without our best big man defender.

This time they took us down.

My takeaway here is that we’re a competitive team, capable of beating the elite teams. But we have two different paths to winning. Sure everyone needs their teams to play well. The Sixers have to hope their glass stars don’t break otherwise they’re done for. The Knicks’ path to winning is hoping our young players grow with each game and through life experience, learn new counters when they experience hardship.

This.

Not to mention we made them look like a lottery team in the first half.
Our bench got outplayed, we went to hero ball in last 5 and our three point rotations broke down. We also once again struggled against the zone.
Think teams that send out a couple of physical bigs to take Embid off his game will fair well.