Knicks 104, 76ers 101: "We just Reggie Millered the Sixers”

There have been many Game Threads and other posts published here at P&T that have generated thousands upon thousands of comments. Yesterday’s was one for the ages, such as the Knicks 104-101 win over the Philly Cheesesteaks.

I didn’t want to be overly picky with the headline on this historic day, so I just went into the comments section and picked the single post with the most likes among them all, courtesy of Kappo_Cocoa-24: “We just Reggie Millered the Sixers.“

Absolutely spot-on, even more so considering the legendary Clyde Frazier voiced similar words in the hallways of MSG, per the New York Post.

“Reggie Miller moment. It’s all destiny, man. All destiny.”

The Knicks PR made a fairly cliché choice for their typical postseason motto, one of those sentences you often see smacked right in the middle of all team tees and other pieces of garment fans go mad about and buy in bunches.

“No Quit, All Grit, Close Knit.”

In this case, I have no problem acknowledging the folks who hit the nail square on the freaking forehead.

On Saturday, in the Knicks’ Game 1 win, Jalen Brunson shot 8-of-26 from the floor and 1-of-6 from three. He scored 22 points in 41 minutes.

On Monday, in the Knicks’ Game 2 win, Jalen Brunson shot an even worse 8-of-29 from the floor and 1-of-6 from three. He scored 24 points in 38 minutes.

New York beat Philadelphia twice on back-to-back first-round matchups. The rest of the Knicks players on the court in those two games (a seven-man army once you remove JB) put up 89 points in G1 and 80 in G2.

Apply the same equation to a Sixers team featuring two (not one) superstars in Joel Embiid and Tyrese Maxey, and Philly’s rotation players would fall way shorter of meeting their Manhattan counterparts’ standards.

Deuce McBride was the man of Game 1. Donte DiVincenzo got the love in Game 2. Both deserved those nods of approval for their exploits.

Interestingly enough, Josh Hart excelled in both contests, but nobody noticed (I mean, we did, but we just take it so for granted at this point that we have to look for new heroes, don’t we?).

Hart logged 42 minutes and a 22-13-2-1 line in G1 and on Monday the man ate the freaking full 48 minutes getting to a ridiculous 21-15-3-2-2. None of those two performances rank high among all individual games played this postseason—far from it. According to Stathead’s Game Score metric, Josh Hart’s G2 outing is just the 20th-best 2024 playoffs game out of 213 to date.

Excellent, not great. Not when the likes of Nikola Jokic are putting up back-to-back near-triple doubles.

The point to make here, however, is that as great as Hart has been (and Brunson has not), the former has two games ranked in the Top 25... and the full Knicks squad, including Brunson, has the 3rd-best GmSc average of all 16 competition teams only trailing Denver and the Clippers.

“No Quit, All Grit, Close Knit.”

After an absolutely wild G1 full of ups and downs in which the Knicks had to fight hard to come back from many points down, New York found itself in a different-yet-similar scenario on Monday.

A late eight-point lead was wiped out by the Liberty Ballers. Philadelphia thought they had tied the series heading into the first game scheduled to take place in Cheesesteakfield. No, sir.

With 47 seconds left and the Sixers up 5 points, here is what happened.

LOLgotcha.

Shouts out to Joel Embiid for telling lies without even looking straight into the eyes of those reporting, covering his face, and spitting expletives.

Shouts out to Nick Nurse for calling out the refs for not spotting him calling for a timeout with the game on the line. (Funny aside: all 76ers fans out there are just assuming they would have won the game just like that...)

Shouts out to the NBA for their unrelenting push of the “Knicks Who?” agenda. Keep fueling this fire, folks.

As always, Russell Richardson has the nitty-gritty details of what happened on Monday written in his exquisite Scenes.

If you’re more interested in what happened after that, here’s that:

Knicks in four!