Reigning NBA Most Valuable Player of the Year and superstar Philadelphia 76ers center Joel Embiid sat at his locker, his face burrowed into his two ginormous hands after Monday night’s heartbreaker.
His Sixers led the Knicks, 101-96, with 47.1 seconds left in regulation in Game 2 before the Knicks came roaring back — a Jalen Brunson prayer of a three here, a stolen inbounds pass there, a fateful offensive rebound and a dagger trey dialed up from Donte DiVincenzo — to take a 2-0 series lead with a miraculous 104-101 victory at Madison Square Garden.
Embiid couldn’t believe it. He still can’t.
At his locker, an exasperated seven-foot, 280-pound Goliath let out a battle cry with the series swinging back to Philadelphia for Games 3 and 4.
“We’re gonna win this series. We’re gonna win this. We know what we’ve got to fix,” he said. “We did a better job today, so we’re gonna fix it. We’re the better team and we’re gonna keep fighting.”
Every victory counts, but this was a bad beat.
Like Embiid said, the Sixers were the better team — for most of the game.
Embiid and co-star Tyrese Maxey combined for 69 points, 19 rebounds and 16 assists (Maxey was one board shy of a triple double in Game 2) and combined to shoot 24-of-51 from the field and 14-of-18 from the foul line.
You can’t ask for much more from Philly’s All-Star duo.
There’s much more to be asked of the role players, however, who haven’t shown up in two games at The Garden this series.
Tobias Harris shot 4-of-11 from the field for 10 points, Kelly Oubre Jr. finished with four points on 2-of-7 shooting, sixth man Buddy Hield only scored two points in 15 minutes, and Nic Batum — a 6-foot-8 irritant on the defensive end — hit a pair of threes but finished with just six points in 33 points off the bench.
Players not named Embiid or Maxey scored just 32 points in Game 2 and 42 points in Game 1.
Head coach Tom Thibodeau and his Knicks expect this trend to change with the series shifting to Philadelphia’s Wells Fargo Center for the next two games.
Hield, for example, shot better from both the field and three-point range and averaged 2.2 more points at home than he did on the road this season.
The numbers are skewed differently for Harris and Oubre, who each averaged more points per game on the road than they did at home this season — but role players performing better at home is one of the NBA’s worst-kept secrets.
“You got the MVP, or last year’s MVP. Maxey is one of the bright, young players in the league. Great speed. Great shooting ability. So any time you put two players like that in pick-and-roll, that puts a lot of pressure on your defense and it requires everyone to be tied together,” Thibodeau said after Game 2’s victory. “And we know that’s the challenge. The thing is that overall, I think we’re doing OK. We gotta do a lot better.
“We know going down to Philly it’s gonna be different. We gotta clean things up. We gotta be better. 104 the first game, 101 the second game; and we gotta play better defense.”
The Sixers believe they improved from Game 1 to 2. They believe they can take what they learned in Game 2, where they led the entire first half, couple their adjustments with an infusion of energy from their rowdy home fans, and tie the series with two wins on their own home floor.
“We played really well, did a lot of great things, played better in a bunch of areas tonight. It’s obviously difficult when it’s so close and you kind of give it away at the end. It’s obviously difficult in these circumstances. This makes the series a little longer,” Sixers coach Nick Nurse said with a smile after the loss. “If we get the win, it’s a big — we’ve won one and we had a major accomplishment here. They’ve won their two home games. We’ve got to get back to our place, right? But just gotta — again: we played better than we didd the other night. I think we can continue to play even better than that, and that’s what we’ve gotta focus on.”
History, however, is on the Knicks’ side.
Since 1970, only 13 teams have successfully come back from down 0-2 to win a first-round NBA playoff series. The other 183 teams went on to early playoff exits.
“It doesn’t mean much. Job’s not finished,” Isaiah Hartenstein said of taking a 2-0 series lead and protecting home court. “It’s only two games, so you have to win four to get it done. So we’re just gonna keep going day by day and just approaching it like that because when you feel like you get too loose, that’s when teams come back.”
It was the Sixers who loosened the grip enough for the Knicks to steal Game 2 away on Monday.
Philadelphia now awaits a Knicks team that must secure a win in hostile territory to prevent a seven-game first-round series.
L2M REPORT
And the ‘Bockers may have gotten away with one. The Last Two Minute report — conducted by the NBA – indicated that Tyrese Maxey was indeed fouled by Josh Hart when the Knicks stole the inbound pass on the bizarre play that resulted in them taking a 102-101 lead with 13 seconds remaining.
Officials also indicated that Sixers head coach Nick Nurse should have been granted a timeout prior to the ball being stolen.
The report will likely not make Philadelphia fans feel any better, however, the Knicks will surely take the 2-0 lead as they prepare to enter a hostile environment on Thursday.
