Moments after he drained a game-winning 3-pointer that will live on forever in Knicks playoff history, Donte DiVincenzo and his teammates were asked if they had ever been part of a game like that.
“It was very similar to the Pistons game earlier this year,” DiVincenzo replied, referencing a regular-season win on Feb. 26 against lowly Detroit.
But while that Pistons game featured a similarly chaotic ending to Monday’s Game 2 thriller against the 76ers, the stakes couldn’t have been more different.
DiVincenzo’s 3-pointer with 13 seconds remaining Monday completed an instant-classic 104-101 win at Madison Square Garden in a game the Knicks trailed by five points with under 30 seconds to go.
Philly led 101-96 until Jalen Brunson made a step-back 3-pointer that bounced off the rim and through the basket, cutting the Knicks’ deficit to two with 27.0 seconds remaining.
Brunson and Josh Hart then pressured Kyle Lowry’s inbound pass to Tyrese Maxey, and Hart came away with a loose ball. He found DiVincenzo, who missed an open 3-pointer, but Isaiah Hartenstein came flying in for an offensive rebound, giving DiVincenzo another chance.
“After I missed the first one, I was really, really, really, really hoping that Isaiah got it, because I knew with the rotation and everything, I would get a second look,” DiVincenzo said.
Indeed, the ball ended up back in DiVincenzo’s hands, and this time, he nailed the 3-pointer.
“There have been some pretty wild finishes, but that was right up there with the best of them,” Knicks coach Tom Thibodeau said. “That just shows you what the playoffs are all about.”
The Knicks unleashed an 8-0 run in the final 27 seconds to take a 2-0 lead in their first-round series against the Sixers.
The comeback added another all-time postseason highlight in a building where an injured Willis Reed emerged from the tunnel for Game 7 of the 1970 NBA Finals; Patrick Ewing’s tip-in dunk helped send the Knicks to the 1994 NBA Finals; and Larry Johnson delivered a game-winning four-point play in Game 3 of the 1999 Eastern Conference Finals.
Each of those highlights happened more than two decades ago.
“It was crazy,” Hart said after Monday’s win. “It was hectic, but at that point, we had nothing to lose. We’ve got to be as physical as we can, and it panned out.”
