PHILADELPHIA — If there was an analog for Game 4 here, it may have been something from a few decades ago. On Sunday, the New York Knicks and Philadelphia 76ers Sunday produced a beautiful kind of ugly together: a low-scoring, highly physical playoff game that would have made Allen Iverson, Julius Erving and John Starks — all sitting courtside — quite proud and empathetic. This series had gotten chippier with every game, but instead of boiling over, it produced a five-star match.
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The Knicks won it, a 97-92 victory that embodied their abrasive style of basketball. They harried Joel Embiid. They rebounded like angry badgers. Crucially, Jalen Brunson once again proved to be Wolverine with a jump shot, taking hit after hit and still dropping in 47 points (on 34 field-goal attempts) and 10 assists. He got caught up under Embiid in the third quarter — a bump that might have a ended less fortified soul — and missed the first 2:25 of the fourth quarter after a right knee injury at the third-quarter buzzer had him yelling into a towel in frustration. He went back to the locker room, but his stay was temporary.
The 76ers discombobulated in the fourth quarter. They scored just 16 points, missed 18 of 24 shots and again were unable to hang on the boards with the Knicks. That has been a familiar theme in this series. The Knicks have outrebounded the 76ers in three of four games this series and it has cost them every time. These games have been decided on the margins, with the Knicks winning three times by a combined 15 points, never by more than seven. Those issues undercut another strong game from Embiid, who didn’t go for 50 points as he did in Game 3, but did have 27, 10 rebounds and six assists and protected the rim with force.
The rebounding problems have lingered because the 76ers haven’t been able to match the Knicks’ intensity on the boards. While Embiid is a force, the Knicks rebounded in groups. The Sixers couldn’t. Coach Nick Nurse had the 76ers in a matchup zone late in the game at times and, like in Game 1, it left them vulnerable to offensive rebounds.
“That’s what they do,” Sixers forward Kelly Oubre said. “Like I said, Jalen is putting up all the shots, but at the end of the day, like that’s what he’s supposed to do. And then everybody else is supposed to crash the glass like mad men. And Josh (Hart) is a strong body. OG (Anunoby) is a strong body. Donte (DiVincenzo) squeezes in a few and then they just have guys that just know that they have to go get those misses because that’s how they’ll eat. So at the end of the day, we got to do a better job of hitting, also holding our hits and not necessarily holding them, but holding our hits and just blocking out better going to get them.”
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The Knicks had 15 offensive rebounds and seven in the fourth quarter. Both teams shot miserably in the fourth — a 20-16 quarter in the Knicks’ favor — but New York had 10 more rebounds and an 11-2 advantage in second-chance points (and 21-6 for the game). Hart had 17 rebounds, five of them offensive, and played well despite missing all seven of his shots and scoring just four points. He became just the sixth player in NBA history to have zero made field goals and at least 15 rebounds in a playoff game — Ben Wallace did it twice — and the first to ever have no made field goals, 15-plus rebounds and five assists in a playoff game.
The Knicks had a 35.7 percent offensive rebounding rate for the game, according to Cleaning the Glass, which is 3.5 percentage points higher than their league-leading regular season rate. They did that despite foul trouble forcing Isaiah Hartenstein to the bench for the final 13 minutes and 25 seconds of the game. New York center Mitchell Robinson, who was second in the league in offensive rebounding percentage among players who played at least 20 games behind Chicago’s Andre Drummond, did not play on Sunday because of an ankle injury.
Embiid, however, credited this disparity to a few lucky bounces. He saw it as a function of their offense funneling through Brunson.
“It almost seems like they just know he’s going to shoot it, so they’re just getting ready to offensive rebound it,” Embiid said. “And if you’re in the gap by the time you turn around, your man has already passed you and now you’re left with a three-on-two. But I don’t even think that was an issue tonight. I think we had a lot of bad bounces. You look at the game. Every single shot, it just felt like it kept falling in their hands. Sometimes you can do the best job possible to try to box out, but if the ball doesn’t bounce your way, there’s nothing you can do about it.”
While the 76ers could credibly make the case that the Knicks were the beneficiaries of a few good bounces in the fourth quarter — you could argue three of those offensive rebounds were caroms in New York’s advantage — the biggest offensive boards of the game were won with muscle and guile.
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The Knicks held possession for 39 seconds late in the fourth as they nursed a 92-89 lead. They took three shots and missed them all, but New York burned time off the clock in doing it. The catalyst was Precious Achiuwa, who came off the bench and played a big role despite being the Knicks’ third-string center. With Hartenstein on the bench with five fouls and Robinson unavailable, Tom Thibodeau relied on Achiuwa down the stretch. He was rewarded.
First, Brunson missed a 3 with 2:42 left but Achiuwa drew a foul on Kyle Lowry after getting position on him for the rebound. That restarted the shot clock. Then Anunoby swooped in from the perimeter, getting around Lowry to rebound Hart’s missed 3-pointer.
The Knicks reset and then Brunson missed a pull-up jumper, but Achiuwa got position on Lowry again and grabbed the offensive rebound. It led to Miles McBride missing a corner 3. But they had also run enough clock to increase their odds of winning.
The 76ers were playing that matchup zone for both boards and Lowry had to find a body and block out as both bigger Knicks sped in for position — no easy feat.
“I thought OG and Precious and and those guys were really a factor,” Nurse said. Both Anunoby and Achiuwa played for Nurse in Toronto. “They were both very energetic, very athletic, getting their hands on some balls. Hart obviously got his gotta share, but Precious came in and got four and probably get his hands on two or three more.”
The Sixers leaned heavily on Embiid in this game, as they always do. He played 44 minutes, including the entire second half. He had never played an entire second half before in his career. He did it while still on a balky left knee and playing through a case of Bell’s palsy.
The reasons were clear. Embiid has been Philadelphia’s lifeline this whole series. The 76ers won Embiid’s minutes and lost the ones without him. That played out in the first quarter, when they outscored the Knicks by 10 as he played the entire period, but they were outplayed by the Knicks the rest of the time during his minutes. He ended up just plus-one for the game, and Philadelphia was outscored by seven in the second half.
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“He was feeling good and wanted to go,” Nurse said of the decision to keep Embiid in the game for the entire half. “We didn’t have a very good stretch in the first half when he was out, so we didn’t want that to continue on.”
It was clear late in the game that Embiid was feeling the effects of playing so much in such a physical game. He admitted he didn’t feel good towards the end of the fourth. But he stayed out there.
The 76ers couldn’t take advantage to start the fourth quarter when Embiid stayed in but Brunson was out as he tended to his knee after colliding with Lowry at the end of the third. The Knicks led by one after three quarters and were still up one when Brunson came back into the game with 9:35 left.
“It’s tough, especially playing all these minutes,” Embiid said. “It’s unfortunate. Your competitive nature is always going to take over. I felt that they always come back in the game in this series (when he is on the bench), so I was like I got nothing to lose. I just gotta push myself and obviously it didn’t work out the way I wanted to, but it’s whatever it takes to win.”
The Knicks made it hard on Embiid, switching matchups. They put Achiuwa, the center, on Oubre Jr. and shifted the stout Anunoby over to cover Embiid. That allowed Achiuwa to roam as a helper on the baseline sometimes and serve as a big body near the rim, especially when Oubre Jr. was in the corner.
That caused trouble for Embiid and the 76ers. Anunoby worked hard to front Embiid, getting between the center and any screens his teammates set to free him. On the whole, it worked. When Embiid got the ball, the Knicks sent quick doubles.
Embiid passed out of the doubles but the ball didn’t always come back to him, especially during crucial late possessions. Embiid said he was OK with the decision to pass out of those plays and that he trusted his teammates. But the 76ers shot just 25 percent in the quarter, and Embiid missed all five shots he took.
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“It was a smart move by Thibs and then we kind of recognized it after a while,” Oubre Jr. said. “But yeah, 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 the passes and stuff.”
With the 76ers trailing 95-92, Lowry intentionally missed his second free throw with 7.5 seconds, hoping for an offensive rebound and a 3-point attempt. It was a well-executed, shot except it wasn’t coordinated. Tyrese Maxey, standing along the 3-point line behind him, didn’t know Lowry was attempting to miss it. The ball eventually bounced his way, but Brunson grabbed the rebound.
It was hard to ignore the mass of Knicks fans at the Wells Fargo Center. They came down in large numbers and they were loud. They showered Brunson with an occasional “MVP” chant and made their presence known. It diluted the home-court advantage for the 76ers.
And it did not make Embiid happy.
“Disappointing,” he said. “I love our fans. I think it’s unfortunate. I’m not calling them out, but it is disappointing. Obviously, you got a lot of Knicks fans. They’re down the road and never seen it. And I’ve been here for 10 years. It kind of pisses me off. Especially because Philly is considered a sports town so they’ve always shown up and I don’t think that should happen. It’s not OK.”
(Photo of Donte DiVincenzo rebounding the ball: Jesse D. Garrabrant / NBAE via Getty Images)
