Jalen Brunson dropped a game-high 35 points (on 12-for-18 shooting) in the Knicks’ Game 1 victory.
The New York Knicks have dominated the playoffs over the last 11 days, winning four games by an average of 33.8 points.
But their 39-point win over the Philadelphia 76ers in Game 1 of their Eastern Conference semifinals series only counts for one win. And to even the series and take home-court advantage to Philadelphia, the Sixers only need to win Game 2 by a point.
Of course, just winning by a point would require that the Sixers play much, much better than they did in Game 1. It’s tough to know if they need to adjust the game plan when they didn’t execute it in the first place.
Here are three things to watch in Game 2 on Wednesday (7 p.m. ET, ESPN):
1. Stopping Brunson
Improvement for the Sixers has to start on defense, where they allowed 109 points on 73 possessions (1.49 per) through the first three quarters. The final tally (137 on 98) was Philadelphia’s worst defensive mark of the season.
The first thing that the Sixers have to figure out is how they’re going to defend Jalen Brunson in the pick-and-roll. And that’s about both scheme and matchups.
The Sixers mostly played straight matchups in Game 1, with Joel Embiid guarding either Karl-Anthony Towns or Mitchell Robinson. That allowed the Knicks to run many 1-5 pick-and-rolls with Brunson as the ball-handler and Embiid as the screener’s defender. Those plays worked out really well for New York.
There were 15 ball-screens set for Brunson by the player Embiid was defending on Monday. Ten of those led directly to a shot, turnover or trip to the line, and the Knicks scored 19 points on those 10 possessions.
Here are some options for the Sixers in Game 2 and beyond:
- Keep Embiid in drop coverage, while asking the player guarding Brunson (Paul George is probably the best option) to be better at navigating screens to prevent comfortable pull-up jumpers. The Sixers weren’t as good in that regard as they were at the end of the first round, though there was one screen where they kept Brunson from getting a shot off:
- Blitzing could get the ball out of Brunson’s hands and force the screener to make plays, which is a better option when that’s Robinson instead of Towns. But pulling Embiid away from the basket seems like a bad strategy, and it’s imperative that Brunson’s defender not allow him to reject the screen and put both defenders in the rear-view mirror:
- The one time Embiid switched onto Brunson on Monday, he got burned. But the Sixers could change the matchups, have George or Kelly Oubre Jr. guard the center, and switch those 1-5 pick-and-rolls. If the Knicks want to go at Embiid, someone else (likely Josh Hart) will have to set the ball-screens. Oubre did guard Towns (with Embiid on Hart) on one possession out of a timeout in Game 1, but the Knicks didn’t run a ball-screen on that play.
- The Sixers “pre-switched” on one possession on Monday, where Miles McBride (being guarded by Embiid) went to set a screen for Brunson. Tyrese Maxey switched onto McBride before he set the screen and Embiid took Hart off the ball. But that was the final possession of the first half, when the Knicks were holding for the last shot. Pre-switching can be more difficult during the flow of the game. (The Sixers did the same on the last possession of a quarter in Game 7 in Boston.)
- The Sixers played a few possessions of zone in Game 1, but the Knicks scored against it most of the time and even got an open Towns 3 on the one possession where they didn’t. New York had the most efficient offense vs. zone (1.25 points per possession) in the regular season, according to Synergy tracking.
2. More Embiid in the post?
The Knicks mixed up their coverage on Embiid in the post in Game 1, sometimes letting him go one-on-one, and sometimes bringing a double-team. Neither coverage was particularly successful …
- The Sixers scored eight points on six possessions when the Knicks went with single-coverage:
- The Sixers scored five points on three possessions when the Knicks sent a double-team:
The last double-team resulted in a bad turnover, but Embiid’s assist/turnover ratio in these playoffs is 3.22. He’s generally done a good job of making the right reads and taking care of the ball.
Given how fruitful Embiid’s limited post-ups were in Game 1, we should see more in Game 2. The Knicks may continue mixing up their coverage, though the double-teams are probably the better option if they want to keep their bigs out of foul trouble. If there was one thing that went wrong for New York on Monday, it was that the Sixers attempted 34 free throws.
3. Get Maxey some momentum
Some of those fouls came when Maxey attacked the bigs in pick-and-roll. But Maxey, who put Game 7 in Boston away by twice driving past Neemias Queta, didn’t get downhill often enough in Game 1 — and not until the Knicks had taken control of the game.
If he’s got a little more burst on Wednesday, he could get to the bucket, draw more fouls, or bend the defense and create open shots for his teammates. We might also see him attack his counterpart a little more often than he did in Game 1, when the Sixer that Brunson was defending set just three of the 19 ball-screens for Maxey.
But Towns should remain his No. 1 target. Over the five games that Maxey and Towns have played against each other over Towns’ two seasons in New York, the Sixers have scored an amazing 1.73 points per chance (52 on 30) when a ball-screen for Maxey by the Sixer Towns was defending led directly to a shot, turnover or trip to the line.
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John Schuhmann has covered the NBA for more than 20 years. You can e-mail him here, find his archive here and follow him on Bluesky.
