The crafty Jalen Brunson scored 26 points to lead the Knicks to a Game 2 win and 2-0 edge over the 76ers.
Sometimes, it’s not so easy.
After four straight wins by an average of 33.8 points, the New York Knicks finally had a nail-biter in Game 2 of their conference semifinals series with the Philadelphia 76ers.
The game had 25 lead changes and neither team led by more than four points in the second half … until a late 9-0 run gave the Knicks some separation and a 108-102 victory at Madison Square Garden.
Jalen Brunson had a couple of big buckets down the stretch and finished with 26 points on 9-for-21 shooting. Karl-Anthony Towns dealt with foul trouble but tallied 20 points, 10 rebounds and seven assists in a little more than 27 minutes.
The Sixers were without Joel Embiid and the Knicks dominated inside, outscoring Philly by 26 points (56-30) in the paint.
Here are some notes, numbers and film as the Knicks took a 2-0 series lead:
1. Knicks survive ugly fourth
The Sixers had a one-point lead after the third quarter, and it had been an efficient game on both ends of the floor, with the two teams combining to score 179 points on 145 possessions (123 per 100). But things got real ugly in the fourth.
The Knicks scored just 19 points on 22 possessions in the final period, their second least efficient quarter of these playoffs … and won it by seven.
The Sixers’ 12 points on 21 possessions (0.57 per) in the fourth period was their third least efficient quarter of the entire season (92 games).
Embiid was out, and neither Andre Drummond (who started) nor Adem Bona played at all in the fourth. The Sixers went small with Dominick Barlow at the five, and they had little choice but to play more aggressive defensively. Paul George was defending Towns, and he stole the ball from him twice. They blitzed Brunson, and the Knicks had as many live-ball turnovers in the fourth quarter (four) as they had through the first three.
The Sixers got better shots than the Knicks in the fourth, but they couldn’t knock them down. George and VJ Edgecombe played the entire fourth quarter and combined to shoot 0-for-9, while Tyrese Maxey was 2-for-8.
Ultimately, the Knicks won with some more late-clock magic. Josh Hart drained a corner 3 with one second left on the shot clock to tie the game with 6:25 left, and Brunson had two isolation buckets with less than five seconds left on the clock.
Then Mikal Bridges got the ball with five seconds left, isolated against Kelly Oubre Jr, and drained a step-back 20-footer:
Finally, Brunson drove to the basket with less than five seconds left on the clock and drew a foul on Edgecombe.
The Sixers couldn’t answer, even though they weren’t up against the shot clock nearly as often.
2. Barlow under the spotlight
Barlow had played just 63 minutes over the Sixers’ first eight playoff games, and most of that was garbage time in a few blowout losses. On Wednesday, he didn’t play at all through the first 31 minutes. But when Bona picked up his fifth foul with 4:53 left in the third quarter, Barlow checked in … and he was a big part of this game from there on out.
On defense, he was Brunson’s primary target. And he had some success in that regard.
On one isolation late in the third quarter, Barlow stayed in front of Brunson and stayed down on a pump fake, forcing the Knicks’ point guard to give up the ball late in the clock:
… only for George to commit a foul on OG Anunoby.
Barlow also made an incredible close-out to block an Anunoby corner 3 midway through the fourth. And when he blitzed ball-screens for Brunson, the Sixers forced a couple of turnovers.
But ultimately, the Knicks scored 13 points on eight trips down the floor when the guy Barlow was guarding set a ball-screen for Brunson. Brunson’s two late-clock, isolation buckets down the stretch were against Barlow, not that he could have defended the All-Star much better. One gave the Knicks the lead with a little more than five minutes left, and the other put them up four with 3:45 on the clock.
On the other end of the floor, Barlow scored six points on 3-for-3 shooting, but also had two turnovers. Out of a timeout with a little more than two minutes left, the Knicks blitzed a Barlow screen for George. Barlow got the ball on the short roll but made the wrong read, trying to force a pass to a cutting Oubre instead of taking a half a second longer and finding a wide-open Edgecombe on the wing:
That was the seventh straight empty possession for the Sixers.
3. Sixers find the corners
A lot of the Sixers’ offensive success on Wednesday came from the corners. After shooting just 1-for-5 on corner 3-pointers in Game 1, they 5-for-6 from the corners in the first quarter of Game 2.
George was quick to let it fly. The Knicks ran double-teams at Maxey and the Sixers quickly got the ball to the open man in the corner. Using Maxey as a screener got Quentin Grimes downhill, and he found Oubre open on the weak side.
The corner 3s didn’t stop after the first period, and the Sixers finished 9-for-15 from the corners. The nine makes were the most for any team in these playoffs and the most for the Sixers in any of their 92 games.
But they needed one or two more. After going 8-for-10 from the corners through the first three quarters, the Sixers were 1-for-5 in the fourth. And all four misses were open and in rhythm:
- George from the left corner (after the Knicks blitzed Maxey) with 10:30 left.
- Maxey from the right corner (after a George drive drew help) on the very next possession.
- Edgecombe from the left corner (after another blitz had the Knicks scrambled) with 4:45 left and the Sixers down two.
- Maxey from the right corner (after an offensive rebound) on the next possessions and the Sixers still down two.
The Sixers shooting 60% was still one of their 10 best shooting nights from the corners this season. And overall, they out-shot their expected field goal percentage in Game 2.
But those were some great looks they got in the fourth quarter, and they went cold at the wrong time.
4. Maxey goes long
It’s possible that the guys that missed those fourth-quarter corner 3s didn’t have much gas in the tank. Maxey played 46:48 on Wednesday, including all of the final 37:23. George played almost 43 minutes, while both Edgecombe and Oubre played almost 40.
As noted above, Barlow didn’t check in until there was less than five minutes left in the third quarter, and he was only the third reserve that the Sixers used. Bona replaced Embiid in the rotation, but Justin Edwards was excised.
It’s hard to argue for a second-half rest for Maxey when the Sixers were somehow outscored by six points in his 1:12 on the bench in the first half.
Of course, that was more about the defensive end of the floor, where the Knicks scored seven points on three possessions with Maxey on the bench. Two of those came when they allowed a dunk on a baseline out-of-bounds play (not their only defensive breakdown on a night where every possession mattered), and another two came when Edgecombe fouled Brunson 94 feet from the basket.
The Sixers played just two offensive possessions without Maxey. Bona drew a foul and went 1-for-2 from the line and Grimes might have been fouled when he lost the ball out of bounds on the second trip. So it’s not like the Sixers proved to be incapable of running their offense without their point guard.
Still, they’ve scored less than a point per possession (141 on 146) in Maxey’s 72 total minutes off the floor in the playoffs. Bench minutes have been an issue throughout, and those bench minutes may continue to be short when the series moves to Philadelphia for Game 3 on Friday (7 p.m. ET, Prime Video).
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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.
