10 burning questions for Sixers’ second-round matchup with the Knicks
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Just two days after the Sixers earned a cathartic Game 7 win over their hated rivals in Boston, Joel Embiid and Co. have to walk into Madison Square Garden and play a team that finished off their round one series with a 51-point blowout. As head coach Nick Nurse told the 76ers on Saturday evening around 10 pm, you had until midnight to celebrate the victory before moving on to the next step of the journey. So it goes in the playoffs.
These two teams played a very fun series two years ago, but a lot has changed since then, with Karl-Anthony Towns and Mikal Bridges entering the picture and Tobias Harris getting swapped out for Paul George in Philly. Let’s take a look at some stats, trends, and matchups to keep an eye on coming into the series, after the teams split the games 2-2 in the regular season.
Can VJ Edgecombe successfully slow down Jalen Brunson?
You could make a pretty easy argument that Edgecombe was the single-best defender of New York’s offensive engine in the regular season. The numbers are staggering for a rookie — Edgecombe guarded Brunson for around 106 possessions across four matchups, the second most of any individual player this season, holding Brunson to a total of 19 points on 8/24 shooting in those possessions. He slid around screens, contested midrange jumpers well, and wore Brunson down on the other end, making his life miserable for most of their time on the floor together. Other high-level defenders got their opportunities and struggled to keep Brunson down, with Jalen Suggs and Dyson Daniels both getting carved up by the Knicks guard in the regular season across a similar number of reps.
Though he battled foul trouble at times throughout the year, Edgecombe was fairly successful at guarding the more physical, timing-based players in year one, which is part of what allowed him to scale up and battle bigger wings in the mid-post, including in round one vs. Boston. Even when Brunson was able to shake Edgecombe with an initial head fake or dribble move, the rookie’s closing speed allowed him to get back into plays and contest without putting himself in jeopardy.
The trouble is that Brunson is a player who has proven he can work through initial struggles to produce big moments in the playoffs, with Brunson shooting a combined 16/55 against the Sixers in Games 1 and 2 in 2024, only to score 40+ points against Philadelphia in the final three games of the series. So even if Edgecombe can maintain the early advantage, this won’t be a one-person job by any stretch. This year, Philadelphia cycled through everyone from Paul George to Quentin Grimes to Justin Edwards on Brunson in the regular season, trying to throw different looks at him to change the sight lines and keep him guessing. I’d expect a similar kitchen sink approach in May.
Which backup center plays the most minutes?
Andre Drummond seems like the heavy favorite to play after Nick Nurse rode the roller coaster with him against the Celtics, and rebounding is arguably even more important in this matchup. I would play Drummond in any Robinson minutes that don’t overlap with Embiid’s to try to win the rebounding battle, but I’d consider Bona vs. Towns just to get a more mobile guy on the floor to combat the five-out lineups on New York’s end.
(I never thought I’d see the day when I’d write something like “Drummond’s corner shooting is a differentiator that can open the floor up for the guards,” but I absolutely believe it at this point. He has earned a lot of trust from me on those looks.)
Will Josh Hart shoot a billion percent from three again?
If the Knicks opt to go with their usual starting lineup of Karl-Anthony Towns, OG Anunoby, Mikal Bridges, Josh Hart, and Jalen Brunson, the Sixers will have to decide between two main defensive choices:
- Play the matchups straight up and bring Embiid up to the level on ball screens. The Sixers won’t be able to get away with the heavy drop they played against Boston, because Towns is a dead-eye shooter in the trail spot who the Sixers won’t be able to play off of too often
- Have Embiid “guard” Josh Hart and help off of him, while Paul George or Kelly Oubre takes the Towns assignment
I tend to believe Nurse will opt for the former to open the series for a variety of reasons. For one, using George to simply get out to the trail spot in 1/5 pick and pops feels like a waste of his defensive talents, putting him in less useful help positions and taking him off of more dangerous downhill threats. And if Embiid is reasonably healthy, he should be able to stay in front of Towns while also taking away space on the perimeter. But part of Philadelphia’s rebounding improvement against Boston relied on keeping Embiid near the paint, and that’ll be much tougher against lineups with Towns on the floor.
So keep an eye on Mr. Hart, who lit the Sixers up from deep for large portions of the 2024 series, with the Sixers banking on the idea that he couldn’t sustain it and losing that bet. Embiid will probably spend some time roaming so he can offer rim protection and rebounding, and Philly will have to live with the potential ramifications of leaving Hart open in those spots.
Which member of Knicks celebrity row will have the most unhinged reaction during a game?
Here are the odds as selected by yours truly:
- Turtle from Entourage -150
- Spike Lee -110
- Timothee Chalamet +100
- Jon Stewart +150
- Ben Stiller +225
- Tracy Morgan +300
- Fat Joe +350
- Any former Knicks player +600
- Steve Schirripa +800
- Kendall Jenner +2000
Place your bets now!
What is New York’s plan vs. Joel Embiid?
There has rarely been a point in their careers where Towns has been a credible defender against Joel Embiid. Embiid dominated him so thoroughly in their last meeting in mid-January that putting Towns in foul trouble actually ended up working against the Sixers in New York’s second-half comeback. New York used Mitchell Robinson, a stream of doubles and traps, and even OG Anunoby to try to force the ball out of Embiid’s hands in that game, willing to live with the others taking and missing open jumpers. I feel pretty good about Embiid’s chances to bulldoze New York’s typical starting lineup, if they choose to roll with it, based on the history with Towns.
Embiid vs. Robinson is a more fascinating individual matchup. While Robinson has never come close to “stopping” Embiid, the question is how he changes Embiid’s offensive process compared to the previous series against Boston. Robinson’s size makes him a lot tougher to post up, so Embiid will need to rely more on the face-up game and get into a groove with Maxey and Edgecombe in pick-and-rolls, forcing Robinson away from the basket with elbow jumpers. When Embiid gets Robinson further away from the basket, that’s where he has been able to draw more fouls and send Robinson back to the bench.
Anunoby is the potential secret weapon here as one of the NBA’s true five-position defenders, though it’s fair to say he’ll require help and doubles to hold up against Embiid for any extended period. If they can make that work, New York can throw some lineups heavy on ballhandling at the Sixers and juice up their offense, changing the dynamic of the game, particularly in transition.
The good news for Philadelphia is that the Boston series ranks among his best stretches of high-usage, low-turnover offense in the playoffs. Perhaps he has turned a corner, or perhaps he simply got a favorable matchup against a relatively soft frontcourt.
Can the Sixers keep Knicks fans out of their arena?
There were a lot of New Yorkers (including ostensibly serious media members) trying to make fun of the Sixers for effectively banning people outside of Philadelphia from buying tickets for their home playoff games, and I have to say, I don’t really get it. Knicks fans buy up secondary market tickets for a cheaper way to see their team. Sixers fans and players get upset about the arena takeover. The Sixers respond by trying to keep homecourt advantage an actual advantage. Everyone here seems like a rational actor to me.
Those efforts might not matter in the end, anyway, because Knicks fans are plentiful and only a short trip away from Xfinity Mobile Arena. If that happens, you can take solace in the fact that the Sixers have been road warriors this year, and should have won 2/3 on the road with a worse team in the 2024 series, if not for the botched end-of-game officiating that helped steal Game 2 for New York.
Will Philadelphia’s rebounding improvement hold up?
Though Boston’s three-point shooting was probably the No. 1 swing factor in the previous series, Philly’s improvement as a defensive rebounding unit was right there, too. The Celtics had far more one-and-done trips on offense as the series wore on, with the Sixers effectively locking Boston out of extra possessions for the final two games of the series. Schematic changes had a lot to do with that, with the Sixers staying home on shooters and leaking out less, giving themselves better post-shot opportunities to hit a man and gang rebound.
If you can believe it — and I know many of you won’t due to nightmares about 2024 — the Celtics were actually a better offensive rebounding team than the Knicks this season. In the regular season, the Knicks grabbed offensive rebounds on 32.8 percent of available opportunities. But it’s important to note the impact of lineup changes on New York’s identity. Robinson is basically a one-man offensive rebounding machine, and in the instances where the Knicks go Robinson/Towns for an ultra-big lineup, they absolutely mash teams on the offensive glass:
While the Sixers have ways to punish that sort of look on the offensive end, I am not sure they have a solution to keep that style of lineup off the glass unless they are prepared to play something like an Embiid/Drummond frontcourt.
What do the Knicks do to slow down Philly’s backcourt?
New York has great personnel to deal with the Celtics team Philadelphia took down in round one, and I would argue that half the reason they have Bridges and Anunoby is to deal with the Tatum/Brown wing combo. I am not quite as convinced about their ability to guard the Maxey/Edgecombe backcourt, who we saw get busy against the Knicks in the regular season. Maxey and Edgecombe scored a combined 49 points a night against the Knicks on stellar efficiency, frequently attacking Jalen Brunson and crushing the Knicks inside the arc.
New York made the mistake of trying to hide Brunson on the rookie early in the season, and there were some brutal bully-ball moments where Edgecombe just moved his man off a spot and scored through contact with ease. If the Knicks try to do that again, there are a bunch of ways to attack that — you could use Edgecombe as the lead ballhandler, run 1/2 ball screens to get a Brunson switch on Maxey, or run Edgecombe through off-ball screens to force Brunson to chase and absorb contact. Presumably, the Knicks will try to pre-switch some actions if the Sixers really start spamming the 1/2 screens, and the key is to not let Brunson simply hang out and use Edgecombe as a stationary shooter, even if he’ll need to be that at times throughout games.
The regression case would zero in on Edgecombe’s two-point efficiency in the regular season, because he shot an astounding 65.7 percent inside the arc against New York in four meetings. That’ll probably come down a bit regardless of how the matchups shake out, particularly if they can make him live on tougher pull-up twos and crowd him in the paint.
On Maxey’s end, Bridges was the primary defender in the regular season but didn’t do a heck of a lot to bother him. Josh Hart had the most success in the regular season on a fairly small number of possessions, I’m just not sure I buy him winning that battle over a longer period of time.
Can Nick Nurse put together another excellent series?
Narrative battles over Embiid’s career, Maxey’s heroics, and VJ Edgecombe’s awesome Game 7 have slightly overshadowed a terrific first-round series from the head coach. He made some noteworthy changes midway through to get them back on track, and as the teams got even more familiar deep in the series, Nurse and his staff were well-prepared and nimble as Joe Mazzulla got more and more unhinged with lineups and coverages. They did a great job as a team of reading coverages in real time and getting into their counters:
How deep in the bag is Nurse willing to go? Perhaps more pertinently, how deep in the rotation is he willing to go? Dominick Barlow was a little-used option against Boston, but perhaps there’s a place for him in this series, depending on New York’s willingness to play Robinson and Towns together (they logged 29 possessions against Atlanta in round one). What’s Nurse’s tolerance level for Justin Edwards, whose role fluctuated throughout the Celtics series?
Frankly, their play against Boston earned Nurse some benefit of the doubt I didn’t show him for a lot of the year. I’m eager to see what his crew cooks up for the second round.
Is it finally time for an Embiid conference finals appearance?
Because man, would it be cool for the Sixers to go on a settling all debts run, vanquishing the Celtics and the Knicks consecutively to make this happen.
