NEW YORK — Jalen Brunson scored 26 points and helped New York seize control of a close game after a run of blowouts, leading the Knicks to a 108-102 victory over the Philadelphia 76ers on Wednesday night for a 2-0 lead in the Eastern Conference semifinals.<\/p>\n
Playing without the injured Joel Embiid, the 76ers put up a far better fight than in the Knicks’ 137-98 romp in Game 1. The game featured 25 lead changes – the most in a playoff game in 11 years – and 14 ties. Neither team led by more than seven points.<\/p>\n
But those kinds of situations are made for Brunson, who made the tiebreaking basket with 5:06 remaining and added another jumper for a 103-99 advantage with 3:45 to play before Mikal Bridges’ basket made it a six-point game.<\/p>\n
OG Anunoby added 24 points for New York, though he wasn’t on the floor at the end. It was unclear if he had been hurt.<\/p>\n
Karl-Anthony Towns had 20 points, 10 rebounds and seven assists for the Knicks, whose Game 1 victory made them the first team to win three straight postseason games by at least 25 points.<\/p>\n
Tyrese Maxey scored 26 points for the 76ers, who face another big climb after falling behind 3-1 against Boston in the first round.<\/p>\n
The series moves to Philadelphia for Game 3 on Friday and Game 4 on Sunday, where Embiid will find out if gets his wish for the arena to be filled with Sixers fans or if New Yorkers made their way in.<\/p>\n
Embiid was ruled out with right hip and ankle injuries after waking up with soreness and being unable to go through the 76ers’ morning shootaround.<\/p>\n
But the 76ers, who won Game 2 in Boston without him while he was still recovering from a late-season appendectomy, got 19 points each from Paul George and Kelly Oubre Jr. and 17 from VJ Edgecombe to nearly overcome their big man’s absence.<\/p>\n
They were ahead for the final time at 99-96 after Oubre’s 3-pointer before Josh Hart – who had appeared to hurt his left hand or wrist in the third quarter and left the game – made a 3-pointer with 6:52 remaining.<\/p>\n
The 25 lead changes were the most since the Spurs and Clippers combined for 31 on May 2, 2015.<\/p>\n
Maxey managed only 13 points in Game 1 but was back to leaving defenders in the dust Wednesday, scoring 15 points in the second quarter and 19 in the first half.<\/p>\n
The Knicks did a better job on him in the second half, led by Bridges, who also contributed 18 points.<\/p>\n
Copyright \u00a9 2026 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"NEW YORK — Jalen Brunson scored 26 points and helped New York seize control of a close game…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":628512,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[64],"tags":[271871,355,99],"class_list":["post-628511","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nba","tag-271871","tag-nba","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/628511","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=628511"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/628511\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/628512"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=628511"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=628511"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=628511"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}