The New York Knicks are now one win away from completing a second-round sweep of the Philadelphia 76ers after taking down Philly 108-94 on Friday night at Xfinity Mobile Arena.<\/p>\n
Joel Embiid returned to the lineup after missing Game 2 of the Eastern Conference semifinal series with ankle and hip injuries, finishing with 18 points, six rebounds and five assists, but New York\u2019s duo of Jalen Brunson and Mikal Bridges proved too much to overcome.<\/p>\n
Brunson once again controlled the pace for the Knicks, finishing with 33 points, five rebounds and nine assists, while Bridges added 23 points of his own.<\/p>\n
Philadelphia looked in control early and even built a 12-point lead, but the Knicks answered with multiple scoring runs that completely shifted the momentum as Knicks fans in attendance in Philly cheered them on.<\/p>\n
Young star Tyrese Maxey added 17 points and seven assists while Kelly Oubre Jr. led all Sixers scorers with 22.<\/p>\n
Now facing elimination, the 76ers will try to avoid the 17th playoff sweep in franchise history \u2014 the second-most all-time \u2014 when the series returns to Philadelphia for Game 4 on Sunday.<\/p>\n
Here are the biggest takeaways heading into Game 4.<\/p>\n
Knicks crash glass, Philly\u2019s party<\/p>\n
The Knicks don\u2019t miss a ton of shots, so when they do, it\u2019s best to make sure you get the rebound.<\/p>\n
The 76ers did not.<\/p>\n
New York grabbed 13 offensive rebounds and had 20-plus second-chance points en route to a 3-0 lead. Karl-Anthony Towns led the way with four offensive rebounds, and four other players had at least two. Crashing the offensive glass was the only offense the Knicks could generate early on as the 76ers got out to a huge lead to start the game.<\/p>\n
During the regular season, New York ranked sixth in the NBA in offensive rebounds per game and seventh in second-chance points per game. Going into Game 3, the Knicks ranked just 13th of all playoff teams in offensive rebounds per game but were second in second-chance points. That means that when they do miss, they\u2019re still ending possessions with points.<\/p>\n
Philadelphia has been a terrible rebounding team all season, and it\u2019s hard to see how the 76ers aren\u2019t swept come Sunday if New York continues to dominate the glass.<\/p>\n
If the Knicks are going to continue to score second-chance points at this clip, it\u2019s going to be hard for anyone to beat them. This is a team that can win in many different ways, as Game 3 showed. \u2014 James Edwards III, Knicks beat writer\u00a0<\/p>\n
Knicks play with grit and Hart<\/p>\n
Josh Hart plays basketball as if his headband were on fire. He hurtles his body through the air as if shot out of one of those T-shirt cannons, and he is willing to pay the price of a crash landing. Better yet, Hart will do all these things while playing hurt, in this case with an injured left thumb.<\/p>\n
He got an X-ray on it before Game 3. \u201cIt wasn\u2019t broken,\u201d Hart said, and that was that. He played a relentless style of ball because that\u2019s the only kind he knows how to play.<\/p>\n
Hart had four points and four rebounds in the first three and a half minutes Friday, and yet, he was still taking social-media grief for his offensive flaws. Hey, he\u2019s hardly a perfect player. The 76ers had Embiid cover him for a reason. But at 31, in his ninth season, Hart provides a ferocity on both sides of the ball required from a legitimate championship contender. He doesn\u2019t care about his injury \u2014 he said it\u2019s something he\u2019ll revisit in the offseason \u2014 and he sure wasn\u2019t going to sit out with OG Anunoby (hamstring) already sidelined.<\/p>\n
And oh, by the way, Hart added of the 76ers: \u201cThey got somebody on their team who played through it and won a championship.\u201d Kyle Lowry, fellow Villanova man, did indeed lead the Toronto Raptors to the 2019 title while his left thumb was barking at him.<\/p>\n
Hart finished with 12 points and 11 rebounds in a decisive victory that made this a 3-0 series and put the Knicks on the brink of a second straight trip to the Eastern Conference finals and another shot at the franchise\u2019s first appearance in the NBA Finals since 1999. Hart would\u2019ve fit in with those \u201990s Knicks. He plays with that level of toughness and grit. \u2014 Ian O\u2019Connor, senior writer\u00a0<\/p>\n
Sixers miss on second chances<\/p>\n
It\u2019s hard to advance deep into the playoffs when you don\u2019t rebound the basketball defensively and haven\u2019t all season. Yes, you might have some pockets of time where you can clean things up a bit. But when you are bad at something for 82 games, you just aren\u2019t going to magically change stripes.<\/p>\n
Game 3 was won in the first half by the Knicks and lost by the 76ers because the Knicks outworked their counterparts on the glass.<\/p>\n
They came up with one offensive rebound after another. They came up with one second-chance point after another. Every rebound that turned into a make whipped a heavily present New York crowd into a frenzy. The 76ers mitigated a lot of the damage in a first-round win over the Boston Celtics, because the Celtics were smaller and less dynamic.<\/p>\n
Even so, Philly had issues in the first half of the series. The 76ers just cleaned it up a bit over the second half of the series. There\u2019s your pocket of time. Against New York, this flaw hung heavy and exposed the Sixers. As a result, this series has turned into a rout, and Philadelphia will have some real searching to do in the offseason. \u2014 Tony Jones, Sixers beat writer\u00a0<\/p>\n
George and lead vanish for 76ers<\/p>\n
Not even nine minutes into Game 3, Paul George had accumulated 15 points. He was nailing 3-pointers and taking Knicks off the dribble. The former All-Star looked like a current one, and his team followed his lead, going up double-digits right out of the gate.<\/p>\n
Then New York switched around its defense, placing Bridges on George. George, in turn, went absent. He started to clank. And clank. The Knicks climbed. They tied the game in the second quarter, then went up double-digits themselves. All while George went errant. After beginning the game 6-of-8 from the field, he missed 10 consecutive shots.<\/p>\n
The Sixers never led after the first quarter. Such has been life for Philadelphia in this series. Just when the Sixers seem like they have a chance, that chance vanishes. \u2014 Fred Katz, senior NBA writer\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The New York Knicks are now one win away from completing a second-round sweep of the Philadelphia 76ers…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":632281,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[64],"tags":[355,361,2113,99],"class_list":["post-632280","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nba","tag-nba","tag-new-york-knicks","tag-philadelphia-76ers","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/632280","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=632280"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/632280\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/632281"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=632280"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=632280"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=632280"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}