PHILADELPHIA — The Sixers were wobbly. They were vulnerable. We will hear all day Friday, all day Saturday, that they were the desperate team, that they saw their season flashing before their eyes and simply refused to let it dissolve. And there is an element of truth to that.
But they were right there, standing in a corner after 24 minutes, down three. They’d been feisty and salty and physical, but the Knicks had answers for all of it. Joel Embiid had dragged on Mitchell Robinson’s leg while he was sitting on the floor, came as close to a flagrant 2 foul and an ejection as you can come.
“We knew what Game 3 was going to be, come on,” Josh Hart said. “Especially after how Game 2 ended.”
Kyle Lowry had himself a flagrant 1, too. The Sixers were desperate even as they were doing rock-headed things like that in the first half, and the desperation didn’t fuel them. The Knicks went into the third quarter up three, and it felt like the Sixers were one uppercut away from going down, maybe going away, one 10-2 run away from surrender.
“We took a hell of a punch from them in the first half,” Sixers coach Nick Nurse said.
Then a funny thing happened.
The Sixers didn’t miss. Inside. Outside. Drives. Three-pointers. Embiid — who’d talked awfully big after Game 2 — played even bigger in the third quarter. You want to credit that with desperation, go right ahead. You want to make a case that Embiid should’ve been sitting in the locker room while all of that was happening? Sure, you can do that. You get the sense that Sixers fans sure would’ve done that if it was Robinson tackling Embiid.
But Embiid didn’t win his MVP trophy in a lottery. He wasn’t the leader in the clubhouse to win his second straight by accident. He’s that good. He can be as dominant a force as anyone on the planet. In the third, he was everywhere, did everything. He got the benefit of the doubt, no doubt, by not getting tossed in the first quarter.
Then left little doubt about Thursday’s outcome in the third.
That was 76ers 125, Knicks 114. The Sixers are right back in the series. They get a chance to pull even Sunday. The Knicks could never land that uppercut, then surrendered 43 points in the third quarter. Embiid scored 50. He was 13-of-19 from the field. He was 19-of-21 from the line, now reportedly adding Bell’s palsy to his aching knee on his list of maladies.
“We didn’t have a lot of answers,” Deuce McBride said.
If you have the choice between desperation and domination, you’ll take the latter every time out. The Sixers did. They had Embiid for 41 of 48 minutes, even if they were lucky to keep him for the final 40. They got out of the corner. Now they get a Game 4 on Sunday in which they can reduce this best-of-seven to a best-of-three, and shift every ounce of pressure back onto the Knicks.
“They hit us, and we got back on our heels,” Knicks coach Tom Thibodeau said. “That was a problem.”
And when they rocked back, Embiid seized.
“We’ve got to do better,” Thibodeau said. “We have to play with discipline, don’t whack down. We’ve got to do better.”
Thibodeau was careful to lead with that. He waited until he was asked a question about the play in the first quarter when Embiid, prone on the ground, dragged down Mitchell by his leg. And then he delivered a quintessential study in passive-aggressiveness.
“Which flagrant?” he asked. “The one they called or the one they didn’t call?”
He was referring to a play a few minutes earlier when Embiid sure seemed to knee Isaiah Hartenstein in a place that’s best shielded by a protective cup. Embiid got away with a common foul on that one. It was clear the 76ers had grown weary hearing about how the Knicks were tougher than Chuck Bronson for two games.
They came out swinging. And pushed the envelope right to the brink.
“What did they have, 33 free throws?” Thibodeau said. He already knew that the Knicks had taken just 19. Then he quickly added: “This is the playoffs.”
This is the playoffs. And this is what the playoffs look like. Sometimes you get a chance for an early knockout. The Knicks had that shot, had Embiid on one leg, fighting Bell’s palsy, knowing that he’d have gotten booted for doing the same thing Jan. 25.
But this wasn’t Jan. 25. This was April 25. This is the playoffs. And this is still a series.
