NEW YORK — If there was ever any concern that the New York Knicks, coming off their annihilation of the Atlanta Hawks and freshly minted as the new favorites to represent the Eastern Conference in the 2026 NBA Finals, had spent the last few days getting fat and happy, Mike Brown sought to assuage them.
Yes, the Knicks won eight more games than the Philadelphia 76ers during the regular season. And yes, they finished four seeds higher than the 76ers in the Eastern playoff bracket. But before Game 1 on Monday, Brown emphasized that the iteration of the Sixers that would be coming into Madison Square Garden — one finally featuring a healthy three-headed monster in Joel Embiid, Tyrese Maxey and Paul George — had New York’s full, undivided attention.
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“You know, when that combination was on the floor together, they won, I think, almost 65% of their games,” Brown told reporters in his pregame press conference. “So, they were on pace to be almost a 60-win team. And if you’re on pace to be a 60-win team — I can’t remember what Boston did, but that’s better than us, you know, record-wise. And they’re completely healthy. So it’s gonna be a tough series.”
(The Sixers were actually only 11-10 in the 21 games that their Big Three played together this season. But who can begrudge a coach his preferred motivational tactic?)
It may well still be a tough series. It wasn’t a tough Game 1, though — far from it. Because this Knicks team, which shifted into a dramatically higher gear in the second half of its series against the Hawks, is showing absolutely no signs of slowing down.
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With a two-day rest advantage on a Sixers squad that was fighting for its life in Boston on Saturday night, New York looked the fresher, deeper, more balanced and significantly more offensively potent team, opening the Eastern Conference semifinals with an emphatic 137-98 beatdown to take a 1-0 lead in the best-of-seven set.
Forty-eight hours after winning Game 1 in Boston, Philadelphia hung tight for a quarter before effectively running out of gas. The Knicks opened up a double-digit lead late in the first, pushed it to 16 on a pair of OG Anunoby baskets with four minutes to go in the second and never looked back.
“Honestly, you gotta take this game with a grain of salt and just kind of move forward,” Knicks superstar Jalen Brunson said after Philly struggled to string together much of anything for the bulk of the competitive portion of Monday’s proceedings. “I don’t think we’re gonna see that team that we saw in Game 1 in Game 2. They’re gonna be ready to go.”
Sixers coach Nick Nurse pulled his starters with more than five minutes to go in the third quarter and the Knicks leading by 31. They’d go up by as many as 40 in a fourth quarter that began with copious “WE WANT KOLEK!” chants from the Madison Square Garden faithful. (Tyler Kolek did indeed check in with 10:14 to go in the fourth quarter, scoring eight points with four assists as the reserves on both sides played out the string.)
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That extended garbage time session came about because New York’s starters needed less than three quarters to set the terms of engagement. The perimeter defense that smothered the Hawks stifled Tyrese Maxey, holding the All-Star guard to 13 points on 3-for-9 shooting with twice as many turnovers (four) as assists (two). Joel Embiid drew his fair share of fouls, catching Karl-Anthony Towns, Mitchell Robinson and OG Anunoby often enough to work his way to nine free throws, but he couldn’t find his touch from the field, missing eight of his 11 shots en route to a quiet 14 points.
Well, quiet for him, anyway.
Paul George knocked down some pull-up 3s and generated some good looks attacking Towns and Robinson in the pick-and-roll when he ran the show early in the second quarter. For the most part, though, the Knicks grinded the Sixers down, holding Philly to 41.1% shooting from the field with 19 turnovers against 15 assists, and just 101 points per 100 possessions, according to Cleaning the Glass — a bottom-10 offensive performance of the season for Nurse’s club.
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And that wasn’t nearly as ugly as what happened on the other end.
The Knicks had 33 points after 12 minutes, 74 points at halftime, and 109 points at the end of three quarters. They shot 63.1% from the field — a franchise record for field-goal percentage in a playoff game. They went 19-of-37 from 3-point range — a franchise record for long-distance makes in a postseason contest. They had 34 assists — one more than they managed in Game 6 against Atlanta and more than any Knicks team has put up in a playoff game since 1990.
“Toward the end of the first, we just weren’t getting … six straight mid pick-and-rolls were just too easy,” Nurse said after the game. “It was just all … it wasn’t challenged. You gotta challenge one way or the other, at the rim or the 3. Somebody’s gotta be running out there to challenge. We couldn’t get around ’em, back in front of ’em. We left them open for too many wide-open 3s. We even gave up a couple of dunks behind us. We just gotta clean all that stuff up.”
Freed from the annoyance of trying to shed Dyson Daniels, Brunson got off to a roaring start, scoring 14 of his game-high 35 points in the first quarter to set the tone. His 27-point first half was the second-highest-scoring playoff half by any Knick in the play-by-play era, which stretches back to the 1996-97 season, trailing only … Jalen Brunson, who scored 28 points against the Pacers in the first half of Game 5 back in 2024.
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Towns continued to facilitate from the high post in Brown’s reoriented offense, attacking when driving lanes opened up and stepping back for 3s when Embiid and Andre Drummond sagged off him in drop coverage. He finished with 17 points, 6 rebounds, 6 assists and 2 blocks in 20 minutes. (Towns had seven six-assist games over the course of the regular season; he has now dropped six or more dimes in four straight playoff games.)
Anunoby continued to flex his shot-making and basket-attacking muscles to the tune of 18 points on 7-for-8 shooting. Mikal Bridges built on his Game 6 breakout against Atlanta, aggressively looking for his shot, hunting early-offense opportunities in transition and making some great extra passes on his way to 17 points on 7-for-10 shooting and five assists in 26 minutes, all while working overtime to stay connected to Maxey.
“[Bridges has] been our starting two guard all year, and he’s had a really good season, so for me, it was easy, you know, to stick with him,” Brown said after the game when asked about Bridges’ breakthrough after such a rocky start to the Atlanta series. “I mean, as a coach, it’s up to me to think about everything — whether I need to change this or change that. I’m always thinking. But in terms of sticking with him, it’s a no-brainer.”
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With the starters combining for 95 points on 54 field-goal attempts, the Knicks scored a scorching 141.2 points per 100 possessions, according to Cleaning the Glass — a top-10 offensive performance of the season for a New York team that seems to have reached a terrifying new level as April turns to May.
The Knicks have now played 16 straight quarters in which they’ve looked basically untouchable, outscoring the Hawks and now the Sixers to a degree that is literally unmatched in NBA postseason history …
… and maybe the most exciting thing about it, if you’re a Knicks fan, is that they do not seem at all satisfied with or impressed by themselves.
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“We’re playing well, but it doesn’t mean anything if we can’t find a way to get three more wins, so we’ve just got to stick to the task at hand,” Towns said when presented with the plus-135 statistic. “You said it’s the last four games? The key word is ‘last.’ It doesn’t have anything to do with the next three, four, five, six. You know, we got to stay locked in and be disciplined and execute at a high level.”
And if you can maintain that focus, that discipline and that execution, you can go from a team that looked adrift at times in the dead of winter to one that looks more and more like a championship contender as the weather warms.
“That’s why you play a season — that’s why you go through the ups and downs of the season,” Brunson said. “That’s why you go through adversity. You know, you find things to make you the best team as possible by the end of the year, and you continue to work. And even when you’re at this point, you continue to find ways to get better and improve. There’s never a time where you look back and you say, ‘All right, we’re good now, and we don’t have to continue to work or to continue to get better.’ It’s not the case at all. You continue to fight. You continue to improve, you find ways, whether it’s mental or physical, to get better.”
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These Knicks continue finding those ways, treating these postseason challenges as a proving ground — an opportunity to exhibit and sharpen a relentless drive to sweat all the small stuff that can wind up having a massive impact.
“They’re trying to focus on the details, no matter what the score is,” Brown said. “They’re still trying to stay locked in, and it shows by, you know, whether we’re up double digits or not, we’re still diving on the floor for loose balls. We’re still trying to get out in transition and get to the corners to put pressure on the defense. You know, we’re still trying to play the right way.”
Let’s be honest, Coach: Right now, the Knicks are doing a hell of a lot more than trying.
“I mean, I can’t deny it,” Brown said. “Our guys are playing pretty good basketball.”
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