NEW YORK — To hear Nick Nurse tell it, it all came back to those high ball screens.
Time and again in his postgame remarks after a tip-to-tail annihilation to tip off the 2026 Eastern Conference semifinals, the Philadelphia 76ers head coach pointed to a string of defensive possessions early in Game 1 on which it seemed his team had absolutely no answer for what the New York Knicks were trying to do.
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“I mean, we had, I think, five or six mid pick-and-rolls in a row that they scored on in pretty much every way they could,” Nurse said. “Came off [the screen], hit a 3. Didn’t get through the screen, got a lob. Hit a couple floaters down the lane. I think they scored six straight times off that, and that kind of extended [New York’s lead] a little bit.”
Nurse was right on. The Knicks scored on six consecutive possessions midway through the first quarter — a lob dunk for Mitchell Robinson, a pair of midrange pull-ups sandwiching a driving layup by Jalen Brunson, a pull-up Brunson 3, and a catch-and-shoot 3 in the strong-side corner by Deuce McBride — to take early control of the game.
“I think, most importantly the ball was going in, and I got a rhythm,” Brunson said of the hot start that propelled him to a game-high 35 points, in a performance reminiscent of the way he torched Philly’s drop coverage in New York’s Round 1 victory in 2024. “My teammates did a good job of setting screens and getting me open.”
When you take a look at how the Knicks got him open and scored on those plays, there’s one common denominator: They all came after involving Joel Embiid in the action, forcing him to prove he could contain the roll, bother the ball-handler or (ideally, for Philadelphia) both.
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He could not:
On the possession after McBride’s corner 3, Nurse instructed reserve forward Justin Edwards to intentionally foul Robinson — a strategy that a number of opponents have deployed to try to limit the defensive, offensive-rebounding and rim-running effectiveness of the Knicks’ backup center, a notoriously poor free-throw shooter.
It was also just about the only way the Sixers could get a stop.
“[The opportunity] just presented itself,” Nurse said. “Subbed him in, they were in the bonus, figured … and I think it was right on the end of that famous pick-and-roll series I’m talking about. It was a chance to try to stop their momentum a little bit.”
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It worked in the short-term; after four missed free throws on the next two New York offensive possessions, Knicks head coach Mike Brown subbed Robinson out, bringing in lightly-used third-string center Ariel Hukporti for a short stretch. In the bigger picture, though, it didn’t: Robinson checked back in for the final two minutes of the quarter and the Knicks finished strong by, once again, going right at Embiid in the pick-and-roll:
“We were just not physical enough,” Embiid said, which saw him finish with 14 points on 3-for-11 shooting with four rebounds, no blocks and no steals in 24 minutes. “I thought they were too comfortable. We’ve got to do a better job.”
Joel Embiid under attack
Doing a better job of making the Knicks uncomfortable will require Embiid to do a significantly better job of making his presence felt when they attack him in the pick-and-roll. New York’s ball-handlers — chiefly Brunson, who established an early rhythm by hunting Embiid off the bounce, but also Mikal Bridges, among others — drew a bullseye directly on the chest of the former NBA MVP, betting that if they could make him navigate traffic and guard in space, they’d be able to get just about whatever shot they wanted, whenever they wanted. The story of Game 1 was that they were pretty much dead on.
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According to Synergy Sports Technology’s tracking, New York shot 11-for-14 from the field on plays after forcing Embiid to defend the ball-handler in the pick-and-roll, scoring 29 points in 16 possessions — a monstrous 1.81 points per possession — when targeting the big fella in the two-man game. That, to put it mildly, is an unsustainable figure for the Sixers if they want to have any chance of pouring some cold water on a Knicks offense that’s been scorching hot for the last four games.
“I just feel like we were a full step slow tonight,” Nurse said. “Defensively, we just seemed like we were chasing everything. Didn’t guard the ball well enough, didn’t contest shooters well enough. They were obviously picking us apart, just moving a lot better than we were.”
They were certainly moving better than Embiid. Whether he was limited by the left knee he banged up in Game 7 against Boston, the right hip contusion with which he was listed on the pre-Game 1 injury report, or fatigue after playing 112 minutes across three consecutive elimination games in five nights just three and a half weeks removed from an emergency appendectomy, Embiid clearly wasn’t covering ground as well, as quickly or as decisively as the Sixers would prefer. That made him a defensive liability for Brunson to exploit early, often, ruthlessly and relentlessly.
“Our guys did a good job of setting screens for him, and Jalen’s pace and his change of speed, all that stuff, with the basketball was really good,” Brown said. “You know, they like to play in a drop, and [Brunson] was able to come off and get a couple of pocket 3s because we had good screens. And when he did that, it made them come up the floor a little bit, and then he was able to get by them.”
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Nurse opened the series by playing his defensive matchups straight, with Embiid guarding Towns — the sort of center-on-center matchup that has typically allowed the Knicks to unlock the Brunson-KAT two-man game to great effect. Sure enough, New York went right to work, with Brunson rejecting Towns’ screen to go one-on-one against rookie VJ Edgecombe with Embiid out of the play, and Towns stepping back to drill a 3 with Embiid two steps too far off to contest the shot:
After Towns picked up two quick fouls and Robinson checked in, the Knicks stuck with the script, allowing Brunson to walk into a clean pull-up 3 that missed before what Nurse termed the “famous pick-and-roll series” that helped stake New York to an eight-point lead after the first quarter.
When Embiid checked back in midway through the second, the Knicks stayed committed to the game plan. Even when the initial screening action didn’t produce a clean look for the ball-handler or roll man, being able to draw Embiid out of the paint opened up opportunities for dribble penetration and second-side action, which New York capitalized on to generate one-on-one drives out of the corner for Anunoby and Josh Hart with no help defense or rim protection on the interior:
When New York was able to reset quick enough to get Brunson the Embiid switch, he roasted the big fella in space for a runner. When Nurse toggled the coverage, having Embiid try to blitz the pick-and-roll up top, Hart was ready to provide an outlet, reverse the ball to Anunoby in the corner, and create an open catch-and-shoot 3 for Bridges ahead of Philly’s scrambling rotations. When Embiid came up to try to hedge and recover, Brunson just went early, crossed over with another reject, hit the gas and got another paint touch for another finish. And when they went back to drop, Brunson just walked right back into another pull-up 3:
Before Game 1, Brown said he expected the 76ers to cross-match a smaller defender onto Towns and station Embiid on a wing — likely either Hart or Anunoby — to try to protect Embiid in the pick-and-roll. When Nurse did go to that look, New York was prepared for it, patiently and persistently cycling through screeners and moving the ball until they got what they wanted:
“You know, you see a lot of that during the course of the season, and so you keep working with it with your guys,” Brown said of the development of the scintillating read-and-react rhythm with which his Knicks are playing offense right now. “You keep showing your guys film of it, and it’s something that you address. We have actions where, if teams are cross-matched, we can try to get the guy that we want in the pick-and-roll. Doing stuff like that throughout the course of the year while showing them film, hopefully, at this point in the season, gets them to a point where they’re comfortable enough and they can continue trying to attack it the right way.”
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New York repeatedly attacked those looks the right way, and the results were devastating: The Knicks posted a 160.4 offensive rating with Embiid on the court in Game 1, according to NBA Advanced Stats.
“It wasn’t any fun to sit there,” Nurse said. “It wasn’t any fun to be a part of, to be honest, and watch. But it’s 0-1. Doesn’t really matter if it’s six points or 36, or whatever the hell it was. It’s 0-1, and we’ve got to wash that one away and get back, and we’re gonna have to provide much more energy and physicality and that kind of stuff.”
How will the Sixers respond?
Nurse has buttons to push and levers to pull on the offensive end. Embiid and Tyrese Maxey were able to get Towns, Robinson and Anunoby into foul trouble in the first half. That aggressiveness could bear more fruit in Game 2, especially if Maxey — whom, as Brown noted, missed some makeable shots more than the Knicks necessarily clamped him down — can get going early.
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The Sixers generated a number of good looks early in the second quarter, with Paul George targeting New York’s bigs in the pick-and-roll; they also made some hay when they finally showed a renewed interest in making Brunson work on defense, whether by putting him in actions or allowing the rookie Edgecombe to attack him off the bounce. If Philly can hit those notes — and if the vicissitudes of shot variance that saw the Knicks dramatically overperform their expected shot quality in Game 1 while the Sixers dramatically underperformed it, according to PBP Stats’ metrics, level out a bit — the scoreboard could, too.
“Yeah, we had breakdowns tonight,” George said. “But they also shot the s*** out of the ball.”
Dismissing what New York did in Game 1 as just an outlier heater, though, would be a step too far. The Knicks — ninth in effective field goal percentage and eighth in true shooting percentage during the regular season, and top-two in both categories alongside Oklahoma City in Round 1 — can knock down good looks if they keep getting them like they did in Game 1 …
… and if the Sixers can’t find a way to either hide Embiid or get more out of him on the defensive end, New York’s shot diet very well might remain awfully tasty.
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“Our defense was not good today,” Embiid said. “We’ve got to do a better job defensively.”
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