As delightful as I find the NBA Play-In Tournament to be, it has the small downside of leaving just thirteen hours between the finalization of the complete playoff bracket and the tip-off of its first game. As you may imagine, this makes the task of previewing the playoffs rather difficult! So rather than waste precious time on a sappy intro (I find these upcoming two months both magical and comprehensively invigorating), I will dive right into analysis.

New York Knicks vs Philadelphia 76ers

Knicks: 50-32, 118.2 ORTG (7th), 113.4 DRTG (10th), 4.8 NET (5th)

76ers: 47-35, 116.9 ORTG (14th), 113.8 DRTG (11th), 3.1 NET (8th)

Season series: 3-1 NYK > PHI, 1-0 NYK when Joel Embiid plays

Game 1: Saturday, 6 p.m. ET at Madison Square Garden (ESPN)

To start with the obvious, the 76ers are a radically different team when Joel Embiid plays vs when he does not. With Embiid, Philadelphia played at a 65-win pace this season (32-8 record) with a net rating of +10.5, which would have been the highest mark in franchise history if sustained over 82 games. Without him, they collapsed to a 30-win pace (16-27) and the 9th worst net rating in the league (-3.7). EPM, my favorite among the all-in-one advanced metrics, estimated Joel’s performance across the 39 regular season games he played to be the most impactful of any player it has ever recorded, a tick better than Steph Curry’s legendary season in 2016. He is, over the last two seasons, authoring arguably the greatest stretch of regular season scoring we have ever seen, pouring in 34 points per game on an efficiency (65% True Shooting) that simply renders the sport of basketball conquered, and simultaneously delivering 99th percentile value as the rim-protecting anchor of an elite defense. Needless to say, if I knew for certain that Philadelphia would get *this* version of Joel Embiid, they would be my pick in the series. 

Such is not the case. The reigning MVP, in heroically battling back from a February surgery on his torn meniscus, looks strained, exasperated, and ground-bound. He is 54/114 from the field since returning, generating fewer free throws in favor of twice as many three-point attempts, and turning the ball over a disquieting 5 times per game. By the end of the play-in game vs Miami, whose largest player is the 6’9” Bam Adebayo, Embiid could hardly keep himself upright, his knee evidently whimpering under mounting inflammation from repeated collisions. His body is plainly not in condition to withstand the physicality of his customary playstyle, and he now draws perhaps the most relentlessly rugged opponent on the board: The New York Knicks. 

Playing the Knicks is like being trapped in a Port-A-Potty as it tumbles several thousand feet down a rocky mountain. You are unlikely to emerge better for the experience. As you may imagine, teams do not typically lead the league in rebounding due to their compassion and diplomacy, and these Knicks are no exception, having elbowed and bruised their way to a league-leading 33.3% offensive rebounding rate. Tom Thibodeau’s disciples are utterly unyielding, a nightmarish matchup for a 76ers team that finished the regular season 26th in defensive rebounding. Their forward rotation of Kelly Oubre, Tobias Harris, and Nicolas Batum lacks sorely for an athlete both sturdy and explosive enough to consistently establish favorable positions in the paint and then attack the basketball at its apex as it leaves the rim.  They customarily survive this issue through the brutality of their behemoth, Joel Embiid, but I am doubtful he can leave his feet much at all, let alone jump fifty times per game (as would be required to stave off the blue-orange vultures on the glass). 

So let us assume that the Knicks both dominate the rebounding battle and contain Embiid to something in the neighborhood of 28 points per game on 59% True Shooting. Do the 76ers have a path to victory in this universe? 

Yes. For as much wear as the Knicks will put on Embiid’s knees under the basket, they still play at the slowest pace of any team in the Association, an enormous blessing and relief for his lagging conditioning. The 76ers halfcourt offense, which plays five-out thanks to Embiid’s 38% accuracy from long range, poses problems for the Knicks defense, which relies on ferocious rim protection and drop coverage from their bigs. Isaiah Hartenstein’s D-EPM of +3.9 paints him as the second best defender in all of basketball this season, and indeed he has been (astoundingly) New York’s centerpiece on that end since December, but dragging him away from the basket prevents him from doing any of what has made him so vital. The Knicks, often playing three or four of Jalen Brunson, Miles McBride, Josh Hart, and Donte DiVincenzo at the same time, lack strength and size on the perimeter, which minimizes their collective resistance to paint touches and dribble penetration. Hartenstein compensates for this, erasing mistakes and turning back potential layups with his mammoth frame and brilliant instincts as a help defender, a safety net which could collapse entirely if he has to occupy himself with the threat of Embiid raining in threes. Affirming my concerns here, the Knicks went 1-8 this season against the Thunder, Celtics, and Pacers, allowing over 120 points per game to the three most ‘five-out’ teams in the NBA outside of Philadelphia. 

Given the established athletic limitations of their forwards, the obvious candidate to take advantage of these driving lanes and score at the rim is Tyrese Maxey, whose performance I believe will either make or break this playoff run for the 76ers. Maxey, the fastest player on the floor at all times, took the 6th most shot attempts in the NBA on drives to the rim this season but struggled mightily with his efficiency, converting a grim 46% of them. He in fact rates near the bottom of the league in almost every rim finishing metric I could find, which may embolden the Knicks’ help defenders to prioritize the disruption of passing lanes above the congestion of driving lanes. If they do follow this blueprint, even sporadically, denying smooth ball movement to suppress three-point attempts, the burden of creation will fall squarely on Maxey’s shoulders. He may have to shoot 25 times in a game this series, ideally generating double-digit free throws along the way, in order to punish this aggressive defensive approach, at which point Philadelphia’s outcome will be defined by his accuracy. 

Conversely, 76ers coach Nick Nurse will exercise every resource shy of committing explicit war crimes to flush the basketball out of Jalen Brunson’s hands. Nurse’s Raptors (the 2019 NBA champions) held prime Giannis to 22 ppg on 52% True Shooting, a testament equally to his ingenuity and extravagance, as it came at the cost of surrendering 40 three-point attempts per game to the Bucks shooters. Brunson should expect spontaneous blitzes, irregular zones, and outright double-teams, transparent audacities he will need to anticipate and yield control to. The double will most often come from the defender assigned to Josh Hart, who will need to demonstrate both a willingness to shoot and some fluency facilitating offense in 4 vs 3 situations if he wants to stay on the floor in this series. Persistent (characteristic) on-ball reluctance from Hart would force Thibodeau to play Bogdanović, whose minutes beget abject defensive cataclysm. New York’s best lineup in this series might be Jalen Brunson, Deuce McBride, Donte DiVincenzo, OG Anunoby, and Isaiah Hartenstein, but the likelihood is slim that Thibs commits extensively to his worst rebounding lineup in a series where the Knicks envision themselves devouring every loose basketball. 

All told, the Sixers have the better offense and higher team ceiling but a slim margin for error, clinging to life by the fragile, decimated remnant of Joel Embiid’s left meniscus as the Knicks boast superior depth, athleticism, and schematic versatility. I prefer Nick Nurse to Tom Thibodeau in a playoff series, but Thibs has coached magnificently through an injury-riddled regular season that has evicted him from his comfort zone. Philadelphia will start strong, but I am officially picking the New York Knicks to outlast them in what I hope will be a legendary Game 7 at the Garden. 

The pick: Knicks in seven