NEW YORK – Tyrese Maxey could feel the hole in his gut growling, growing, deepening. He knew how bad it was and how much worse it was about to get. He could almost reach out and touch the nightmares—the ones he wouldn’t be able to shake, the ones he’d have for weeks. Maybe months. Maybe more.
When you’re the kind of kid who gets every test right, every mistake hits you hard, and there was Maxey, half a minute from the end of the line, covered in red pen strokes. Philadelphia was down by six in the fourth quarter of Game 5 – just 28.9 seconds separated the Knicks from advancing to the second round of the 2024 NBA playoffs, and the Sixers from yet another disappointing early postseason exit to cap a season which began with such great and bright hopes.
Just as he did in the first four games of this opening-round series, Maxey was, overall, brilliant: 34 points on 14-of-24 shooting, eight assists against two turnovers, the Sixers’ offensive engine needed with Joel Embiid battling a backlog of illnesses — pain in his surgically repaired left knee, migraines, Bell’s palsy — that sapped MVP’s pain.
But Maxey wasn’t thinking about any of those makes, any of those dimes, none of those quick, hiccuping slaloms through layer after layer of the Knicks’ perimeter defense. He could only think of those where he had gotten it wrong.
“I mean, I… I’m a happy guy, but I hate losing,” Maxey said. “Especially in certain moments – like, I missed three free throws, crucial free throws, and then I turned the ball over late. You know, people don’t see me upset, but I was really upset and I just wanted to go out there and make it up to my teammates, man.
“I feel like I played really well the whole game, and if we lost a game like that – ending the season like that – I would have been devastated.”
Then Maxey did the only thing you can do to end a nightmare: He woke up, scoring seven of his career-high 46 playoff points in the final 28.9 seconds to save the Sixers’ season.
First, Maxey made an inbounds pass in the backcourt, opening the way for the attack. Less than three seconds after getting the ball in his hands, he was in the air.
“We knew we needed to raise some threes,” he said. “I mean, I tried to get to a point, step up and shoot.”
Fortunately for him and Philadelphia, he wasn’t the only one on air. Knicks center Mitchell Robinson — active in Game 5 after missing Game 4 with an ankle injury — jumped to corral Maxey after Embiid’s screen trapped New York guard Miles McBride. The problem was that he literally jumped, giving Maxey a 7-foot target to aim at.
“I mean, I’ll take it like a man,” Robinson said.
Maxey connected with Robinson’s body, and the shot found the basket, giving Philly a chance for a four-point play. After missing the previous free throws, Maxey wasn’t going to waste this chance, cutting New York’s lead to two.
“We fouled in a situation we didn’t want to,” Knicks coach Tom Thibodeau said.
After Knicks forward Josh Hart split a pair of free throws at the other end, the Sixers were down three, and Maxey had another chance to atone. This time, Embiid placed the ball screen even higher – at midcourt. McBride overcame that, but not quickly enough to get a rearview scramble on the speedy Maxey, who hit the launch pad between the N and New York’s midcourt logo – about 10 feet away from the supposed rearview contest. Robinson, and 35 feet away from the rim – and let him fly with the season on the line.
What was Maxey thinking when he stopped: “Find a way to survive.”
“Our season is on the line,” he said. “I mean, I just know that I trust my work. I trust what I’ve done my whole life and I just tried to get to a point and get up and knock down the shot.
What Kelly Oubre Jr. was thinking when the shot left Maxey’s fingertips: “Good Luck God bless you.”
“You know, he works on that scene, actually,” Oubre said. “Warming up, you probably see him shoot that shot. It’s just ultra-confidence and the desire not to lose.”
What the Knicks were thinking – well, some of them, at least: “Hey, should we be fouling Maxey before he can hit a 3-pointer?”
“In these situations, you talk about what you want to do,” Thibodeau said. “The timeout is up and Josh has two free throws. [The lead is] two. So you have to communicate what your decisions are. We could have done better in this situation, and we will. …We could have [fouled on that play]. That’s, you know. But let’s leave it at that.
(Knicks star Jalen Brunson’s take: “I think we need to be on the same page, all five of us. I think some of us thought we were going to foul. We weren’t. And that’s on me – I have to be ready to communicating things like that on the court. Yes, I need to do a better job of leading.”)
What do Knicks fans we were thinking when the shot fell softly through the net, ending the game at 97 with 8.1 seconds left… well, that’s probably unprintable. Which is what Maxey was saying when Brunson’s last-ditch attempt to surpass his fellow All-Star point guard was defeated by Nicolas Batum:
“I was saying some things that my grandmother probably wouldn’t like, honestly,” Maxey said.
The comments Maxey blurted out while walking from one end of the court at the World’s Most Famous Arena to the other may not have been appropriate for the job. But the play that produced and preceded them gave the Sixers another five minutes in the office… and they made the most of it.
Especially Embiid, who struggled with his shots and turnovers, and was a frequent target of Brunson’s pick-and-roll punishment in Games 4 and 5, but who locked in late to deliver a handful of his best assets on the night when Philly needed it most. from them:
“He can do those things,” Sixers coach Nick Nurse said of Embiid, who finished with 19 points on 7-for-19 shooting, 16 rebounds, 10 assists — his first career playoff triple-double — nine turnovers , four blocks and a steal. “It just didn’t seem like it was going to show up tonight. He obviously wasn’t feeling well. It was a difficult game for him […] I mean, he can move his feet, he can block shots, he can strip the ball. We’ve all seen him do this when he’s super engaged and trying to stop. And it was good that he finally came out and was able to dig deep.”
As Maxey worked magic and Embiid dug deep, the Knicks came out firing.
After Brunson scored five quick points to open the extra session, New York scored just four points in the final 3:56 of overtime, going 1-for-8 from the floor with two turnovers. Five of those seven misses belonged to Brunson, who couldn’t replicate the isolated cooking success he found early in Game 3. So did the two turnovers — including a backbreaker with 18.2 seconds left where he and center Isaiah Hartenstein got their wires crossed:
A HUGE comeback from Jalen Brunson and the Sixers steal Game 5 at The Garden!
Get all your #NBA Playoffs action LIVE on ESPN! pic.twitter.com/lWijO9fCpI
– ESPN Australia and New Zealand (@ESPNAusNZ) May 1, 2024
“It wasn’t good judgment on my part,” said Brunson, who finished with a 40-point, six-assist double in his 47-point, 10-assist masterclass in Game 4. “A careless turnover in overtime.”
“Tough way to lose a game,” Thibodeau said. “There was a clue. We have to play harder with leadership.”
On Tuesday, though, it was the Sixers who held out most down the stretch, led by their 23-year-old point guard — an All-Star, the league’s most improved player and now the author of one of the postseason’s most legendary performances. in Philadelphia basketball history.
“Tonight — in that fourth quarter, in that last minute — what he was able to do was spectacular for us,” said Sixers forward Tobias Harris, who scored 19 points on 7-of-11 shooting with eight rebounds in his best game. from the series. . “He carried us right there.”
Game 6 promises to be another war of attrition, just 48 hours after so many of this series’ protagonists logged monstrous, high-leverage minutes: 48 for Embiid, 50 for OG Anunoby, 51 for Brunson, 52 for Maxey and 53 for Hart, who didn’t rest for a while second on Tuesday. The Knicks – who played with just seven players in Game 5 after losing eighth player Bojan Bogdanović for the rest of the season – cannot afford any respite as they try to capitalize on a second chance to avoid a winner-takes Game 7. all.
“All out,” Brunson said. “There is no more time to pace yourself.”
Nor, as Maxey knows, can the Sixers.
“I mean, honestly — I know this is cliché or something — but I’m trying to flush the game,” he said. “I just… I know what we have to do in 48 hours. And we can’t let this happen. It’s a whole new game. And our season is back on the line.”
